Chapter Text
The day was just breaking as Daredevil stumbled down the stairs from the roof, bumping the railing as he rounded the corner. He pulled clumsily at his mask and it fell to the ground, skittering across the room. He’d pick it up in the morning. For practical reasons, he never usually left stray objects lying on the floor. Even with his enhanced senses, random objects and blindness were not a great combination. But he was tired and his head felt like it was in a vice-like grip. Did one of the tonight’s thugs get a swipe at his head? He tried to go through the evening’s event in his mind as he removed his suit, but it was a strange blur.
Slick with sweat, he made his way into the shower, clipping the doorframe on the way. He leaned against the shower stall a little as he washed, unsteady on his feet, trying not to dwell on his worrying lack of memory. He’d followed a group of men to the docks. They were talking about a shipment. What were they smuggling again? Or was it an assault? He squeezed the bridge of his nose, willing his brain to help him out.
After drying off, he collapsed onto the bed, not even bothering to struggle into his pyjamas. He could feel the blood pumping through his head. Pulsing, angry. He fell asleep with his arm outstretched towards the clock on the bedside table, alarm still unset.
“Foggy… Foggy… Foggy… Foggy…”
Matt swiped irritably at the phone. “Foghh?”
“Big night, Buddy?” Foggy quipped.
“Mmmm…” Matt groaned into the pillow.
“Get the hell up. Karen’s gone to the state archives to see if she can dig up more on Mr Browne’s family background, and I don’t want to be stuck with boring discovery on my own.”
“Yeah, yeah”. Matt needed him to stop talking. It was too loud. Piercing.
“Okay, I want to see you here in thirty. No more or I’m divorcing you as a business partner.”
“Fo…”
“Just kidding. Now get your ass down here.”
Matt swayed a little as he got out of bed. His headache had lessened a little, but he still couldn’t remember what had happened last night. Grabbing his tie, he crossed the ends as usual, pulling one end through, and… what was the next step? He untangled the ends and tried again. Cross, up, and through. His muscle memory kicked in and he sighed with relief. How could he forget how to do up a tie?
He leaned heavily against the railing as he descended the stairs of his apartment block. Between the headache and lack of sleep, he decided to splurge on a cab ride to work.
“Twenty-nine minutes,” Foggy bellowed from his chair as Matt entered the office. “Didn’t think you’d make it, Murdock.”
He jumped up and followed Matt into his personal office, summarising the day’s tasks as they walked. Foggy stopped mid-sentence when Matt stumbled slightly and clipped his desk as he approached the chair. Matt leaned against the desk, head down, steadying himself before moving slowly into his chair.
“You okay, buddy?”
Matt waved a hand as if to say ‘stop bothering me, I’m fine’.
Foggy sighed a little, not convinced by Matt’s silent act, but continued summarising. “So if you take the McCartney correspondence and I take Zhang, perhaps we could get through them by mid-afternoon. Karen will probably be back by then, so we can revise what we have so far and hopefully knock-off work by beer-o-clock. What do you think?”
Matt was silent. Still.
“Matt?” Foggy asked quietly.
“Yar thash fii…” Matt slurred.
“You’re not sounding great. Did you get shot in the head again?” Foggy said only half-jokingly. Matt was rarely honest about the extent of his injuries, and getting information about his night time activities was like drawing blood from a stone.
Before Matt could answer, his body went stiff, his head pushing back into the chair. Then drooping sideways, his body started convulsing.
“Shit!” Foggy tried to remember his first aid training he received in second-year college. He recited the guidelines out loud: “don’t hold them down, move objects away, don’t stick anything in their mouth, time the seizure, place a sweater or something under their head…” He hesitated, confused. “But he’s in a chair! What do I do if he’s upright?”
He supported Matt from the side to prevent him from falling off the chair, plucking the glasses off his face and clumsily dipping into his pocket for his phone. He was tempted to call Claire first, knowing that if Matt was conscious, he would almost certainly demand that the straight-talking nurse treat him off-duty, as opposed to a hospital. Matt had an almost pathological fear of hospitals, not to mention an understandable paranoia about being outed as Daredevil if the staff put two and two together. The seizure in itself wasn’t suspicious, but the many scars from knife and bullet wounds would be hard to explain. In the end Foggy decided that if Matt died, it really didn’t matter if his secret double identity was discovered. Shaking, he dialled 911.
By the time the paramedics arrived, Foggy had lowered Matt to the floor and placed him in the recovery position on his side. Matt’s pants were damp with urine and a wet patch of bloody saliva was forming on the suit jacket under his head. Matt would be a little peeved if he knew his usually immaculate jacket was crumpled on the dusty floor, but jackets could always be replaced.
The paramedics started questioning him before they even crossed the room. “Does he have a history of seizures?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“And do you know if there was any cause? Was he acting unusual beforehand?” one of them asked as the other placed an oxygen mask on Matt’s face, clipping a monitor to his finger.
Crouching down, the female paramedic, Sophie, quickly pulled a penlight out of her pocket, flicking the light in Matt’s right eye.
“He’s blind. No light perception”, Foggy blurted out, clearly flustered. “Sorry, I should have mentioned that on the phone.” He gestured in the direction of Matt’s usual cane parking spot - the edge of the entry vestibule. Only it wasn’t there. Sophie glanced at the spot Foggy was pointing to, confused as to what he was pointing at. “Surely he didn’t forget to use the cane this morning,” Foggy mumbled to himself, hoping that no one had noticed that the blind man had inexplicably navigated his way to work without his usual cane.
“No worries. Could you tell me if he was acting unusual,” the paramedic repeated. “Irritable? Slurred words? Did he seem disoriented?”
“Four for four. He couldn’t seem to find words, and when he did they were slurred. Plus he bumped into the desk getting to his chair.” Foggy quickly added, “I know that sounds reasonable for a someone who’s blind, but it’s not normal for Matt.” He paused, debating whether to elaborate on Matt’s extraordinary spatial awareness. “Also, he slept in and his tie was in a fisherman’s knot… also not normal for Matt. He’s very particular about his appearance, believe me.”
“We want to administer some medication to prevent further seizures. Do you know if he has any allergies?”
“Only cats… oh and ferrets,” Foggy corrected. “Cats and ferrets.”
“And do you know if he’s taken any drugs lately, prescription or otherwise?”
“No, Matt never takes drugs. He’s too much of a control freak.
“What about Asprin?”
“Dunno. It’s possible I guess. He has it in his house. Could Asprin cause this?”
“Not in itself, but Asprin’s a blood thinner. If he has an existing head injury it could potentially complicate things.”
Foggy paled. How serious was this thing?
“Is that why he’s spitting up blood?”
“No, it looks like he just bit his tongue during the seizure. That can happen sometimes.”
‘Just?!’ Foggy thought to himself.
“Charlie,” Sophie called to her colleague, “could you grab the c-collar and help me roll him over?” Overwhelmed by the medical speak (“hema”-something, “inferior”-something), Foggy watched in silent alarm as they worked together to gently roll Matt onto his back, fitting a bright yellow brace to his neck. One of them rubbed his chest in an attempt to get a response. Although it was not a good sign that Matt was still unconscious, Foggy was slightly glad to postpone the inevitable backlash that would occur when Matt woke up and realised an ambulance had been called.
On cue, Matt roused just as Sophie was feeling the back of his hand for a vein. He moaned and jerked his arm away, wincing at the sudden snap as something fell off his finger. As the paramedics wrestled to keep him still, Foggy tried to reorient the beast: “Matt… Matt… calm down…you’re in the office. You had a seizure, but you’ll be okay.” Foggy hoped that in his delirium, Matt wasn’t picking up on his frantic heartbeat or the uncertainty in his voice. (He’ll be okay, won’t he? He has to be okay.)
Sophie chimed in, “can you tell me your name?”
Matt made an attempt to roll over with another moan, pushing weakly at his oxygen mask, which Sophie quickly moved back into place.
She repeated the question, “Can you tell me your name?”
“Ma… Mahhew Merhogh” he slurred.
“Good,” Sophie encouraged. “Can you tell me the day of the week?” After a brief silence, “okay, another question: can you tell me where you are?”
Matt frowned slightly, trying to figure out why he was on the ground, who they were, and where he was. He clicked his fingers a couple of times. Foggy had said something… a clue. What was it? He tried to make sense of the jumble of smells around him: plastic, antiseptic, wood, ammonia, dust, ink, coffee… it was too hard.
“Fo…”, he whimpered.
“I’m here, buddy. There are two paramedics here too. They’re trying to help you. Concentrate for me.”
Sophie gently touched his hands. “Matt, I’d like you to squeeze your left hand… good… and then your right… great.” If the paramedics had noticed Matt had confused his left and right, they didn’t say anything.
“Do you remember hitting your head at all?”
Matt frowned again, unable to remember anything from the day or so. “You have a fairly substantial bump on the side of your head. It might explain the seizure. We need to take you to the hospital for tests and observation.”
“No!” he started writhing again upon hearing the word ‘hospital’, trying to get up and away from the woman. He clawed at the plastic around his neck in panic. Recognising that Matt responded to words rather than physical force (not to mention avoiding battling the surprisingly strong man), Sophie reassured him, “you have a brace around your neck. You need to wear it just until we confirm you don’t have a spinal injury. You need to stay still and calm to help your brain rest. Can you do that?” Matt tried to map his spinal cord in his head. Surely he’d know if it was damaged in any way.
“I’m just going to put this clip back on your finger. It’s measuring your oxygen levels. It doesn’t hurt. You’re also going to feel a small prick on the back of your hand as I insert a cannula.”
“Foghh, pleahh”, Matt appealed, hoping that his friend would understand. Foggy knew about his fear of hospitals, so why was he letting this happen?
“Fo…?” he tried again.
“Matty, you have to.” Foggy tried to placate him by using his childhood name. “You hurt your head. You had a seizure and you can’t even pronounce my name. This is not negotiable.”
Matt’s hand was rubbed with oh-so-familiar-smelling medical alcohol. Sophie reminded him (“now a small prick”) as the cannula entered his vein. He appreciated the warning, but he was angry that they still weren’t listening to him. He didn’t want this. They couldn’t do this to him, surely. If only he could find the words…
“I refushe.”
Foggy turned to the paramedics, rolling his eyes at Matt’s stubbornness. “Surely he can’t refuse treatment in this state. He’s clearly not competent to make such a decision, and I’m his medical power of attorney. What can we do?”
Matt started shifting again, increasingly distressed. Before he could protest further, however, Matt let out a deep moan and his hands clenched tight as he experienced a second seizure. Foggy was relieved to take the back seat this time. He watched, horrified, as Sophie deftly pushed a syringe of liquid into the cannula attached to Matt’s now jerking limb.
After the convulsions had finished, the paramedics turned to Foggy. “We can’t leave him. As you said, he’s disoriented, confused. And a second seizure suggests significant damage. It’s tricky because the usual diagnostics like pupil response aren’t possible in his case, but the hospital can conduct scans to confirm the injury and assess the extent of the damage.”
“I’m prepared to suffer the consequences if he gets angry later, believe me”. Foggy would do just about anything for Matt.
“We’re going to move him now. Would you like to accompany us in the ambulance? He’ll probably be quite agitated and disoriented again when we wakes up so it would be good for him to see a familiar face … er, I mean voice, hear your voice, when he comes to. We need to minimise movement to prevent swelling and secondary injury.”
“Of course.” There’s no way Foggy would let Matt travel alone.
He watched as the two gently shifted him onto a stiff board and strapped him in place. Foggy was still learning more and more about the extent of Matt’s strength and skills, and he suspected the man’s ability to negotiate restraints might even challenge the thick straps if he were to wake up at this point.
Matt remained unconscious throughout the short trip to Metro-General Hospital. He got carsick easily, and the combination of sirens and movement would have distressed him on a normal day, let alone in his current state. Foggy whispered reassurances to his friend the whole way, hoping Matt could somehow still hear him and will him to spontaneously recover.