"Ngggghh," Matt groaned softly as his senses were once again flooded by the world around him, awareness finally creeping back in. He was on his couch in his apartment. He didn't remember how he'd gotten there.
"You lawyers are so eloquent," a voice said teasingly, and Matt recognized both the sound and the shape looming over him as Claire immediately. She was familiar, and he was comforted by her presence despite the pain he was in. "Although," she said, "I'm really just happy to hear you speak again at all after the shape you were in when I got here."
"That bad?" Matt asked, his brain desperately trying to form a memory of the night before.
"For you? Not really," she said. "For a sane person who doesn't spend their off hours leaping from roof to roof brandishing billy clubs and hunting criminals? That's another story."
Matt groaned again and tried to sit up, panting and shaking with the effort, but Claire put a firm hand on his chest and pushed him back down. "No," she said. "You're not going anywhere. I'd say not for at least a day, but I've seen the way you heal. You still need to take it easy though."
"I'll be fine," Matt said, but he stayed lying down trying to pretend that his head wasn't spinning and his entire body didn't ache.
"Yeah," said Claire, "You will. It occurs to me that you've never really explained to me why that is."
"What do you mean?" Matt asked.
"I mean that there are a lot of sick people down at my hospital who could really benefit from whatever weird ninja voodoo you work on yourself that makes you not die," she answered.
"It's just meditation," Matt told her, "Like I said."
"No," said Claire. "Not acceptable. Tell me more. I want to know."
Matt struggled for a moment, as he usually did when it came to his heightened senses, with how to explain it in a way that a sighted person could understand.
"Do you remember what I told you?" he asked, finally. "About the world being on fire?"
"How could I forget?" she said. "It's not exactly something you hear everyday."
"Well," he confessed, "There's more to it than what I said."
"Go on," she encouraged.
"The fire is a metaphor, obviously. Taught to me by my mentor, a man named Stick. But it's a good one. I live in a world that is constantly assaulting me with information, with sounds and smells and so many things, has been since the day I woke up in the hospital after my accident. It was always overwhelming and confusing, but it got worse after my dad died, I couldn't make any of it make sense. It was unrelenting. It felt like a firestorm. It felt like what I had always imagined when I listened to the priest deliver his sermons on sin. Like hell.
Claire listened patiently, reaching out absentmindedly to stroke Matt's face and comfort him as he spoke.
"Stick showed me that through meditation, through careful focus and attention, I could conceptualize all of the sensory data I was exposed to in a new way, put it all together to form a picture of the world around me, like radar. I could take everything I could sense and twist it in my favour, make the fire and flames work for me, control it. Once I realized that, it was like a whole new world opened up to me. One where I wanted to feel everything instead of block it out, because the more I felt, the more fuel the fire had, and the stronger I was."
"And the pain?" asked Claire, "It fuels the fire?"
"Like nothing else," said Matt. "It brings a sort of clarity, a zen that I can't really describe. The pain takes me outside of my own body to a place where I can feel absolutely everything, every wound. I get to a level of body awareness where the pain no longer exists, where I no longer exist. Where I'm just cuts and bruises and flesh. And then I can will myself to heal, feel skin knitting back together and bruises fading, and get back up. Does that make any sense?"
"No," said Claire, "It really doesn't. But then nothing about you does."
"I'm sorry," said Matt. "I know you were looking for a more concrete answer to your question. Something that you could take with you when you leave here to help people who need it."
Claire laughed gently. "Yeah, somehow I don't think 'Deliberately put yourself in enough pain that you have an out of body experience' is really going to go down too well in the emergency room. In fact, I think if I suggested masochism as a healing option, I would be fired."
"Is that what it sounds like?" Matt asked. "Masochism?"
"Yeah, Matt," said Claire. "It is. But then I'm not surprised. All that Catholic guilt's done a number on you."
They sat there for a moment, each contemplating their own thoughts, Matt's breathing heavy and labored.
"Claire," Matt finally asked. "Will you stay for awhile?"
"Sure," said Claire, "Somebody's gotta keep you out of trouble, since you won't do it yourself."
After a few moments, Claire sensed his breathing even out and knew that he had passed out again. She stayed anyway.