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Matt’s chest rises and falls with a rhythm and regularity of a machine. It is a machine, breathing for him. He looks like a corpse. Like they’ve set this up to pretend for a minute that he’s not dead. Like a joke. Lifeless, with a tube all the way down his throat. Foggy sits by his bedside, hands curled up on his thighs and not daring to reach for Matt’s hands — afraid that they’ll be icy cold and betray the illusion. Confirm that this is all some sick joke played on him and that his best friend is dead, like the most fucked up candid camera prank show in existence. His shirt sticks against his back, but Foggy can’t even move enough to shrug out of his suit jacket.
‘Worried about swelling,’ Foggy had been told, ‘Won’t be able to breathe on his own.’
Cracked skull.
Drunk, Matt had once described feeling his father’s face after he’d been shot. Spiderwebs. That’s how Matt had described the cracks in the bone to him with red, red eyes that were no longer sparkling with tears. He’d said it flat and even and croaking with the ends of sobbing. Foggy’s never actually seen Matt cry, not really, but he’s seen him in the states afterward a few times.
Foggy pushes out a long sigh through his nose. It’s all he really seems to get, isn’t it? The aftermath.
Bleeding out already, on the floor.
Knocked out already, on a roof.
With a tube down his throat already, in the fucking hospital.
That’s how bad it is. Bad enough for Claire to strip Matt to his boxers and pretend he just tripped over and brained himself in her apartment. Lucky she works here. Lucky she’s a woman, because if Foggy called an ambulance saying the blind guy in his apartment was his boyfriend who had smacked his head and EMTs arrived and actually put eyes on Matt? The half-healed broken fingers, multi-coloured bruises, the criss-crossed scars along his chest? Hauled in for questioning at a minimum.
“Fuck, Matt,” Foggy mutters. Breath goes in and Matt’s chest rises. Breath goes out and it falls. A perfect cycle, a perfect rhythm, a perfect tempo. If that machine stopped Matt would choke.
‘Won’t be able to breathe on his own.’
Heat builds behind his eyes, grows in, flooding over to cling against his eyelashes. Matt could die, could never wake up, never be able to breathe. Even if he does wake up the doctors told him — like in a dream, while he numbly stared at their gently frowning, sympathetic mouths — that he should prepare for there to be a laundry list of possible complications, both temporary and permanent. That they won’t know which is which for months. Motor difficulties, neurological deficits, cognitive impairment, personality changes, memory loss. Turns out the brain’s pretty important and getting it knocked around is kind of a big deal.
Under the bandages, Foggy knows they’ve shaved half of Matt’s head. That he’ll complain about it when he wakes up. When he wakes up. When. Matt will wake up and complain about the itch of newly grown hair, then he’ll joke about the metal plate they’ve had to screw his skull against and how Foggy should feel better now. More protection, because that stupid fucking helmet doesn’t provide enough. Skin fucking tight. Foggy grips his wrists and rakes his nails against them — drawing hot red lines to raise. There’s clearly a reason bike helmets are so bulky and stupid looking. The second Matt wakes up Foggy’s going to make him feel what a real helmet’s like.
Foggy already feels wired, too much fury and fear humming in his blood, but he’s also completely exhausted, drained. He pulls out his phone and shoots Karen a quick text:
‘Coffee?’
Only after it’s sent does he realise how rude it was. Not even a please, but she’ll understand. She’d probably appreciate his bluntness after waking up to his frantic voicemail about Matt in the hospital; she'd certainly sounded rattled enough when she called him back. She asked if she could bring him anything and at the time it felt insane to want anything at all while Matt is the one in need, but it’s been fifteen minutes and that martyrdom has slid off of him in favour of self pity.
What’s he going to do if Matt doesn’t wake up? If he does?
Motor difficulties. Neurological deficits. Cognitive impairment. Personality changes. Memory loss.
And Foggy waits. Could set his watch to the rhythm of the clicking and hiss of air. He’s not allowed to be here, not really. Thank christ or whoever for Claire, again. So he can sit here and watch like something will change. Maybe it would have been better if he couldn’t be here. If he was trapped behind the doors to the neuro-ICU and was able to go home. To drink. To not be able to imagine how bad things are. Because they are bad. It’s bad.
Matt might not wake up.
But of course he will. Foggy pulls at his hair. And pulls and pulls and pulls. Of course Matt will wake up, and when he does he’ll be fine. Maybe not immediately, not quick enough for himself. He’ll needle and whine and be such a pain in the ass that Foggy will want to put him back in the coma again himself. When he wakes up.
Motor difficulties.
Foggy pulls out his phone again. Karen’s texted back ‘sure thing’, but that’s not why he’s taken it out. No. He googles.
Recovery time of weeks-to-months for the skull, but TBIs can affect things forever. Permanent. That’s if he… he… but he will. Ataxia. That might change the way he walks, the way he moves. Not just in that stupid suit, but all the time. How much could that slow him down when he types? How might a tremor affect how he reads? Even in one of his hands. Foggy licks his teeth. Partial paralysis. Matt could lose function in some… any part of his body. Because your fucking brain controls your whole body, right? All of this, for what? Not some crazy fight with some supervillain as far as Foggy knows. Claire doesn’t even know. All she knows is that Matt somehow found his way to the alley near her apartment, slurring down the phone in distracted stops and starts. So. Yeah. But there have been no bombs. No Punisher-esque rampage. Probably a mugger with a lucky shot. And now Matt might… might…
Neurological deficits.
Weakness, numbness. Speech difficulties. That’s… he can still work. Maybe not in court, and he loves being in court. But a stutter, aphasia… that’s not the end of the world. It’s not. He could live with that. And Matt, despite being the unluckiest person Foggy’s ever met, is the luckiest man in the world. It can't just be sheer force of will that he always bounces back from these injuries that would retire any career athlete. Matt’s going to be fine, he’s going to be completely fine.
Cognitive impairment.
Now that one’s a kick in the teeth. Matt might value a lot about himself, but how hard he’s worked is how he defines himself. If that’s gone? His brains? That’s going to be a problem. Matt could… if that’s all he comes out of here with, Foggy knows that’ll drive Matt deep into his daredevilling. If years of schooling suddenly means nothing, if he can’t be a lawyer, then why not? Why not just go head first — again. Get himself killed faster.
Matt’s going to get himself killed. If not now — if not now, then when he’s back out before he’s ready. When the next hit comes. When he thinks he can’t do it any more and he—he…
Personality changes.
Despite the fear the others inspire, this is the one that terrifies Foggy the most. Matt might wake up and not be Matt. Not his Matt. Maybe he won’t care about being Daredevil anymore. And as much of a relief as that might be, who is Matt Murdock if he’s not relentlessly pursuing justice? Recklessly disregarding his own health and safety for complete strangers just because he can. That’s just who he is. Or who he was. Whatever Matt wakes up… however different he is, Foggy will stick by him. When he wakes up. When.
Memory loss.
Amnesia. Antegrade, it’s rare, the whole soap opera type of brain injury, but it’s possible, isn’t it? Matt could wake up and not know who the hell he is. Or Karen. Or anything. Maybe he’ll get that back over time, maybe just miss a week or a month or something. Missing time is normal, apparently. It probably won’t be that much. Even Matt might not know why he’d gone out last night, who had brained him. Not that it matters. So long as he wakes up.
Could also be retrograde, like Memento or something. Relentlessly pursuing the man who broke his skull open, though he’s not got a dead wife or anything. Still. Can’t be a lawyer like that. Can’t go out at night as Daredevil. Can’t even see those little photographs. Maybe he could make himself little braille notes or something.
Foggy drags a hand over his face. Maybe he should download Memento. Is it on something? If he’s going to sit here watching Matt’s chest rise and fall and rise and fall until they finally wean him off the sedation and see if he can breathe on his own again.
Fuck.
Fuck.
The floor is so far away suddenly. He’s standing; Matt would be able to hear his thundering heart like a mile away probably if he was awake. God, he’s going to be sick. He’s going to be goddamn sick. Matt’s hearing. Those senses, everything. If he’s got cognitive issues, does that mean he can still use them right? What if they don’t come out right? Too much, too strong, too little?
He’s already sweating through his shirt.
Karen’s going to get here soon, then he’s going to down the coffee that’s going to have gotten cold, and pretend he’s not scared out of his fucking mind. And Karen will see right through him. But she’ll stay the night with him until he leaves to crash at home, and then he’ll do the same for her. And Matt will wake up and he will be fine.