Foggy’s giddy with excitement when they finally get round to releasing him from the hospital.
“Hey Matt!” He shouts behind him as Karen pushes him through the half-empty car lot. His enthusiasm is infectious, even when there’s a bump in the tarmac and he’s jostled unceremoniously in his seat. “Man, you should try this! I feel like royalty!”
“Your highness,” Karen teases as she spins the chair in a sharp half-curve and one of the wheels gives an anxious wobble and a groan. Foggy makes a neee-OWWW noise like he’s in a rally drive, and laughs delightedly. Karen drives him harder indulgently, wanting to hear him laugh again, joining in with his mad-rush racetrack commentary.
“Come on, Murdock!” Foggy calls out again over the rattle of the wheels. “You should have a go, and push me around. I could be your trophy boyfriend. You know you want to be seen with this fine specimen of manhood.”
“I think people might be suspicious when they see a blind guy pushing a wheelchair,” Matt replies sardonically from behind them, swinging his cane out in front of him in a low aborted arc. He feigns an aloofness that he hasn’t quite mastered. Karen watches as Foggy keeps a careful eye on where Matt’s walking, and something fond bubbles up in her heart.
“Whatever man. You’re missing out.”
Karen yelps and giggles as she overestimates a turn, and the chair nearly topples again. As it bounces back to stable ground, Foggy tries to one-handedly push himself forward, and ends up turning a wobbly circle instead.
“Why don’t they give you driving lessons with these?” he grumbles as Karen turns him the right way round, breathless with mirth. Matt’s caught up to them, and places his hand on the arm-rest.
“You won’t be in it long,” he says. “Just till your shoulder heals. You’ll get the best crutches in Hell’s Kitchen then.”
“Spoil my fun, why don’t you?” Foggy pretends to be upset and folds his arms in a huff. It’s awkward with the sling but he manages.
Matt turns his face towards Karen, and she sees the expression on his face as he tucks his cane under his arm. Suppressing a chuckle, she moves out the way, and helps direct Matt’s hands to grip the handles.
“Well if you put it like that…” Matt says, grinning like the devil, and then he pushes hard.
Foggy shrieks as they’re both propelled forward, Matt’s long legs running helter-skelter as the wheels clatter and jerk, and Karen near collapses with cackling at Foggy’s near-petrified expression.
“Matt! Matt! You’re going to drive us both into a car! Shit, Matt – the Volvo! The Volvo!”
Karen thinks she’s going to collapse with giggling as when Matt swerves the chair with ease to avoid the parked car and says loudly “I’m sorry, Fog, what was that?” and makes over-the-top car-rally noises of his own.
Foggy swears blue and calls him an asshole. Matt and Karen carry on laughing.
**
Foggy forgets, for a long while, what it’s like not to ache constantly. He feels trampled down by his own expectancy, frustrated that this is taking so much longer than he would have thought. Weeks drip on into months, and his ribs still twinge when the weather drops cold, his shoulder still seizes when he tries to lift something too heavy. He still has bad dreams.
If there’s one thing however that he is, out of the many things he isn’t, it’s patient. Matt’s all for pushing headfirst, expansive gestures and grandstanding, the defense rests, your honour with a cocky little bow, whereas Foggy’s strengths are in the groundwork. The long-haul nights and meticulous focus, practically slotting together the right evidence one puzzle piece at a time, the foundations of a case built from the ground up.
That’s what this is, he tells himself. Groundwork.
He gets used to dragging around the weight of his plastered-up leg. Matt slows down for him when they go out together, and Foggy will adjust his gait so that Matt can hold his arm as they go, the blind leading the slow. He wakes up in the morning and doesn’t even think now when he reaches for his crutches, takes it in his stride when he has to rub hand-cream into the roughened callouses on his palms, or has to wrap his leg up with a trash bag and a rubber band so as not to get it wet when he showers. These are just things he has to do these days.
The doctor can’t give him a straight answer on whether he’ll be able to walk the same again, but that’s not a problem he’s considering for now. He’ll reach that when the cast comes off. Whatever happens, he’ll deal with it.
He grits his teeth and goes to physio three times a week to rebuild the muscles around his shoulder. They push him, and he hates it, and it’s hard, and every stretch makes him want to cry. Sometimes he does. Afterwards, he is drained but oddly lighter. He’ll force his body to do just one more, and tell himself that not being able to do it doesn’t make him weak, that he doesn’t need to be ashamed. He cannot win every fight, but no-one can. He just needs to take little steps, stumbling steps, and he’ll get there.
Afterwards he buys some ice cream on the way back to the office, a strawberry pot for Karen, a vanilla for Matt, and his own flavour dependant on how well it’s gone. It’s an odd system, but it works, and ever so gradually, he’s buying more good-day-chocolate than bad-day-rum-and-raisin. He’s getting there.
In the yellowing light of his apartment bathroom, with the grown-in limescale on his bath-tap and a hairline fracture in the over-sink mirror, he charts his hair growing back with no small amount of eagerness. He’s got tufts curling over the curve of his ears now, and he thinks it makes him look younger. He’s still going to grow it back long, but there’ll be no harm to his ego if he gets ID’ed at any point. With a thoughtful expression, he pokes and prods at the indents of scattered scars across his cheek, traces the more obvious closures, the thin lines like stretch marks from his cheekbone to his jaw. It’s put a dent in the adorkable look he’d been rocking for so many years, but Karen assures him chicks dig scars, and he amuses himself by thinking up the wildest stories to tell anyone who asks. Escaped zoo animals, previous career as a stuntman, foiling a robbery, the works, he’s going to try them all. He’ll get Matt involved, it’ll be hours of endless fun.
He fingers the small silvery marks delineated across his forehead, barely visible without looking closely. They will fade in time, he knows with satisfaction. He is more than a few scars. He is worth more than what they did to him.
He looks at the man in the fogged up mirror, with the scars on his face and the smudged rings under his eyes from bad dreams, and he thinks proudly, fiercely, I’ll show you a fucking martyr.
**
Karen seems to think that through sheer force of will alone, Foggy will get back to his former self. It is a mantle she and the rest of Foggy’s family have taken upon themselves with a near ferocious sort of glee, a fine example of the bulldozer determination that the Nelsons, and clearly the Pages as well, are known for. They call it helping; Foggy calls it suffocating. But fondly. A glow in his chest.
The most prevalent concern appears to be that Foggy has wasted away while in hospital. Sure, he’d lost a couple of pounds, the round of his stomach a little flatter, his suits fitting a bit looser. With the amount of ice-cream and pot-noodles he’s been getting through, he can’t see this being a state of affairs that lasts a long time. However, in the meeting they all clearly had in his absence, the consensus has been seemingly made that this is unacceptable. And while Foggy would have been perfectly happy regaining the weight gradually, Karen’s tactic is less careful mothering and more advanced warfare.
Not a day goes by without her bringing snacks or candy to ply Foggy with at the office, until he’s half dazed with the sugar rush, his mouth tacky with sweetness and his stomach full with a pleasant buzz. His ribs ache, but in a nice way, not a still-healing way. On weekends, she’ll pop by his flat, having somehow gained her own key, with yet another treasure from herself or from one of the Nelson clan.
“This is from Carla,” she will say, unwrapping a coffee bun gifted to him from one of his many cousins; or “Here’s a comic book from Mateo” (“Graphic novel, Karen, it’s a graphic novel.”); or “Esther sends along her kisses,” which Karen will then deliver with glee and an excessive puckering noise pressed his cheek, against which Foggy will attempt to pull away, moaning aw geroff Karen. He will pout for a moment, mumbling something about how he doesn’t need another sister to boss him around, but his expression will be lighter, his voice without heat. He doesn’t mean it.
In amongst the regular flow of visitors – his parents, sisters, cousins, and the extended collection of honorary Nelsons – Brett pops by after work, still in his uniform, trudging with slow steps after a long day.
His gaze shifts to the marks on Foggy’s cheek, but he still puts up that half-annoyed front they’ve been carrying on with since they were kids.
“My mom sent me round. She wants to know where her cigarettes are.”
“I treat that woman like gold and this is how she repays me?” Foggy says, moving to one side to invite Brett in over the threshold. “Now you’re here, you might as well say for a beer. Fancy one?”
Brett huffs. “Ain’t you supposed to be loopy with painkillers or something?”
“Please, I could still drink you under the table.”
“Oh yeah? Prove it, hotshot.”
It’s a nice night. It’s slow and steady, and they talk about nothing in particular. They skirt away from darker topics, and talk instead about their city, their home for so many years. Old friends who moved away, the run-down and boarded-up places where they used to play, the pranks they pulled on the kids the next block down. The shops that were no longer there anymore, and the new landmarks that have struggled up in their place. They clink their bottles together in a quiet solidarity, Hell’s Kitchen’s kids, big hearts underneath it all.
Brett gives him a tight one-armed hug when he goes to leave.
“Take care of yourself, kay man?”
“Don’t I always?” Foggy replies as he sees him out. He doesn’t feel like he’s lying that time.
Things carry on. On lazy weekends, Foggy will find his cupboard-sized flat occupied by two dorks who clearly don’t have their own homes to go to, and he’ll moan and complain but still go down to the key-cutters and make them their own copies of his housekeys. He starts to stock the coffee Matt likes, and keeps Karen from making it, citing a desire not to be poisoned in his own home.
Karen will flop on his battered sofa in her hoodie and channel-hop, occasionally getting up to hit the wide top of Foggy’s TV to steady the picture. At some point, if Foggy’s joined her on the sofa, she’ll ruffle her fingers through his hair and look satisfied. She always claims it’s nearly long enough for her to braid.
“Promises, promises,” Foggy will say, but he’ll smile, pleased.
Matt will sit in the squishy chair in the corner he’s claimed as his own since time immemorial, listening to something with one headphone dangling out and knocking against his collar, or skim-reading some article with lazy fingers.
“You’re just letting her bully me like this,” Foggy whines when Karen pushes a full plate of food into his hands with an expression that reminds him too much of his mother. “I’m being smothered here, man.”
“Just eat your sandwiches like a good boy and maybe there’ll be ice cream for after,” Matt intones without even making the gesture of looking up, and then he jumps and laughs aloud, shifting out of the way as Foggy tries to jab him with his crutch and misses.
“You suck, dude.”
“Is that the opinion of the jury, counselor?”
"You're an ass, that's the jury's opinion."
And everything is not perfect. There are bad days and good days, long nights without sleep and the time-scratched memory of old hurts playing out behind his eyes, the stretch of scars scattered across his body that will never fade to nothing. But Foggy is breathing and complaining and laughing and alive, and all these things are not perfect, are not nearly enough, but they’re just about as good as they can get.
Fill: a silhouette and nothing more 9/9 Complete
“Hey Matt!” He shouts behind him as Karen pushes him through the half-empty car lot. His enthusiasm is infectious, even when there’s a bump in the tarmac and he’s jostled unceremoniously in his seat. “Man, you should try this! I feel like royalty!”
“Your highness,” Karen teases as she spins the chair in a sharp half-curve and one of the wheels gives an anxious wobble and a groan. Foggy makes a neee-OWWW noise like he’s in a rally drive, and laughs delightedly. Karen drives him harder indulgently, wanting to hear him laugh again, joining in with his mad-rush racetrack commentary.
“Come on, Murdock!” Foggy calls out again over the rattle of the wheels. “You should have a go, and push me around. I could be your trophy boyfriend. You know you want to be seen with this fine specimen of manhood.”
“I think people might be suspicious when they see a blind guy pushing a wheelchair,” Matt replies sardonically from behind them, swinging his cane out in front of him in a low aborted arc. He feigns an aloofness that he hasn’t quite mastered. Karen watches as Foggy keeps a careful eye on where Matt’s walking, and something fond bubbles up in her heart.
“Whatever man. You’re missing out.”
Karen yelps and giggles as she overestimates a turn, and the chair nearly topples again. As it bounces back to stable ground, Foggy tries to one-handedly push himself forward, and ends up turning a wobbly circle instead.
“Why don’t they give you driving lessons with these?” he grumbles as Karen turns him the right way round, breathless with mirth. Matt’s caught up to them, and places his hand on the arm-rest.
“You won’t be in it long,” he says. “Just till your shoulder heals. You’ll get the best crutches in Hell’s Kitchen then.”
“Spoil my fun, why don’t you?” Foggy pretends to be upset and folds his arms in a huff. It’s awkward with the sling but he manages.
Matt turns his face towards Karen, and she sees the expression on his face as he tucks his cane under his arm. Suppressing a chuckle, she moves out the way, and helps direct Matt’s hands to grip the handles.
“Well if you put it like that…” Matt says, grinning like the devil, and then he pushes hard.
Foggy shrieks as they’re both propelled forward, Matt’s long legs running helter-skelter as the wheels clatter and jerk, and Karen near collapses with cackling at Foggy’s near-petrified expression.
“Matt! Matt! You’re going to drive us both into a car! Shit, Matt – the Volvo! The Volvo!”
Karen thinks she’s going to collapse with giggling as when Matt swerves the chair with ease to avoid the parked car and says loudly “I’m sorry, Fog, what was that?” and makes over-the-top car-rally noises of his own.
Foggy swears blue and calls him an asshole. Matt and Karen carry on laughing.
**
Foggy forgets, for a long while, what it’s like not to ache constantly. He feels trampled down by his own expectancy, frustrated that this is taking so much longer than he would have thought. Weeks drip on into months, and his ribs still twinge when the weather drops cold, his shoulder still seizes when he tries to lift something too heavy. He still has bad dreams.
If there’s one thing however that he is, out of the many things he isn’t, it’s patient. Matt’s all for pushing headfirst, expansive gestures and grandstanding, the defense rests, your honour with a cocky little bow, whereas Foggy’s strengths are in the groundwork. The long-haul nights and meticulous focus, practically slotting together the right evidence one puzzle piece at a time, the foundations of a case built from the ground up.
That’s what this is, he tells himself. Groundwork.
He gets used to dragging around the weight of his plastered-up leg. Matt slows down for him when they go out together, and Foggy will adjust his gait so that Matt can hold his arm as they go, the blind leading the slow. He wakes up in the morning and doesn’t even think now when he reaches for his crutches, takes it in his stride when he has to rub hand-cream into the roughened callouses on his palms, or has to wrap his leg up with a trash bag and a rubber band so as not to get it wet when he showers. These are just things he has to do these days.
The doctor can’t give him a straight answer on whether he’ll be able to walk the same again, but that’s not a problem he’s considering for now. He’ll reach that when the cast comes off. Whatever happens, he’ll deal with it.
He grits his teeth and goes to physio three times a week to rebuild the muscles around his shoulder. They push him, and he hates it, and it’s hard, and every stretch makes him want to cry. Sometimes he does. Afterwards, he is drained but oddly lighter. He’ll force his body to do just one more, and tell himself that not being able to do it doesn’t make him weak, that he doesn’t need to be ashamed. He cannot win every fight, but no-one can. He just needs to take little steps, stumbling steps, and he’ll get there.
Afterwards he buys some ice cream on the way back to the office, a strawberry pot for Karen, a vanilla for Matt, and his own flavour dependant on how well it’s gone. It’s an odd system, but it works, and ever so gradually, he’s buying more good-day-chocolate than bad-day-rum-and-raisin. He’s getting there.
In the yellowing light of his apartment bathroom, with the grown-in limescale on his bath-tap and a hairline fracture in the over-sink mirror, he charts his hair growing back with no small amount of eagerness. He’s got tufts curling over the curve of his ears now, and he thinks it makes him look younger. He’s still going to grow it back long, but there’ll be no harm to his ego if he gets ID’ed at any point. With a thoughtful expression, he pokes and prods at the indents of scattered scars across his cheek, traces the more obvious closures, the thin lines like stretch marks from his cheekbone to his jaw. It’s put a dent in the adorkable look he’d been rocking for so many years, but Karen assures him chicks dig scars, and he amuses himself by thinking up the wildest stories to tell anyone who asks. Escaped zoo animals, previous career as a stuntman, foiling a robbery, the works, he’s going to try them all. He’ll get Matt involved, it’ll be hours of endless fun.
He fingers the small silvery marks delineated across his forehead, barely visible without looking closely. They will fade in time, he knows with satisfaction. He is more than a few scars. He is worth more than what they did to him.
He looks at the man in the fogged up mirror, with the scars on his face and the smudged rings under his eyes from bad dreams, and he thinks proudly, fiercely, I’ll show you a fucking martyr.
**
Karen seems to think that through sheer force of will alone, Foggy will get back to his former self. It is a mantle she and the rest of Foggy’s family have taken upon themselves with a near ferocious sort of glee, a fine example of the bulldozer determination that the Nelsons, and clearly the Pages as well, are known for. They call it helping; Foggy calls it suffocating. But fondly. A glow in his chest.
The most prevalent concern appears to be that Foggy has wasted away while in hospital. Sure, he’d lost a couple of pounds, the round of his stomach a little flatter, his suits fitting a bit looser. With the amount of ice-cream and pot-noodles he’s been getting through, he can’t see this being a state of affairs that lasts a long time. However, in the meeting they all clearly had in his absence, the consensus has been seemingly made that this is unacceptable. And while Foggy would have been perfectly happy regaining the weight gradually, Karen’s tactic is less careful mothering and more advanced warfare.
Not a day goes by without her bringing snacks or candy to ply Foggy with at the office, until he’s half dazed with the sugar rush, his mouth tacky with sweetness and his stomach full with a pleasant buzz. His ribs ache, but in a nice way, not a still-healing way. On weekends, she’ll pop by his flat, having somehow gained her own key, with yet another treasure from herself or from one of the Nelson clan.
“This is from Carla,” she will say, unwrapping a coffee bun gifted to him from one of his many cousins; or “Here’s a comic book from Mateo” (“Graphic novel, Karen, it’s a graphic novel.”); or “Esther sends along her kisses,” which Karen will then deliver with glee and an excessive puckering noise pressed his cheek, against which Foggy will attempt to pull away, moaning aw geroff Karen. He will pout for a moment, mumbling something about how he doesn’t need another sister to boss him around, but his expression will be lighter, his voice without heat. He doesn’t mean it.
In amongst the regular flow of visitors – his parents, sisters, cousins, and the extended collection of honorary Nelsons – Brett pops by after work, still in his uniform, trudging with slow steps after a long day.
His gaze shifts to the marks on Foggy’s cheek, but he still puts up that half-annoyed front they’ve been carrying on with since they were kids.
“My mom sent me round. She wants to know where her cigarettes are.”
“I treat that woman like gold and this is how she repays me?” Foggy says, moving to one side to invite Brett in over the threshold. “Now you’re here, you might as well say for a beer. Fancy one?”
Brett huffs. “Ain’t you supposed to be loopy with painkillers or something?”
“Please, I could still drink you under the table.”
“Oh yeah? Prove it, hotshot.”
It’s a nice night. It’s slow and steady, and they talk about nothing in particular. They skirt away from darker topics, and talk instead about their city, their home for so many years. Old friends who moved away, the run-down and boarded-up places where they used to play, the pranks they pulled on the kids the next block down. The shops that were no longer there anymore, and the new landmarks that have struggled up in their place. They clink their bottles together in a quiet solidarity, Hell’s Kitchen’s kids, big hearts underneath it all.
Brett gives him a tight one-armed hug when he goes to leave.
“Take care of yourself, kay man?”
“Don’t I always?” Foggy replies as he sees him out. He doesn’t feel like he’s lying that time.
Things carry on. On lazy weekends, Foggy will find his cupboard-sized flat occupied by two dorks who clearly don’t have their own homes to go to, and he’ll moan and complain but still go down to the key-cutters and make them their own copies of his housekeys. He starts to stock the coffee Matt likes, and keeps Karen from making it, citing a desire not to be poisoned in his own home.
Karen will flop on his battered sofa in her hoodie and channel-hop, occasionally getting up to hit the wide top of Foggy’s TV to steady the picture. At some point, if Foggy’s joined her on the sofa, she’ll ruffle her fingers through his hair and look satisfied. She always claims it’s nearly long enough for her to braid.
“Promises, promises,” Foggy will say, but he’ll smile, pleased.
Matt will sit in the squishy chair in the corner he’s claimed as his own since time immemorial, listening to something with one headphone dangling out and knocking against his collar, or skim-reading some article with lazy fingers.
“You’re just letting her bully me like this,” Foggy whines when Karen pushes a full plate of food into his hands with an expression that reminds him too much of his mother. “I’m being smothered here, man.”
“Just eat your sandwiches like a good boy and maybe there’ll be ice cream for after,” Matt intones without even making the gesture of looking up, and then he jumps and laughs aloud, shifting out of the way as Foggy tries to jab him with his crutch and misses.
“You suck, dude.”
“Is that the opinion of the jury, counselor?”
"You're an ass, that's the jury's opinion."
And everything is not perfect. There are bad days and good days, long nights without sleep and the time-scratched memory of old hurts playing out behind his eyes, the stretch of scars scattered across his body that will never fade to nothing. But Foggy is breathing and complaining and laughing and alive, and all these things are not perfect, are not nearly enough, but they’re just about as good as they can get.