Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.
Summary: The flu is such that it's a relief when Matt finally succumbs and goes to the hospital.
A second later, Jessica Jones is calling him. "Heard you need a babysitter?"
"Look, no offence? But not you," Foggy says.
"None taken. I was calling to agree with you."
"Damn it, but would you come? Please?"
Timeline: No idea. In a hypothetical Defenders season 2 where they're all friends and everything's fine?
Author's Notes: Yet another installment from Whumptober for the prompts manhandled and bedridden, this time featuring Matt and Jessica.
In this fic, Foggy references a time where a feverish Matt escaped from a hospital and came to his apartment. This was a chapter of Just In Case, "…Matt Gets Sick," but it's not necessary reading.
The title is from Isaiah 46:4. Seemed appropriate.
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Carry You, Sustain You, Rescue You
The flu is such that it's a relief when Matt finally succumbs. His knees buckle on their way out of court. He grips the lapel of Foggy's suit to keep from falling, and though he tries to let go, he never manages to without his legs coming out from under him. Foggy half-leads but mostly drags him to a cab, and before Matt can give his address, Foggy says, "Metro General," followed by, "I don't want to hear it, Matt!" before Matt can say anything.
Foggy starts sending text messages: Karen and Claire, first. Then Danny, who is out of town but already arranging a private room. "What about security?" Foggy asks, prompting an explanation, "The last time Matt had the flu this bad, he escaped out a window and came to my house. This was with a fever of 104. Point five!"
"I'll see what I can do," Danny says.
A second later, Jessica Jones is calling him. "Heard you need a babysitter?"
"Look, no offence? But not you," Foggy says.
"None taken. I was calling to agree with you."
Foggy comes full circle, hating himself the whole time. "Damn it, but would you come? Please? He really hates hospitals, and if he looks at me with those big, round, kicked puppy eyes, I'm gonna cave and help him hobble across rooftops myself."
"Such an enabler."
"I know. I know! Please?"
Jessica groans. "Fine."
She arrives within the hour, a massive coffee cup in her hand that smells more like whiskey than anything else. The hospital room door is slightly ajar; she peers inside, catching sight of Matt asleep in the bed. "Doesn't look like much of a flight risk to me," she says.
"That's what I thought the last time he was here. But then he showed up at my door in the middle of the night raving about me being in danger."
Jessica sighs, not believing it. Matt's sporting a flush across his cheeks, nose, and neck while the rest of his skin is pale, and he's out. Really out. He'd have to be really out to look at chill at any time, let alone when he's in a hospital bed.
She takes another sip of her drink, bored already. But whatever. Danny wants to pay her rent for a couple of months to make sure Matt doesn't climb out a window - who the hell is she to complain?
She gets an answer to her question a couple of hours later, when she comes back from the coffee machine to find the bed empty and the window open. Matt's gripping the window sill with a fever-hot hand. Jessica grabs him by the forearm and hauls his ass back inside the room.
"Let me go! I have to go!" All those ninja moves come back to him in delirium, and he squirrels and worms his way out of his grasp about three times before she finally twists him up in her grip. She hugs his arms around his chest. Matt kicks, making her job of lifting him that much easier.
"Relax, Matt," she reassures him, but he keeps on struggling, insisting that he has to leave.
"He's in danger. Danger! I have to go!"
She throws him down on the bed a little rougher than intended, but no matter, because Matt's up and at 'em again. Jessica nabs him by the wrist and yanks him back, only to have him hop over to her side, free himself, and head back towards the window.
Jessica tackles him, taking him to the floor. She grabs him around the chest, lifts him off the floor, and puts him back on the bed, this time holding him there. "Who's in danger?"
Matt groans, getting nowhere with her. He writhes on the bed with what little room she gives him, grunting, searching. "I have to –" He's fading, eyes rolling up inside his skull. The whites are eerily bright against the fever-red of his eyelids.
Jessica holds onto him until he's out. She moves his head back onto the pillow and gets him settled under the blanket, then hammers on the call button.
The nurse gets his IV and electrodes reattached. She goes to put something in his IV, but Jessica stops her. "Whoa, whoa, Nurse Ratched," Foggy's instructions for her as an advocate were crystal clear, "Only what's on the chart."
"But he's agitated."
"Does he look agitated right now?" The nurse gives her a look. Jessica rolls her eyes, sighing. "I got it. I'll keep a better eye on him. It won't happen again."
"Be sure it doesn't," the nurse says, storming out of the room.
"Asshole," Jessica says.
The steady diet of coffee and liquor is a bad idea, but hey, hindsight's twenty/twenty. Jessica crosses her legs tight and casts glances from Murdock's passed-out face to the bathroom, the clock ticking on the wall making her desperate. If she doesn't go, she's going to piss herself, and that cannot happen. She rushes off, doesn't even latch the door behind her, and counts out six full seconds before she's got the door open again.
And wouldn't you know it? Murdock's gone.
The window's closed, and he took his IV with him this time, though the electrodes are scattered across the bed. He's standing just outside the door of his room, balanced on his IV stand; his head tossing from side to side, his mutant ears scanning through the open doorways.
Jessica comes up behind him and plays nice. Can't let the nurses see her manhandling a blind man, even if she's already done it tonight and he's a God damn ninja. "Okay, Matt, come on," she says, trying to sound sweet. He won't budge when she pushes him. Jessica mentally counts to ten, reminding herself that this man has a secret identity he won't want exposed, along with a few other parts that are only just being hidden by his hospital gown.
She comes around in front of him, hands on his shoulders. "Matt, look. You're not well. You're in a hospital. You need to lie back down, okay?"
He looks terrible, the pink in his skin and the hang in his head and the way she can feel him rallying in her grip, trying so hard. There's a glassiness to his eyes that's only partly to blame on the fever. "Someone's dying."
"What?"
He points. Jessica listens, but she doesn't hear anything.
She tries again, more forcefully this time. "You're a hospital. People die in hospitals."
Her skin crawls. He's got his senses on her now; she doesn't know how she knows beyond that feeling of being perceived by him. "Are you okay?" Matt asks.
"Yeah."
"Danny? Luke?"
"They're fine."
His voice cracks. His lip trembles. "Foggy?"
Oh, Jesus – "Yes, we're all fine. It's you, Matt. You're the one who's in the hospital. Now come on. Back to bed. Or Nurse Ratched's gonna come back."
Matt staggers back a pace or two. Jessica breathes a sigh of relief they don't have to wrestle again. He's actually in the room, and the door is closed behind them, and all without a fight.
But then Murdock hears something or smells something or tastes something. "No, no, no," he turns around and tries to go through her. "No, they've got him. They've got him!"
Jessica wraps her arms around him and holds him. He kicks her, the asshole, but she stands her ground as he tries to squirm his way out of her grasp. Matt's ninja-shit is less coordinated now, for good reason. He's basically roasting in Jessica's grasp. Even through her leather jacket, he's hotter now than before.
Eventually he stops kicking. He stops standing, too, his knees buckling under him, his head falling onto Jessica's shoulder. "They've got him. They've got him…"
"They don't have anyone, Matt," she tells him, holding him even tighter. "And if they do, they're doing their job. This is a hospital. You're in a hospital. Everyone's okay. You get that? Everyone is okay. Okay?"
His head perks up, twisting in the opposite direction. "I hear sirens."
"Yeah, from the ambulance bay." Jessica feels his feet are back under him, but she doesn't trust to let him go. "It's being handled."
Matt withdraws peacefully from her grasp, and Jessica lets him. He walks an unsteady path back to the hospital bed, standing at the edge with a stricken look on his face while he tries to find the strength to get up.
Jessica stands by, at the ready, but she isn't about to take away Murdock's independence again if she doesn't need to.
"DOCTOR!" someone shouts from down the hall. A few nurses rush away from the station outside the window.
Matt's already heading with them. Jessica pushes him back. "I got it. Lie down," she tells him, then takes off down the hall.
The patient is carrying the bed rail they're handcuffed to, and the cops aren't doing shit, and the doctors don't know what the hell to do. Jessica defuses the situation with a few cuss words and a arm bar. Less than a minute, and a few of the nurses are applauding her. Jessica rolls her eyes. "Yeah, whatever." She heads back to Murdock's room.
IV stand by the bed, fluid draining on the floor. Blankets rumpled. Window open. She sticks her head out into the autumn night to see a ghost slip onto the rooftop.
Jessica pulls out her phone and calls Danny. It goes to voicemail. "Six months rent isn't enough for this shit. You owe me a year." Then she hangs up, grabs a blanket off the bed, and heads for the roof.
Murdock stands unsteadily on the ledge overlooking the ambulance bay.
"Hey, asshole," Jessica says, storming over to him. "Get the hell down from there."
He shakes his head. "There's so many of them."
"So many of what?"
"Sirens. Screams. Alarms."
Jessica slows her pace, deflating a bit. Of course his ears are picking up all that stuff. "It's a hospital," she says, climbing up onto the ledge next to him. "People die in hospitals."
"People are dying out there."
"So? You're dying on a rooftop."
He turns his head to face her at last, his flush cheeks blaring red against the pale expanse of his forehead. Jessica's skin crawls with that phantom itch of being heard, of being held, and she holds onto Murdock right back with her own senses.
"People die," she says, "It's one of the things they're good at."
His bottom lip starts quivering again. Jessica tells herself it's just from the cold, but then he goes and runs his mouth. "They shouldn't have to. Not like…" as if she can hear what he hears, "Not like that."
"You help them," Jessica says.
"Not tonight…"
"No, not tonight. Not like this. Tonight, you have to help yourself."
Matt's face twists. He doesn't like that answer. Jessica rolls her eyes. Of course, he doesn't. Sweet little Catholic Murdock and his GD martyr complex. Honestly. She has to do everything around here.
She tosses the blanket over his shoulders and wraps him up in it, pulling him close to her like she did in the hospital room. She's warming him, alright? It's cold, and he's sick, and she's just trying to warm him up. Matt resists at first, pulling back, but then his head hits her shoulder, and it stays there, and while he doesn't stop shaking, he steps safely off the ledge with her back onto solid ground.
"You help, Murdock," she says to him. "You hear me? You help."
He doesn't respond, but he doesn't try to run away. That's something.
Jessica keeps one arm on him all the way back into the hospital. She glares at Nurse Ratched at the nurse's station when they pass, and thank goodness, someone else answers the call button when Jessica has Matt horizontal again.
He holds himself unnaturally still as his IV is reattached. That fevered intensity in his face is gone, and he's fading out, resigning himself to that horror-show only he can hear.
Once the nurse is gone, Jessica sits down next to him on the bed. She kicks off her boots, she lies down, and she puts her arm overtop of him. "Just shut up, Murdock," she says, even though he doesn't say anything. Even though his eyes are closing and the strength is leaving him and he's probably, hopefully, finally down for the count.
She stays like that through the next attack. And the next one. And the final one when Murdock is trying, trying so hard. Jessica threads an arm around his waist and one around his legs, and she holds on tight, and she doesn't let go.
Dawn breaks through the window, waking her. A rush of shock runs through her as she realizes she's lying against someone. Her head's cradled in the soft spot below Murdock's shoulder, and she's still got an arm around him like he's about to run away.
Matt very well might. Colour has returned to his skin. His eyes wide, fixed on the ceiling. He's lying even stiller than he was last night. "Uh…hi?" he says. "What…uh…?"
Jessica huffs. "This is literally the only way to keep your ass in bed, Murdock." She settles back down for a few more minutes before the sun really wakes her up.
The sun creeps over her face, the perfect complement to Murdock's body heat coming through her chest. He hasn't moved. He finally breaks the silence with, "Thank you."
She waves a hand at him dismissively. Also, "Swear to God, you move, I'll Annie Wilkes you with my bare hands."
Matt laughs lightly.
Jessica doesn't tell him to shut up.
Neither of them run away.
It's a good morning.
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