Matt comes alive with the force of his coughing and choking and gasping, his lungs working overtime to expel the water that had gathered there, where it wasn't supposed to be.
It hurts, his chest, his ribs—And he knows firsthand what broken ribs feel like by now, doesn't he?—his whole body aches and he's blinking water out of his eyes, though some of that might be the tears. He groans, rolls to his back from where he'd been laying on his side, breathes in air, promptly fails to do so, and then starts coughing all over again.
Someone rolls him back onto his side. "Who—?" he chokes out, before returning to the coughing. God, his throat.
"You're okay," someone says. No, he is not! He never wants to be near water ever again! He opens his mouth to say so, but ends up gasping for air instead. It's a wet gasp, and a small, murky part of his mind registers that that's probably not too good, but right now all he's focusing on is trying to breathe normally. Isn't breathing supposed to be easy?
"That doesn't sound good," someone else says. Ya think? "Nearest hospital's like 10 minutes away. By car." Where even are they?
"Well good thing I have a car. Let's go!"
"Sorry 'bout this," the guy mutters, and suddenly Matt is being picked up like a rag doll—which he does not appreciate, thank you very much—in strong and warm arms, which he appreciates much more. He's covered in an equally warm but also soft blanket? Sweater? Hoodie? And then off they go, cool air rushing by and blowing against the damp hair plastered to his face. Matt groans at the dizzying motion and starts yet another coughing fit, spitting what he hopes is saliva out and all the while lamenting his inability to take in air when there's so much of it just right there!
He feels helpless. This is a feeling that comes to him more and more often as the days go by.
(Fisk made him feel helpless for a very long time. Maybe he's still haunting Matt's every step.)
"How many cars do you even have, man?" the person carrying him asks. Matt can feel the vibrations through his chest and sighs listlessly.
"...I'm rich. I can have as many as I want."
"You and I both know that's a lie. You can't even drive properly. Gimme the keys." Matt is set down on soft car seats—Why does this strike him with some amount of alarm?—so he can feel it when the engine starts. He does not feel it when his eyes roll back into his head and he passes out.
"Hey, his eyes are open again!" a guy with far too much enthusiasm says. He's sitting right next to Matt in...in the car, that's right. His car. Who is he?
Matt groans, and then inevitably starts a coughing fit that lasts far too long. By the end of it, he's wheezing for air, mouth wide open to suck in as much of it as possible.
"Keep him awake, Danny! We're five minutes out."
"Will do! You with us?" the guy apparently named Danny asks. It jiggles something at the very corner of Matt's mind.
"What?" he asks. Not the best answer, but he'll take it right now.
"You're probably confused 'cause of your concussion." Concussion? "At least, I think you have one. Your eyes aren't exactly focusing." Because they can't?
He realizes belatedly that he's shivering.
"Oh, you're cold. Here." Another sweater/jacket/something-something-warm is draped onto Matt, and he sighs in relief, but also annoyance that his hair is still damp and he doesn't like that.
After swallowing a little and managing not to cough from the action, though a tickle did start at the back of his throat before subsiding, Matt rasps out, "What happened?"
"I don't actually know. I wasn't actually there when it happened. Luke?"
Yay. Matt's getting names. "I saw what happened. Some shit taxi driver drove you into the water. We knocked him out and left him for the cops."
Matt's brain tries to process what he said. It fails. "What?" he asks, coughing a little on the air and his own spit. He can't even breathe properly, let alone think.
"You almost drowned," Danny supplies helpfully.
"I gathered that," Matt says. His clothes are wet, his socks are wet, everything is wet. He feels like a puddle sinking into the ground.
"We're taking you to the hospital."
Matt frowns. He's pretty sure the hospital's tired of him by now, if they're even going to the same Hell's Kitchen hospital that he usually ends up at. He isn't actually sure where he is right now. Jessica would know, Jessica figures out stuff pretty fast. Matt's brain is just mush right now.
Wait.
"Are you—?" he forces out of his throat before it seems to close up and he starts coughing. Again. Why? "Do you—?" Oh, there he goes again. His throat feels raw and abused like it hasn't in a long time.
His mind is starting to get hazier. Maybe that's not a good thing.
"Um...we're almost there," Danny, from next to him, says, patting his shoulder. Thanks, Danny? "Luke's like, 30 miles over the speed limit. I could never."
"He's the slowest driver in the world, like you wouldn't imagine," Luke says. Matt hopes he's paying attention to the road; he really doesn't want to get into a car crash. This thought seems familiar.
Matt has built up his words into sentences and is now ready to release them into the world. "You guys are...ripoff Avengers, or something." Okay. That was less eloquent than he'd planned.
Luke barks out a laugh. Danny scoffs, offended. "The Daily Bugle needs another hobby that doesn't involve defamation," he says. "We're the Defenders." Same thing.
"Jess'ca told me about you."
A pause. "Jessica Jones has friends outside of us?" Danny asks, incredulous.
A snap of fingers. "Knew you looked familiar," Luke says. "You're her lawyer buddy. Matt Murdock."
Jessica talks about him with other people? "Nice to meet you," Matt says, then proceeds to choke on air.
His world condenses to only the sound of his gasping and coughing, but when his awareness has returned he registers Danny patting his back, saying, "Deep breaths, deep breaths." Matt is trying.
"We're here!" Luke says, but Matt knows no more.
"You're lucky Luke and Danny were there," Jessica says when Matt opens his eyes again. He feels more solid, less like a jellyfish, or a blobfish, less like he'd just drowned in a lake, or a harbor. He actually doesn't know what kind of body of water he'd sunken in, but he feels like it should matter. At least it wasn't an ocean?
Matt just hums through the oxygen mask on his face. He reaches up, not to take it off but to adjust it so it rests more comfortably on the bridge of his nose, but Jessica's (surprisingly warm) hand stops him from following through with the action. She pushes his hand down to the hospital bed and squeezes it, gently. Oh. She'd been worried.
"You're lucky to be alive," Jessica continues, voice minutely softer. Matt doesn't feel all too lucky. He feels drained, like there's nothing left inside him.
"Sorry," he says, voice rasping and scraping through his throat.
Jessica sighs. "I suppose you're forgiven."
"Thank Luke and Danny for me?"
"You can thank them yourself when they come back. Also, they felt kinda bad when they learned you were blind."
"Why?"
"'Cause they looked at your eyes and thought you had a major concussion."
"Oh. Not wrong?"
"The doctors didn't mention one, but you know what's wrong? Water, in your lungs."
"I didn't mean to," Matt says, trying not to sound like a petulant child. "I wasn't the one driving."
Jessica snorts. "I'd be worried if you were."
You're already worried, Matt wants to say. He hates making other people worry. When will it stop?
To distract himself, Matt shifts a little, fortunately does not cough, and brushes his hands through a not-quite blanket draped over him. "Luke's hoodie," Jessica explains. "You're drowning in it." Ha ha.
"I'm being swamped," Matt agrees, wriggling around a little underneath its warmth. He appreciates it. "Wanna give them my lawyery services, too, as thanks."
"Cheating on me with other vigilantes?" Jessica asks.
Matt lifts a corner of his mouth in a smirk. "At least I'm giving you a warning." He pauses, considers. "I have business cards in my pocket. Make sure they each get one if they come back and I'm sleeping?"
"...You realize your clothes are soaked, right?"
Right. He remembers. It was annoying. At least he's dry now. "So?"
"...Your business cards are made of paper." Matt isn't following. "They've pretty much disintegrated by now." Why? Matt thought they had been so sturdy? "Dude, your brain is offline right now. Paper doesn't do well in water."
Oh. Right.
"Huh," Matt says. This is why he wasn't a science major.
"This has nothing to do with science. This is common sense."
Right. Night, Jess.
"It's fucking 8 am in the morning."
Night.
Matt and Foggy are definitely THE vigilante lawyers here, though mostly Matt because he gets into the most trouble and Foggy really would prefer not to deal with that. (Sorry Hogarth?)
