Chapter Text
Prologue
It was her last appointment of the day, and it was late. She usually didn’t do new patients at five in the afternoon, particularly on a winter day where the sun was already setting, but it was hard to say no to a sorority sister, particularly a fellow pledge.
“Look, it was hard enough for me to talk him into it,” Marci said over the phone. “Maybe he won’t show and then you can bill him and go home early. He won’t get away. I’ve got his credit card.”
So Stahl still wasn’t above stealing a boyfriend’s wallet, though in the old days it was to buy something for herself, not hold it hostage and extract promises of seeking medical treatment. They weren’t dating anyway, anymore – Marci was way too clear on that – but she still cared for the guy, something she did not have to say, and Marci Stahl did not care for a lot of people. So Heather said yes.
To be fair, her new patient did look like talking might do him some good. His long hair was wet from the icy drizzle and his clothing was crumpled. Despite still being over what a doctor might consider an ideal weight, his suit was hanging off him, indicating recent weight loss, but his pallor didn’t give the impression that he was out getting a lot of exercise, even just an inside gym with large windows. “Hi.” His palm was sweaty. “I’m sorry – I’ve never done this before.”
She didn’t say that he couldn’t have made that more obvious. “Everyone has a first time,” she said reassuringly. He handed over the medical forms, covered in a furious scribble that probably broke the cheap pen, and she made her introductions and the preliminary questions. Was he taking any medication? No. Did he have any medical history she should be aware of? No.
He was the one who mentioned Marci. “She said – well, I guess it doesn’t matter. She said you were good.” He didn’t make eye contact. He slumped into the opposite armchair and his gaze darted across the old carpet.
She didn’t go into the relationship – that was her personal life, and that was private. Patient-doctor boundaries were important. “We’ll see what I can offer you. Why don’t you start by telling me why you’re here?”
Foggy – that was his name, improbably, on the form – sighed in a way that conveyed not only how tired he was but how unable he was to release any tension. He did not relax on the exhale. He looked at her coffee table. “So I have this friend, Matt. More than friend. Everything. Law school roommate. Best friend. Wingman. Platonic soulmate – whatever you want to call it.”
She cautiously asked, “Romantic partner?”
“Not – okay, once or twice in college, but it did not become a thing. If it had been a thing we would be married by now and have adopted a whole bunch of kids from Guatemala or something.” He tried to smile, but it died on his face. “We did our first internship after law school together, we took the bar together, we started our own firm because we were stupid and we wanted to save the world, not work for corporations.” He shook his head. “I hate talking about him in the past tense, but I slip sometimes. It’s happening more and more.”
She said as gently as possible, “What happened to him?”
“He disappeared. Six months ago.” Foggy swallowed. He was already choking back tears. “There one night, gone the next day. If you live anywhere near midtown, you might have seen the posters. I put a lot of them up myself. The police think – I know they think he’s dead. Someone doesn’t just disappear like that and stay alive. There would be a ransom. Or something.”
This was not the time to make any guesses. “Why don’t you just go over what happened, exactly? In your words?”
He looked up. Some smidgen of eye contact, like he was trying to prove to her that he was brave enough to do this. “It was just an ordinary night. We got off work, we went to a bar, had some drinks with Karen. She’s – was – our secretary. Matt left nine, maybe nine-fifteen. He didn’t live far, didn’t take a cab. And that was the last time anybody saw him.” He shook his head. “The next day, he didn’t show up for work. I didn’t think anything of it. He could be like that. Weird hours. I left a bunch of messages on his phone, mocking him for poor attendance record at work, but he didn’t answer, so at lunch, I went to his apartment. Nothing. The place was spotless. Like he hadn’t been there. And then I noticed his coat wasn’t there, and his briefcase wasn’t there, and the files he was supposed to take home to review weren’t there.”
“So he hadn’t been home.”
“I didn’t want to call the police. I didn’t want it to be that. So I just kept calling his phone. Eventually, someone picked up.” Foggy took an extra moment between sentences. “It was someone who heard the phone ringing when she went to put out her trash. His phone was in the dumpster. Cracked, blood on it, but it still worked. It was three blocks from the bar – that’s how far he made it.” He held up his hands. “And that’s the only shred of evidence the police ever found. It went to missing persons, and they did take it seriously. Extra seriously, because he has a disability. Matt is blind. People think he’s easy to take advantage of, but he wasn’t.” He frowned. “Isn’t.”
“People with physical disabilities are an at-risk population,” she said, choosing her tone as carefully as her words. She didn’t want to sound patronizing, or even be mistaken for patronizing. “Do they have any suspects?”
“You remember Wilson Fisk? The guy running the criminal empire in Hell’s Kitchen?”
She nodded. “Everyone thought he was a big philanthropist who was going to save the neighborhood by pouring money into it.”
“Yeah, well he did pour a lot of money into things,” Foggy said. “Matt and I were the attorneys for Detective Hoffman, the crooked cop who turned FBI information. His deposition sank the whole thing, and a lot of people went down with it. So obviously that was our first thought. Hoffman was in protective custody, so maybe they took Matt, and I might be next. I had to go live in a safehouse for the first few weeks. So did Karen. We were freaked out, but I didn’t care about my safety. I wanted to be looking for Matt.” His eyes wandered. He hunched over, nervously twiddling his thumbs. “Nothing went anywhere. It didn’t affect the case. Hoffman was done anyway, with his statement on record, off to witness protection. And there was a ton of other evidence to indict Fisk, even before he had a SWAT team on his payroll shoot at the FBI. They’re still assembling all of the charges. There’s a massive amount of material. And when Matt went missing, I had to recuse myself, so I’m done. It was how I got out of protective custody. The police found no connection, the FBI found no connection ... There was no connection.”
“Do you believe that?”
Foggy shifted nervously in the chair. His eyes went down again. “I did something really, really wrong. Something I could be disbarred over. Or should have, I don’t know.” His face was flushed from biting back tears. “I went to Fisk. He’s in a maximum facility ward but I was friendly with a guard, so I got ten minutes with someone who was not supposed to have any visitors without his lawyers. It was through glass with the telephone and as I sat down I realized that for months this case had been my life, up to his arrest, and I had never seen him in person,” he said. “He’s big. He’s massive. I should have been terrified. But he looked so sad. Like a big ... I don’t know, baby. Who, you know, killed people. He decapitated someone with a car door. And here he was, pretty much toothless. Defeated. And he didn’t know who I was.”
He paused, and she waited patiently. He didn’t need further prodding.
“He knew about us – Hoffman’s attorneys. His personal assistant or whatever, this guy named Wesley, who’s also missing, hired us to defend someone in Fisk’s empire. It was our first case. But Fisk didn’t have a direct hand in it. He didn’t know us from anyone else, or I thought he didn’t, until I said we had been working for Mrs. Cardenas – another person who’s dead, every around me is dead – in a tenancy case. Then he remembered that he’d met Matt at his girlfriend’s art gallery. They spoke for maybe a minute. He even – Fisk even spoke of him like he admired Matt’s conviction. What kind of bullshit was that?” Foggy hastily wiped his face. “He sounded so ... genuine. When I told him about Matt, he looked upset. He said he had no idea. He had almost no access to outside information, especially the news, so it made sense, but – “ And here he needed another break. “So I offered him a deal.”
This time he needed a little push from her. “What kind of deal?”
“I said – and to be clear, this didn’t actually happen, it was only words – I said I could get my hands on some of the paperwork about the tenancy case and his dealings with Union Allied, and I could destroy some evidence. Not a lot. Maybe enough to get a few charges dropped. I told him that was what I could offer him, if he could tell me where Matt was.” He added, “Matt would have never approved. Maybe never forgiven me. But I would have done it. I would still do it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Fisk looked at me, with those big stupid sad eyes of his, and he said, ‘That’s very generous of you. I know how hard this is for you, and while I’d like to accept, I don’t make promises I can’t keep.’ He didn’t know where Matt was. He didn’t know anything about it. And he was trying to comfort me.” He coughed down a sob. “That fucker was trying to comfort me. I didn’t want him to feel sorry for me. I wanted my friend back!”
His fists were balled in anger but the torrent finally came as he hunched over further and sobbed uncontrollably in his seat. Heather said nothing. She leaned over and nudged the box of tissues next to him to indicate that they were there. He would eventually need them, but she didn’t push. He said things, mostly incoherent ramblings about wanting Matt back, wanting his friend back, over and over, until he finally went for the tissues. Heather knew what he was going to do next. He wasn’t wrong.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was muffled and his nose was filled with liquid. “I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry, Mr. Nelson. It’s what I’m here for.”
“Foggy,” he said. “I know – I’m still sorry.”
“You don’t have to be.”
He took a deep breath. He was probably debating if he was done crying and had it in him to continue. “It’s not just Matt now. Everyone’s left. I guess I didn’t have a lot of people in my life before, but ... Karen, our secretary? She’s gone. She saved and moved to LA. She’s waiting tables, trying to get into acting. She said she was sorry. She really was. But she couldn’t stay. The situation was eating her alive. She was wasting away and she was already thin. I told her to go. I said I wanted her to go, but it was a lie.” He wiped his nose. “Marci said she couldn’t put up with it. It was this huge black cloud over me. Not the words she used – way more cursing – but it was fair. I didn’t disagree with her. I’m a shitty person to be around right now. And Matt had a friend, Claire, an ER nurse. She transferred to a hospital in Brooklyn. She’s subletting her apartment because she said she doesn’t want to be in it anymore. So that’s it. Everyone’s gone. Everyone’s given up. But I can’t.” There was some determination in his voice. “I’m stuck. I’m stuck in this awful place. It’s so bad sometimes I wish Matt was dead. I still have alerts in my email for bodies that wash up in the Hudson. If he was dead, if we had a body – it would be over. I could move on. And I would be so, so grateful for that. Is it okay that sometimes I wish my best friend dead?”
“It’s not at all uncommon,” she assured him. “It happens with the caretakers of the terminally ill. They’re already grieving even if the person isn’t dead, but they still have to take care of the person. And wishing him dead won’t actually make it happen. His situation is out of your hands now.”
Foggy nodded. He looked like he desperately wanted to believe her. “So what am I supposed to do? Without betraying Matt?”
“Well, you say you’re stuck,” she said. “Maybe you could try taking a step forward.”
*******************************
Another six months. Another six months of calendar pages and days lost in Foggy Nelson’s shitty, miserable life. 180 days of trudging back and forth to work, to school, and to the therapist, and basically nothing else.
He still hated his life. It was still shitty. It was still empty, devoid of purpose, lacking meaning. But it was a little different. He was no longer notching new holes in his belt. He was an unhealthy weight, but in the usual wrong direction of too much, and he had a bit more energy because he was reminding himself to eat. He was on anti-depressants, and they weren’t so terrible. They gave him dry mouth but it was easier to sleep. They didn’t make him feel less like a person like he thought they might. He still missed Matt. He still cried about Matt. He still occasionally felt like his world was over with Matt gone. But it was easier to carry that and still manage to sew some grotesque form of a life together.
He left the office late on Wednesdays. It was one of the few days he didn’t either have class or have to TA an undergraduate seminar. At the advice of an old colleague from Landman and Zack, he was now a PhD student at NYU’s law school, complete with a short, well-trimmed beard that made him look more like he belonged there. His practice was still open, but he was not a defense attorney. Not without Matt. He couldn’t do trials without him. He worked as a notary, he wrote a lot of wills, and he cut deals for juvenile offenders so their records would be clean as adults, but he didn’t go in front of a jury. He knew his limitations.
At 4 pm, his secretary went home. She was nineteen, going to Baruch College, and not a particularly personable woman, but she answered the phones and made it seem more like a real office. They didn’t talk outside of what was required for business, and they didn’t need or want to. It was okay. After she was gone, he would look through his window and wonder what might have been, and whether it was right to convert Matt’s office into file storage, but he couldn’t let himself circle too much around those thoughts.
Sometimes he did anyway.
It was almost ten when he finally locked up. Having work to do was good, but it was getting backed up by school, and that was bad for business. When he stepped into the crisp autumn air he was tired, so tired that he didn’t notice the car parked in the no-standing zone or the woman standing in front of it until he was up close. “Oh! Excuse – “
“Are you Franklin Nelson?” she said, making it very clear that she needed the answer quickly. She did not sound patient.
Foggy blinked in the darkness, making out not a lot about her dark pantsuit, but he did notice her red hair and severe expression. “People call me Foggy.”
“You filed the missing persons report for Matthew Murdock and listed yourself as the non-police emergency contact.”
He nodded, a lump suddenly in his throat. He couldn’t think, he didn’t know what to think, he only managed to sputter out and answer of, “Yeah, I – “
She had a perfume bottle in her hand. No, something else. He was pretty sure perfume wasn’t supposed to make you that sleepy.
He didn’t even remember hitting the ground.