Chapter Text
"Holy shit, Matt," Hotty McBurner Phone says as she hurries across the living room.
Foggy doesn't get up from his spot next to Matt on the floor because he's too busy pressing the towel into the gaping mess of blood where his side should be. So maybe it's just as well the woman used a key to let herself into Matt's apartment.
Foggy doesn't have key to Matt's apartment, but she does. The woman Matt assured him hadn't worked out, like his beautiful women never work out. He'd actually felt sorry for the guy because he'd seemed to really like this one.
And the hits just keep coming. Awesome.
"Matt?" She pulls on latex gloves as she kneels on the floor. "Matt, can you tell me what happened?"
Hotty McBurner Phone is, not surprisingly, indeed very hot. Of course she is. And apparently she's Dr. Hotty McBurner Phone. This gets more awesome by the second.
Foggy lets her take over towel duty and watches her peer at the hole underneath.
"He's been out of it since I called you, and he hasn't said much. You want to tell me what the hell is going on?"
"Grab that light and bring it over here," she says, nodding towards the bendable halogen. "I need to see."
She's as good as Matt is at not answering the fucking question. Although it does explain the lamp. Foggy has been wondering about that lamp. Actually, this explains all sorts of things. Foggy suddenly thinks he's the one who's been blind to not see any of this before. Matt's his friend and business partner, for heaven's sake. But how was he supposed to know his best friend, his blind best friend, is the Devil of Hell's Kitchen?
Jesus, is Matt even blind?
"Oh, fuck," she curses as the bright light illuminates Matt's blood smeared torso with frightening clarity. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. So help me," she says to Matt. "If you die on me, you stupid, stubborn, son-of-a-bitch, I will bring you back just so I can kill you myself." She takes a deep breath, and when she speaks again, it's back in the 'you're going to do exactly what I say' tone. "Help me get his clothes off. We need to keep pressure on this wound."
"What the hell?" Foggy begins to ask again.
"Help me, goddammit," she orders, and Foggy decides his questions will have to wait. He doesn't think she's going to answer any of them anyway.
After Matt's shirt is cut away and thrown to the side, he can't help but gasp in horror. It's much worse than he'd thought. Much, much worse. He thinks maybe he'd be okay with being blind for the rest of his life in exchange for un-seeing Matt's shiny, striated muscles that should be covered up with skin.
It's a good thing he didn't become a butcher after all because he think he may throw up.
"I think I'm going to be sick," he says.
"Don't you dare," she barks at him.
Dr. Hotty McBurner Phone leans even closer to Matt and pulls one of his hands to her face so he knows it's her. Foggy wants to un-see this too. The possessive way she puts her grubby little mitts all over him like she has some kind of right. Like maybe she's done it a thousand times before.
Then again, for all Foggy knows, she has.
"Matt, it's Claire. Matt, I need you to open your eyes for me."
"He's blind," Foggy says. At least he's supposed to be. Foggy's almost positive he is.
"I know that," she snaps, as if Foggy is exceptionally stupid. "Matt, it's Claire. Wake up. I need you to wake up now."
He stirs for the first time since taking that swing that sent Foggy's phone sliding across the living room floor. As soon as he moves, Matt moans and gasps for breath.
"No no," she says. "Don't try to move. But I need your old ships ears for just a second, okay?"
What the hell are old ships ears?
"Matt, you have a major abdominal wound. I need you to listen and tell me if there's any internal bleeding. Are your organs okay?"
"Claire," he whisper-moans as his eyes flutter open.
"Matt, I know, and I'm really sorry, but if you can't do this, we're taking you to the hospital right now. Consequences be damned. I need to know if you're bleeding inside. And don't you fucking lie to me."
Foggy appreciates that she sounds equal parts concerned and pissed off. Maybe even leaning more towards the pissed. He can relate to that.
Matt weakly pats her cheek, just a tiny movement of his fingers, and closes his eyes again, but even Foggy can tell it's not because he passed out. He tilts his head to the side, that thing he does when he's really concentrating, and Dr. Hotty McBurner Phone, Claire, holds her breath while she waits for the hospital or not verdict from old ships ears.
Foggy still doesn't know what the hell old ships ears mean, but he hopes they say Matt goes the hospital because this is madness.
"Good," Matt finally says.
The word is barely out of his mouth before she springs into action, reaching for the bag of medical supplies. She looks inside before muttering "Fuck" again and dumping it unceremoniously onto the floor next to her.
"Broken bones I need to worry about?" she asks Matt.
"No. Just old ships."
Again with the old ships. Who the fuck is this woman and what's the deal with the old ships?
"What about your head? Matt, do you have a concussion? How's your skull?"
"Thick," he says and even offers her a weak smile, handsome bastard, before sighing and giving himself over to the pain.
"Okay," she says, although Foggy can't tell if she's talking to Matt or herself. "Get a pair of gloves," she tells Foggy. "You're going to help."
"Oh, no. Bad idea," he says. "I'm a lawyer."
"Well, tonight you're a trauma nurse. Gloves. Now." Foggy reluctantly pulls them on and kneels next to her on the floor. "Keep that in place," she says. When he replaces his hand on the blood-soaked towel, she presses them down harder, hard enough to make Matt moan.
"I don't want to hurt him," Foggy says.
"Nope. He does that just fine on his own. But we need to get the bleeding stopped. Right now hurt is better than dead. He's going to stay passed out, if he's lucky." While she talks, she is in constant motion. Foggy barely has time to breathe and she has an IV going in Matt's arm with a bag of saline. "He's lost a lot of blood. I'm going to have you hold this up, okay. Gravity. We need to get fluid back into him."
She switches out the towel for a gauze pack and Foggy is quite fine holding a saline bag instead of being responsible for keeping Matt from bleeding to death. The towel makes a wet slap on the hard floor when she tosses it aside, and Foggy thinks he might throw up again.
"Deep breaths," she tells him. "In through your mouth. Count to five. Then slowly out through your nose."
Foggy does as he's told and starts to feel better until Dr. Hotty McBurner Phone, Claire, he reminds herself, her name is Claire, pulls out a sterile suture kit.
"Oh God," he murmurers when he sees the curved needle and thread.
"Just close your eyes if you have to," she calmly says as she begins to sew. "Remember to breathe. In and out, nice and steady. I will kick your ass if you pass out before we get him stabilized."
"Matt once told me he used to stitch up his dad when he was a kid," Foggy said, if only to have something to say, anything to cover up the terrible sound of Matt being stitched back together on his living room floor.
"Uh-huh," Claire agrees, more proof that Matt trusts her with his secrets.
More with the awesome.
"I had no idea stitches sound so. So."
"Wet?" she offers.
"Yeah. Wet. So you're a doctor?"
"He asked the same thing when we met," she says, but doesn't offer any more information. "I need a hand here. You can look. The worst is over." She presses Foggy's hand to the fresh gauze on Matt's side. She wipes the sweat from her forehead with her upper arm in a well-practiced move that keeps her bloodied gloves away from her face before using her elbow to pick through the medical supplies. "There," she says, replacing her hand on the gauze. "A syringe and that vial of antibiotics."
Matt's blood blooms onto the gauze pack, soaking through it in a red swell that looks like one of those abstract paintings.
"No, that's morphine. The other one."
"He doesn't like drugs," Foggy tells her as he hands them over.
"I know," she says again, this time in an irritated tone that tells Foggy this is a conversation she's had before and isn't eager to repeat. Matt must have explained how he feels exposed and disoriented when the world is spinning to her too. Yep, she knows all about Matt. "He'll get over it just this once or he can find himself a new seamstress. But I need to finish cleaning him up and make sure he's stable first."
She pulls back the gauze, and Foggy sees a neat line of black stitches holding Matt's side together. "Clot, damn you," she orders the wound before grabbing another new bandage and taping it securely into place.
Foggy watches as she fills the syringe with medicine and injects it into the IV line. The bag of saline has his bloody handprint on it. There's blood all over the floor. And Claire's clothes. And Matt's clothes. And the towel and stacks of gauze she's tossed to the side. So much blood.
Matt's blood.
"Is he going to be okay?" Foggy whispers.
"You must be Foggy," she says instead of answering.
She moves over to the other side of his stomach and starts sewing up that long cut. It's not as deep, the blood already crusted over and dried along the angry red line. Foggy watches her hands and thinks they're a lot like Matt's, actually. Long and elegant. Skilled. Her fingers gently feel along his skin like she's reading information hidden in his flesh. She ties a final, neat little knot, pulling it tight with metal tweezer-like things, and moves to the gashes in Matt's chest. They didn't seem too serious before, when he was bleeding out of his side. But now the gashes look deep and long and deadly.
My God, what happened? How did he make it back home? How has this much blood ended up on the floor and he's not dead?
"Who the hell are you?" Foggy finally asks again as she sews the much smaller line above the gaping side wound.
"A friend," she says.
"Friends don't usually show up with an emergency room in a bag and perform minor surgery on the living room floor."
She ties a final knot and sits back on her knees, stretching her shoulders until they pop. She prepares another bandage and carefully eases the tape off Matt's side. Foggy thinks it still looks awful, but she nods her approval before securing the clean bandage into place.
"Set that on the chair," she says, nodding towards the IV bag. "And take off his boots." Then those long fingers of hers make short work of Matt's belt and zipper while Foggy tugs off his boots.
She runs her fingers all along Matt's legs, Foggy supposes to check for injuries, but something about it seems like more than that, too. Again, her touch is intimate and possessive. It's as sensual as Matt's fingers moving across someone's face. Foggy can't make himself look away, but watching her makes Foggy's chest somehow both tight and empty. Someone else, someone he doesn't even know, a complete stranger to him but obviously not to Matt, touching his best friend so familiarly and knowledgeably makes him sick too. More with the awesome because he is fucking blind. He doesn't know Matt at all. Not in any way that matters.
"What the holy fuck is going on?" Foggy manages to say through a throat that's too tight.
"Help me turn him over. I think he has injuries on his back, too."
"No," Foggy snaps. "I'm not going to help you until you tell me something. Anything."
"I'm an ER nurse."
"Something I don't already know," Foggy clarifies.
"My name is Claire," she tentatively offers.
"Yeah, not exactly what I was going for."
"I know."
Claire, and even her name is beautiful, Foggy thinks, because of course the woman that doesn't work out has a beautiful name, leans back on her knees again and sighs. She pulls off her gloves the way he's seen doctors do it in the movies, so they're in a neat ball, all the blood and germs and contaminants trapped inside the latex.
"You know who I am," Foggy points out. "You seem to know all about him and this." He points angrily to the black mask on the floor. "When do I get to be up to speed?"
"I'm not going to presume to speak for him," Claire says, and as irritated as Foggy is, he begrudgingly respects her for protecting Matt. Matt never asked him too, but Foggy's been evading questions about his best friend since he met him too.
"Okay," Foggy sighs in defeat. "How do you want to do this?"
"As gently and infrequently as possible," Claire says. "I don't want to put any stress on his abdomen. Let's get him turned over here on the floor, and then we'll move him to the couch. He'll be more comfortable, and I can see to the smaller stuff from up there." She pulls on a fresh pair of gloves. "On the count of three."
Matt moans when they shift him, and Claire is quick to soothe his cheek with one hand while she probes the slices on his back with the other. Matt starts to jerk around, like he's trying to get up and fight them off even though he's more than half dead.
"Get in his face," Claire orders Foggy. "Talk to him. Let him feel you. Let him smell you. He needs to calm down."
"Matty, what the fuck?" Foggy whispers. He takes Matt's hand and puts it on his face, the way Claire had done earlier. It's too cold, Foggy thinks. He's not a doctor, but it must be because of all the blood on the floor. His fingers feel like ice. He gently strokes Matt's hair and watches as Matt's face relaxes.
"Foggy?" he breathes because it's so quiet it's not even a whimper.
"Yeah. I'm here. And just so you know, I'm really pissed off at you. Because we're supposed to be a team, asshole. I'm supposed to be your fucking Goose. What the hell is all this?"
He glances over to see Claire taping another bandage over yet another line of stitches.
"Dude, you're a mess. This is the only time I've ever looked better than you. And fuck you because I can't even enjoy it. Seeing your insides is not my idea of a good time. It's actually making me more than a little sick."
"Can you hand me the glue and surgical tape?" Claire asks Foggy. "This one is shallow enough to get away with it."
Foggy keeps Matt's hand against his cheek as he moves through the dwindling pile of supplies to find what Claire needs. The sharp smell of adhesive reminds him of building models when he was a kid, and Claire's strong fingers hold together the long cut while the glue dries.
"He really cares about you," she quietly says.
"An hour ago, I would have agreed with you, but no offense," Foggy says. "Claire." He spits out her name like a curse. "But since I am completely in the dark here, no blind pun intended, I think I can say with certainty that he doesn't."
Claire finishes taping together the shallower gash and once again takes off her gloves. She takes Foggy's other hand and brings it to rest on Matt's back. Foggy rolls his eyes and tries to pull away, but Claire keeps him in place.
"Feel that?" she asks. Foggy sighs and feels the soft push and pull of air moving through Matt's lungs. "He was in full panic mode a couple minutes ago. Probably would have pulled out half these stitches while he fought us off until he passed out again. Would have done serious damage. And then he heard your voice and felt you next to him. Yeah, he loves you. Bodies don't lie."
"Whatever," Foggy mutters, yanking his hand back.
Claire shrugs, like she doesn't care enough to argue the matter further. "Believe what you want. Let's move him to the couch. Take his head. Try not to jostle him too much."
Foggy and Claire muscle Matt to the couch, Claire managing to keep Matt's torso level the entire time. He hates to admit that he's impressed. Damned impressed, actually. She is impressive, and really nice, and crazy beautiful like all of Matt's women always are, and it is so unfair he wants to drop Matt's head. But Foggy's grateful too, so grateful Claire's here because he wouldn't know what to do to keep Matt from bleeding out onto the floor. He wonders how Matt found her. Maybe he just stood around the ER and waited until someone hot offered to help him. Because something like that would so totally happen to Matt.
And then Foggy has to stroke his hair sand babble at him some more about how mad he is because surely, if Matt can be a masked hero-type, he can play a halfway decent game of intramural softball, because the movement from the floor to the couch is enough to make Matt come to and freak out again. And it pisses him off to see what Claire meant, the way Matt relaxes into Foggy's voice and Foggy's touch. Like he trusts him. But Foggy knows bodies do lie because Matt's has lied. Over and over. For years. Fucking years. Now that it looks like Matt isn't going to die right in front of him, the scales are tipping away from concerned and more towards angry.
He doesn't know jack shit about his best friend.
"Grab him some sweats or pajama pants or something," Claire says when Matt's breathing calmly. She has the adhesive out again and is gluing together cuts on his arms. "And a blanket. The heaviest one you can find. I don't want his core temperature to drop anymore than it already has."
"Does anyone ever argue with you when you use that tone?" Foggy asks as he heads to Matt's bedroom.
"He doesn't listen for shit," she admits.
"Preaching to the choir."
When he comes back with what she asked for, Claire is working on Matt's face. She moves her fingertips slowly around his jaw and across the bridge of his nose and around swelling eye.
"Dammit," she mumbles. "I think his orbital rim is fractured. But I can't tell for sure. Stupid, stubborn asshole."
"Don't want to ruin his pretty face?" Foggy asks. "Because it's not like he has to worry about losing any eye or anything."
She turns and glares at him. "Get an ice pack."
Foggy stands there and glares back.
"Please," she adds.
Foggy tries to win the staring contest, but he quickly gives up and heads to the kitchen. When he comes back with it, she's gluing together a cut along his hairline and carefully adding a line of tape. When that's done, she eases him into the sweatpants, not asking for Foggy's help, and takes a stethoscope to Matt's chest.
He's way too pale, even more so than usual, the drying blood a vicious contrast against his skin.
"Okay, then," she finally whispers, putting her hand on Matt's face like she's the one who needs to feel him to know what he looks like. "Okay."
"Here," Foggy says, interrupting her moment by thrusting the ice pack at her.
"Hold it in place," she says as she gets up to give Foggy her perch on the edge of the sofa. She takes the IV out of Matt's arm before removing her gloves and gathering up her things. "I have to go back to work. We're already understaffed, and long lunches aren't exactly encouraged under the best of circumstances."
For the first time, Foggy realizes she's wearing hospital scrubs.
"Wait. You're leaving? You can't leave."
"I have to go," she repeats.
"What am I supposed to do?" Foggy asks around the rising panic.
"I'm going to give him something to help with the pain," she says. "The best thing I can recommend at this point is rest, since he's too much of an idiot to go to the hospital. He needs to make more red blood cells. Give his body a chance to heal. So he's going to be out for the next several hours."
"You can't leave," Foggy says again.
"He shouldn't wake up for a good long while. At least I hope not." She expertly fills a second syringe and injects Matt with the morphine. "God knows he won't let me do that again anytime soon," she says. "Switch out the ice packs and pay attention to his breathing. Check on that side wound from time to time and make sure the bleeding doesn't start up again."
"Okay. Seriously. You can't leave."
"Seriously, I have to."
"What about Matt? I thought you cared about him."
"He has you," she says with a smile. "Call me if you have any questions."
"I have questions now," Foggy says. "I have a ton of questions."
"Medical questions," she clarifies. "And when he wakes up, if you think of it, please tell him I'll be by later to check on him."
"He said it didn't work out between you. He said you'd gone."
"Yeah," she sighs. "Something like that." She leans over the back of the couch and gently brushes back Matt's hair. "Stupid, stubborn..." she whispers before kissing his forehead. The gesture is so filled with longing and sadness Foggy has to blink back sudden tears.
Matt hadn't lied about that part after all.
"Oh, and Foggy," she says from over her shoulder. "Go easy on him when you kick his ass, okay. I don't want to have to redo all those stitches." She gives him a little smile and walks out the door, leaving Foggy alone except for his many unanswered questions in a war-zone with his drugged, unconscious best friend.
Yeah. This is just awesome.
"I finally see," he says to Matt as he glares at the black mask crumpled on the floor. "I see said the blind man."