Once Matt hangs up, he and Foggy sit in silence for a few minutes.
Foggy breaks it with, “So. A car accident. On move-in day.”
Matt nods.
“And I’m in a coma.”
Matt nods again.
“And they’re going to disconnect me from life support next month.”
Matt’s heart lurches like it’s trying to leave his chest. “No,” he growls, fists clenching on his thighs. “No, they won’t.”
Foggy laughs, but it sounds like a sob. “I appreciate the sentiment, Matty, but you really don’t have a say in whether or not they pull the plug. From what I heard.”
“No,” Matt says again, like it’s a talisman, a verbal amulet against a future that absolutely, positively cannot happen. “I-I don’t care, Foggy, I’ll steal you from the hospital if I have to, you’re not dead and I won’t let them kill you.”
That gets a genuine belly-laugh out of Foggy. “You’d steal me from the hospital? I can’t decide if that’s creepy or really, really romantic—” He cuts himself off, suddenly and completely.
Matt thinks he knows why, and he really doesn’t want to let it get awkward again. “Why can’t it be both?” he asks, keeping his tone light. Fuck it. They probably don’t have time to dance around any topics, let alone this one.
When Foggy speaks, his voice is so close, it feels like he could be leaning on Matt’s shoulder. “No reason it can’t.”
***
Foggy’s mom—who’s technically his stepmom, but Foggy says she’s his mom for all intents and purposes—told Matt that she’s keeping everyone updated on Facebook, so Matt friends her immediately. And then he heads to the library to research as much as he can about comas and recovery.
“She said it wasn’t a persistent vegetative state,” he reminds Foggy, a week after the phone call.
“I remember, I was there too,” Foggy replies, sounding distracted. “Okay, clearly we’ve been at this too long because my eyes are starting to cross and technically I don’t even have eyes. You need to eat. C’mon.”
“In a minute.” Miracle of miracles, they actually had Braille versions of the books he needed, so Matt’s fingers are flying.
“You said ‘in a minute’ an hour ago.”
“I said in a few minutes, and sixty minutes isn’t actually that many.”
“Oh, good, then you must mean sixty seconds when you tell me ‘in a minute’ now. I’ll start the countdown.”
Matt ignores him until the last ten seconds, at which point Foggy starts counting down out loud, closer and closer with each number until at “three” Matt slams his hands over his ears.
“Whoa,” he hears through his fingers, then, “Hey, Matt, buddy, can you hear me? Sorry, didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Matt eases his hands down. “You didn’t—you didn’t hurt me, I’m fine.”
“Yeah, that explains the screwed-up face of agony you had just then. It screamed ‘I’m fine.’”
“I just have sensitive ears.”
“And sensitive skin, as witness the silk sheets, and sensitive taste buds—don’t think I didn’t notice the face you made when the barista sneaked the wrong coffee to top off your Americano so she didn’t have to brew more for yours.”
“You saw and you didn’t say anything?”
Foggy laughs. “I thought you wouldn’t notice!”
“It was disgusting,” Matt grumbles.
“I bet.”
Matt slides his hands back out of the way as the laptop screen begins to close. He hasn’t been able to figure out how Foggy can sometimes physically interact with their environment, but not with other humans. There have to be rules to the whole thing, but they don’t matter so much as getting Foggy to wake up, and they’ve got so little time. “Foggy, no. I promise I’ll eat later.”
“Believe me, buddy, nobody appreciates your dedication to this particular cause more than me. But one of us has a body without a feeding tube, which means he has to physically put food into his mouth in order to keep going. Spoiler: it’s you. So c’mon. Sustenance.”
Reluctantly, Matt stands and begins to put his things into his bag. “I could just grab a snack from the coffee shop and come right back up.”
“Matt.”
Matt freezes. Foggy’s got a variety of voices, but most of them have an undercurrent of humor, even the serious ones. This particular voice… doesn’t. “Yeah?”
“Listen. Don’t get me wrong. I want to stay alive. Pretty much more than anything. But it’s kind of not looking likely at this point, and you’ve still got a life that seems like it’ll actually continue past next month. You need to be thinking about yourself, too. You’ve basically stopped studying anything but comas, you skipped class three times last week—”
“I can catch up,” Matt interrupts.
“I know you can, I’ve seen your grades over your shoulder when you checked them, remember? That’s not my point. My point is, you can’t be hurting yourself trying to help someone who’s beyond that, okay?”
“Don’t say that.” The words are coming out too angry but Matt can’t help it, it’s not fair that the best person he’s ever met is leaving, he just wants to fight something but how do you fight death itself? “Don’t. I don’t accept it.”
“Realistically speaking we both know my chances of waking up go down every day. My chances of waking up without serious brain damage are even worse.”
“I don’t care about what’s realistic.” Matt’s fists are clenched and his breath’s harsh. “It’s not realistic for me to hear your spirit, either. We were supposed to meet, Foggy. We were supposed to—” to be together “—to be friends. We still are or I wouldn’t know you were here now.”
“I’m gonna let you have that one, because you’re a lot more of an expert in what’s reasonable on the supernatural front than I am. I’m just saying… don’t kill yourself over a dead guy, Matt. If I’m not around to take care of you, I’d really like to think you’ll do it yourself sometimes. Because I saw the way you weren’t doing it before.”
Matt slings his bag strap over his shoulder, movements jerky with suppressed fury. “I’m not making any promises. You’ll have to do it yourself.”
“Hey, hey.” Foggy might not be able to touch humans, but his voice works just as well as a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Okay. I’m sorry I said that. Let’s go to the Thai place, okay? Maybe I can get you to laugh so hard you get a noodle up your nose again.”
The tension drains out of Matt’s shoulders. He can’t help smiling. “That was disgusting, Fog.”
“But so amusing.”
While Matt’s shoveling pad Thai down, Foggy asks, “So what’s your major? It’s weird I never found out.”
Matt swallows. “Philosophy. I want to be a lawyer, so.”
“Hey, no way! Me too! My mom wanted me to be a butcher, so I decided to rebel by doing something that would make lots of money, instead.”
“Aw, c’mon, is that all you care about?”
“Rebellion?”
“Money.”
“No! Absolutely not. Truth! Justice! Couple of bucks?”
Matt grins. “Yeah, all right, couple of bucks.”
“So who’s the patron saint of lawyers, Saint Matthew?”
“No, he’s for accountants. Well, accountants and, and security guards. There are actually two for lawyers. St. Ives and St. Sir Thomas More. I like St. Ives better, though. He used to do mostly pro bono work. Donated his own clothes to his clients, founded legal aid societies.”
“Inspirational, then.”
“Yeah, very.”
And then it’s back to the library. Back to trying to figure out how to save Foggy.
***
Matt does something that he knows is stupid even while he’s doing it. He goes to see Foggy that Sunday.
He hates hospitals. Hates the smells, the sounds of agony, the way the fluorescent bulbs hum like wasps in his ears. Hates the way they make him feel 9 years old again. But there’s something about knowing Foggy’s body is there that makes him want to check, just to be sure.
He stands in the little waiting area near the elevator, listening to Foggy’s room. He catches Anna’s voice first, on her phone. She’s about to go get some lunch. The nurses are all congregated at the station, discussing a problem patient. Foggy’s going to be alone for at least a couple of minutes.
Matt waits until a transport orderly swipes his ID to get into the ward, sneaks through the automatic door, and gets into Foggy’s room without anyone catching him, mostly closing the door behind him.
He isn’t sure exactly what he’s looking for. Whatever it is, he doesn’t find it. Instead, he focuses on an impression of what Foggy looks like. About an inch shorter than Matt, maybe? Hard to tell when he’s lying down. Broad chest. A little softness around his middle. He briefly considers touching Foggy’s face, but discards the notion just as quickly. It’s wrong to try that on Foggy when he can’t consent to it, and for whatever reason he hasn’t been around to ask today.
As if Matt would be able to find the right words to ask for that privilege, regardless.
He drifts closer to the bed. Antiseptic soap, bruises from lying in bed in one position for so long, contusions that are almost healed, perfume that’s probably Anna’s. Pheromones. Fear, anger, grief. Lots of tears. Faded beneath the others, cheap cologne and something that’s probably Foggy’s usual scent. Someone brought a blanket and pillow from home for him.
When Matt gets really near to someone, he can feel the electrical impulses in their brain, although he has no way of knowing what they mean. Foggy’s are still active. That’s comforting, at least. Matt zeroes in on the sound of his heart beating, slow and steady. That’s even more comforting. Still alive.
Anna’s on the elevator, coming back up, cursing under her breath as she loses signal while talking to yet another friend about Foggy’s condition.
Matt leans over the side of the hospital bed so that he’s closer to Foggy’s ear. “Foggy. I know this is stupid when I’ll probably see you as soon as I get back on campus, but… I really need you to wake up, buddy. Okay? Come back.”
And then he slips out and heads back to his dorm room, where he finds Foggy waiting for him. Matt expects questions about where he’s been, but instead Foggy greets him with, “Got you something.”
“How could you possibly get me something?” Matt asks, but he can’t stop himself from smiling.
“Let’s not think about that too hard, otherwise you might have some uncomfortable concerns about those Band-Aids you were sporting a few weeks ago. But hey! Look!” Something small and metallic hangs in the air in front of Matt’s face. “Or… feel, or something. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Matt takes it. A necklace with a nice thick chain. He feels the small circular pendant and laughs. “A—Foggy, did you steal a saint medal?”
“It is literally impossible for a mostly-dead person to steal.” Foggy starts talking faster at Matt’s frown. “Or at least literally unprosecutable. It’s St. Ives. I figured that if I wasn’t around to look after you that I needed to leave someone else to do the job for me, and he seems up for it, what with the caring for people who apparently couldn’t do it themselves and stuff. It’s blessed, and everything.”
Matt runs his fingers over the medal’s surface again, and again.
“Do you hate it?” Foggy’s voice has gone small.
Shaking his head, Matt holds the necklace out. “Put it on me?” Foggy complies, and Matt tucks the medal under his shirt. “Thanks, buddy. I wish I could give you a legally purchased one too.”
“Yeah? Whose medal would you get for me?”
Matt’s about to make a joke about St. Jude and lost causes, but at the last second he changes his mind and decides to be serious. “St. Raphael.” Raising his finger to trace the medal through his shirt, he adds, “Patron saint of happy meetings. I think—I think you could say our meeting was miraculous.”
He can hear the smile in Foggy’s voice. “I do too. So where were you this afternoon? Not that I object to you taking a break from all the research.”
His first instinct is to lie, but what’s the point? “I went to go see you, actually.”
“You did? Wish I could.”
“Really? Why can’t you? Do you have boundaries you can’t cross, or something?”
“No, I can go anywhere. Except… I try to go there, and it’s like, I blink and I’m back in your room again. No matter how many times I’ve tried to get to the hospital, I turn a corner or climb a set of stairs and I’m going to your room instead.” Matt doesn’t know what to think of that, but before he can come up with a response, Foggy keeps talking. “Anyway. Ready to hit the books again? Why don’t you study for your classes while I read the coma and ghost stuff? It’s not like I’ve got finals on the horizon.”
[Fill] If Only It Were True (part four)
Once Matt hangs up, he and Foggy sit in silence for a few minutes.
Foggy breaks it with, “So. A car accident. On move-in day.”
Matt nods.
“And I’m in a coma.”
Matt nods again.
“And they’re going to disconnect me from life support next month.”
Matt’s heart lurches like it’s trying to leave his chest. “No,” he growls, fists clenching on his thighs. “No, they won’t.”
Foggy laughs, but it sounds like a sob. “I appreciate the sentiment, Matty, but you really don’t have a say in whether or not they pull the plug. From what I heard.”
“No,” Matt says again, like it’s a talisman, a verbal amulet against a future that absolutely, positively cannot happen. “I-I don’t care, Foggy, I’ll steal you from the hospital if I have to, you’re not dead and I won’t let them kill you.”
That gets a genuine belly-laugh out of Foggy. “You’d steal me from the hospital? I can’t decide if that’s creepy or really, really romantic—” He cuts himself off, suddenly and completely.
Matt thinks he knows why, and he really doesn’t want to let it get awkward again. “Why can’t it be both?” he asks, keeping his tone light. Fuck it. They probably don’t have time to dance around any topics, let alone this one.
When Foggy speaks, his voice is so close, it feels like he could be leaning on Matt’s shoulder. “No reason it can’t.”
***
Foggy’s mom—who’s technically his stepmom, but Foggy says she’s his mom for all intents and purposes—told Matt that she’s keeping everyone updated on Facebook, so Matt friends her immediately. And then he heads to the library to research as much as he can about comas and recovery.
“She said it wasn’t a persistent vegetative state,” he reminds Foggy, a week after the phone call.
“I remember, I was there too,” Foggy replies, sounding distracted. “Okay, clearly we’ve been at this too long because my eyes are starting to cross and technically I don’t even have eyes. You need to eat. C’mon.”
“In a minute.” Miracle of miracles, they actually had Braille versions of the books he needed, so Matt’s fingers are flying.
“You said ‘in a minute’ an hour ago.”
“I said in a few minutes, and sixty minutes isn’t actually that many.”
“Oh, good, then you must mean sixty seconds when you tell me ‘in a minute’ now. I’ll start the countdown.”
Matt ignores him until the last ten seconds, at which point Foggy starts counting down out loud, closer and closer with each number until at “three” Matt slams his hands over his ears.
“Whoa,” he hears through his fingers, then, “Hey, Matt, buddy, can you hear me? Sorry, didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Matt eases his hands down. “You didn’t—you didn’t hurt me, I’m fine.”
“Yeah, that explains the screwed-up face of agony you had just then. It screamed ‘I’m fine.’”
“I just have sensitive ears.”
“And sensitive skin, as witness the silk sheets, and sensitive taste buds—don’t think I didn’t notice the face you made when the barista sneaked the wrong coffee to top off your Americano so she didn’t have to brew more for yours.”
“You saw and you didn’t say anything?”
Foggy laughs. “I thought you wouldn’t notice!”
“It was disgusting,” Matt grumbles.
“I bet.”
Matt slides his hands back out of the way as the laptop screen begins to close. He hasn’t been able to figure out how Foggy can sometimes physically interact with their environment, but not with other humans. There have to be rules to the whole thing, but they don’t matter so much as getting Foggy to wake up, and they’ve got so little time. “Foggy, no. I promise I’ll eat later.”
“Believe me, buddy, nobody appreciates your dedication to this particular cause more than me. But one of us has a body without a feeding tube, which means he has to physically put food into his mouth in order to keep going. Spoiler: it’s you. So c’mon. Sustenance.”
Reluctantly, Matt stands and begins to put his things into his bag. “I could just grab a snack from the coffee shop and come right back up.”
“Matt.”
Matt freezes. Foggy’s got a variety of voices, but most of them have an undercurrent of humor, even the serious ones. This particular voice… doesn’t. “Yeah?”
“Listen. Don’t get me wrong. I want to stay alive. Pretty much more than anything. But it’s kind of not looking likely at this point, and you’ve still got a life that seems like it’ll actually continue past next month. You need to be thinking about yourself, too. You’ve basically stopped studying anything but comas, you skipped class three times last week—”
“I can catch up,” Matt interrupts.
“I know you can, I’ve seen your grades over your shoulder when you checked them, remember? That’s not my point. My point is, you can’t be hurting yourself trying to help someone who’s beyond that, okay?”
“Don’t say that.” The words are coming out too angry but Matt can’t help it, it’s not fair that the best person he’s ever met is leaving, he just wants to fight something but how do you fight death itself? “Don’t. I don’t accept it.”
“Realistically speaking we both know my chances of waking up go down every day. My chances of waking up without serious brain damage are even worse.”
“I don’t care about what’s realistic.” Matt’s fists are clenched and his breath’s harsh. “It’s not realistic for me to hear your spirit, either. We were supposed to meet, Foggy. We were supposed to—” to be together “—to be friends. We still are or I wouldn’t know you were here now.”
“I’m gonna let you have that one, because you’re a lot more of an expert in what’s reasonable on the supernatural front than I am. I’m just saying… don’t kill yourself over a dead guy, Matt. If I’m not around to take care of you, I’d really like to think you’ll do it yourself sometimes. Because I saw the way you weren’t doing it before.”
Matt slings his bag strap over his shoulder, movements jerky with suppressed fury. “I’m not making any promises. You’ll have to do it yourself.”
“Hey, hey.” Foggy might not be able to touch humans, but his voice works just as well as a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Okay. I’m sorry I said that. Let’s go to the Thai place, okay? Maybe I can get you to laugh so hard you get a noodle up your nose again.”
The tension drains out of Matt’s shoulders. He can’t help smiling. “That was disgusting, Fog.”
“But so amusing.”
While Matt’s shoveling pad Thai down, Foggy asks, “So what’s your major? It’s weird I never found out.”
Matt swallows. “Philosophy. I want to be a lawyer, so.”
“Hey, no way! Me too! My mom wanted me to be a butcher, so I decided to rebel by doing something that would make lots of money, instead.”
“Aw, c’mon, is that all you care about?”
“Rebellion?”
“Money.”
“No! Absolutely not. Truth! Justice! Couple of bucks?”
Matt grins. “Yeah, all right, couple of bucks.”
“So who’s the patron saint of lawyers, Saint Matthew?”
“No, he’s for accountants. Well, accountants and, and security guards. There are actually two for lawyers. St. Ives and St. Sir Thomas More. I like St. Ives better, though. He used to do mostly pro bono work. Donated his own clothes to his clients, founded legal aid societies.”
“Inspirational, then.”
“Yeah, very.”
And then it’s back to the library. Back to trying to figure out how to save Foggy.
***
Matt does something that he knows is stupid even while he’s doing it. He goes to see Foggy that Sunday.
He hates hospitals. Hates the smells, the sounds of agony, the way the fluorescent bulbs hum like wasps in his ears. Hates the way they make him feel 9 years old again. But there’s something about knowing Foggy’s body is there that makes him want to check, just to be sure.
He stands in the little waiting area near the elevator, listening to Foggy’s room. He catches Anna’s voice first, on her phone. She’s about to go get some lunch. The nurses are all congregated at the station, discussing a problem patient. Foggy’s going to be alone for at least a couple of minutes.
Matt waits until a transport orderly swipes his ID to get into the ward, sneaks through the automatic door, and gets into Foggy’s room without anyone catching him, mostly closing the door behind him.
He isn’t sure exactly what he’s looking for. Whatever it is, he doesn’t find it. Instead, he focuses on an impression of what Foggy looks like. About an inch shorter than Matt, maybe? Hard to tell when he’s lying down. Broad chest. A little softness around his middle. He briefly considers touching Foggy’s face, but discards the notion just as quickly. It’s wrong to try that on Foggy when he can’t consent to it, and for whatever reason he hasn’t been around to ask today.
As if Matt would be able to find the right words to ask for that privilege, regardless.
He drifts closer to the bed. Antiseptic soap, bruises from lying in bed in one position for so long, contusions that are almost healed, perfume that’s probably Anna’s. Pheromones. Fear, anger, grief. Lots of tears. Faded beneath the others, cheap cologne and something that’s probably Foggy’s usual scent. Someone brought a blanket and pillow from home for him.
When Matt gets really near to someone, he can feel the electrical impulses in their brain, although he has no way of knowing what they mean. Foggy’s are still active. That’s comforting, at least. Matt zeroes in on the sound of his heart beating, slow and steady. That’s even more comforting. Still alive.
Anna’s on the elevator, coming back up, cursing under her breath as she loses signal while talking to yet another friend about Foggy’s condition.
Matt leans over the side of the hospital bed so that he’s closer to Foggy’s ear. “Foggy. I know this is stupid when I’ll probably see you as soon as I get back on campus, but… I really need you to wake up, buddy. Okay? Come back.”
And then he slips out and heads back to his dorm room, where he finds Foggy waiting for him. Matt expects questions about where he’s been, but instead Foggy greets him with, “Got you something.”
“How could you possibly get me something?” Matt asks, but he can’t stop himself from smiling.
“Let’s not think about that too hard, otherwise you might have some uncomfortable concerns about those Band-Aids you were sporting a few weeks ago. But hey! Look!” Something small and metallic hangs in the air in front of Matt’s face. “Or… feel, or something. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Matt takes it. A necklace with a nice thick chain. He feels the small circular pendant and laughs. “A—Foggy, did you steal a saint medal?”
“It is literally impossible for a mostly-dead person to steal.” Foggy starts talking faster at Matt’s frown. “Or at least literally unprosecutable. It’s St. Ives. I figured that if I wasn’t around to look after you that I needed to leave someone else to do the job for me, and he seems up for it, what with the caring for people who apparently couldn’t do it themselves and stuff. It’s blessed, and everything.”
Matt runs his fingers over the medal’s surface again, and again.
“Do you hate it?” Foggy’s voice has gone small.
Shaking his head, Matt holds the necklace out. “Put it on me?” Foggy complies, and Matt tucks the medal under his shirt. “Thanks, buddy. I wish I could give you a legally purchased one too.”
“Yeah? Whose medal would you get for me?”
Matt’s about to make a joke about St. Jude and lost causes, but at the last second he changes his mind and decides to be serious. “St. Raphael.” Raising his finger to trace the medal through his shirt, he adds, “Patron saint of happy meetings. I think—I think you could say our meeting was miraculous.”
He can hear the smile in Foggy’s voice. “I do too. So where were you this afternoon? Not that I object to you taking a break from all the research.”
His first instinct is to lie, but what’s the point? “I went to go see you, actually.”
“You did? Wish I could.”
“Really? Why can’t you? Do you have boundaries you can’t cross, or something?”
“No, I can go anywhere. Except… I try to go there, and it’s like, I blink and I’m back in your room again. No matter how many times I’ve tried to get to the hospital, I turn a corner or climb a set of stairs and I’m going to your room instead.” Matt doesn’t know what to think of that, but before he can come up with a response, Foggy keeps talking. “Anyway. Ready to hit the books again? Why don’t you study for your classes while I read the coma and ghost stuff? It’s not like I’ve got finals on the horizon.”