De Profundis
When Foggy arrives at the 15th precinct, it's the weirdest of the news that reaches him. He stares at the young officer on the other side of the counter for a time that is considered a lot longer than normal because the guy just must be on drugs.
"What do you mean he's off duty? I just received a text from him asking me to come here."
The officer looks at him with an unfair suffering sigh, like he's having to re-explain something really simple to a very stupid individual and that he's not even impressed because this shit happens every single day. The guy looks into Foggy's eyes and speaks to him as slowly and distinctly as though he is explaining the Rule against Perpetuities to a demented puppy. "As I said…" he says, "Sergeant Mahoney…" he says, "is off duty…" he says, "today and tomorrow," he says.
"But that doesn't make any sense!" Foggy ignores the remark and shoves his phone's display in the officer's face. "Look! He told me to come here!"
The patience is over, it seems, because the guy isn't even making an effort to look less bored now, effectively ignoring the device that's almost smacking his cheek. "He returns in two days. I'm sure he'll have a perfectly reasonable explanation by then. With that said, bye."
"But that's crazy! He called me!"
"That's really terrible of him. Next!" The officer says in monotone, calling for the next person in line, a hippie dude that seems to be complaining about a cat stealing his dinner. If that even makes any sense.
Foggy huffs in indignation, dialing Brett's phone. He isn't supposed to call if the guy's on duty, but that doesn't seem to be the problem right now, only Sergeant Mahoney's apparent schizophrenia. He'll kill Brett if he's at home with his legs over the coffee table drinking hot cocoa. Oh, but he will.
…
On her solid but somewhat uncomfortable chair in the staff break room of St. Peter's, Claire shifts with increasing anxiety and tries to quell what appears to be her dread-induced fatigue. Sighing, she reaches up and pushes down against the painful, swollen skin around her right eye, a ritual she has adopted over the years at the ER in order to keep herself awake. It is marginally more effective than drinking so many cups of coffee that she's able to hear colors, but less exciting. A hiss escapes her at the self-inflicted pain as it jerks her back into full consciousness.
Getting herself worked up inside her job probably isn't the brightest of ideas, but the way Claire figures it she has so many worries already that one or two more probably won't matter. In all frankness, she is a mess. She isn't even certain she will be able to go back to work without injuring someone in the process with her lack of attention; she almost reopened a man's wound when the burner started ringing inside her pocket. It was funny, really, that he'd decided to call her exactly in the same moment she'd been wondering how he was, while stitching another senseless idiot that had been close to death when arriving at the ER. Hearing his panicked voice while a body lied bleeding and her gloves were stained with red had been the funniest part. Haha, yes. Terribly amusing, in the same way that a basket of strangled puppies is cute.
Huffing with fear-stained annoyance, Claire struggles to put her scattered thoughts in some kind of order, because even though she is sitting in the break room with a phone that she shouldn't still have waiting for the opportune moment for him to call her back, she is still not all certain life is being fair.
God! Stupid Matthew Murdock! Stupid, stupid Matt, who thinks he is so goddamn invincible that he just... ugh, that he just continues to do whatever he is still doing, punching thugs and trying to imprison all the criminals Manhattan has to offer, as if it were even possible for a single human being to dispel all evil in mankind. Because obviously he could never be in any danger.
This situation is so unfair she wants to scream.
Fear and worry are gripping her throat and she would feel righteous to bash his silly head with her baseball bat (after making sure he is not dead or dying) if she had any chance at all to do something. He does not get to call her in these circumstances and not pick her calls afterwards, this is something simply not done and she can't take this type of shit at this point in her life. Oh God, is he too far gone to pick her calls?
She fumbles with the burner and dials for yet another time, the phone connecting to the line and the call dwindling and ringing out again; a new message from the provider saying that sorry, this line has no voicemail.
She wishes now she'd kept his friend's number in her cellphone, but at the time she hadn't wanted to tangle herself any more than necessary to only-human-Matt-Murdock; it had already seemed she was too inextricably attached to the Man-in-the-Mask to do that, more than it was appropriate or good for her own well-being. More than she should be. More than she could be. Certainly more than she cared to admit.
But thing is now only-human-Matt is in danger, she has no way of contacting him or anybody that cares, no way of knowing where or how he is and she's in Albany, for Christ's sake, more than a hundred damned miles away.
What was the point of him calling her, really? Or was he fading so fast he couldn't remember she is miles away, completely incapable of finding him? He seemed so disoriented and in pain, his words slurring and making absolutely no sense, odd sound of liquid choking him – it was blood, her brain unhelpfully provides – and he may be dead by now, for all she knows.
Dread grips her in a strong clutch as Claire dials for the hundredth time, shaking so badly she can hardly make her fingers find the correct buttons. He can't be dead, he isn't dead, because she's the only one he allows to fix him and he can't do this to her while she's so far, and why in God's name is she so distant from him? Why did she come to this damned place if it meant leaving him unprotected, if it meant leaving him to bleed by himself?
The image of only-human-Matt lying motionless on the floor of his apartment, his friend freaking out and babbling nonsenses, his body so cold and so white and so much blood it could make her, an ER experienced nurse, blank. For a whole minute she'd had no idea what to do.
His friend had shouted for her to do something and she had been incited into action – calm and proficient – while on the inside she'd been screaming and kicking, hollering at him to do not do this to me, you bastard, and that had made her decide to leave. She thought she couldn't take to see him so close to death anymore – little did she know that not seeing would make things worse, not easier. She should have known. Not seeing had never made him look any better.
I can't love someone with a death wish.
"But I didn't have to love you, did I?" She asks herself quietly, holding the burner between fingers that shake too much. "I only ever had to be there."
It's not my responsibility to keep you safe.
"I didn't have to keep you safe," her voice falters as she puts the phone down. "But I wanted to…"
Claire sits in the silence. There's not much she can do from where she is but this. She's never been a religious person, her mother has always been the one to love what she cannot see (and maybe this is the trick, it seems). There's no one in the break room save for her, she's too far away to make a difference, so she gets up from the chair, kneels beside the table and prays.
…
Isolation has the quality of a mind-numbing thing – he's learned through life – a sort of thing that knows no equals to.
It's been some time but he can't tell how much. The world doesn't exist. He tries to get up on all fours and move, but a jolt shoots through him, from his toes to the top of his head, forcing him to lie down and curl up again, dry heaving, blood restarting to run down his nose. His eyes fly open and he feels his teeth clench, but there is no sense or sound to this pain. Struggling for air, Matt braces himself against the cold metal of the fire escape as his body thrums with after-shock so powerful that it shakes his heart. The burner slips from unfeeling fingers.
The silence allows nothing, his thoughts jumble, his mind in disarray.
It had been so stupid to assume that calling anyone would be a good idea, Matt feels the nothingness weigh heavy and dark over him, constricting, and there isn't air in the void.
This will be over soon, he thinks desperately. This will not last forever. It didn't the last time, oh, please don't let it last forever this time.
Everything seems as though it is not real, and he is afraid, so afraid that the world is disappearing at odd angles that he can't sense against the throbbing pain and the roiling fear. The metal of the fire escape is freezing against him and everything else is either numb or nonexistent. Dragging trembling fingers over iron, he lets his hand trace the pattern of the metal, his stomach lurching at the thought that this can be the rest of his life, at the thought of what he will do if it is, what he might do, what is real and what is his mind in panicked mode. There's faint taste of bile and copper in his tongue, blood leaking in. He can barely breathe.
Don't think.
He can't stay here, he needs to move, to get up, to run to safety and how-
The touch on his shoulder comes from behind him and isn't neither tentative nor cautious. It is purposeful and determined, knows what it's doing as it shakes him a little, setting Matt's nerves farther on edge, his near none perception going haywire. A hand clenches around his upper arm, another around his shoulder on the floor, and somebody pulls him up, sitting him precariously on the fire escape and proceeding to jerk him up.
It is the nightmare come to life, he's senseless and in danger and his muscles are made of lead.
His heart pounds all over his body, fear and longing and a desperate denial beating against the cage of his skin as he tries to shake himself free but his body is too numb to struggle efficiently. Breathing hard, he tries to yank himself out of the grasp, but he's too weak and in too much pain to succeed, soaking with cold sweat, blood running freely down his nose and the world is overwhelmingly dark and quiet.
Air scraps down his throat, scratches his lungs, claws at him from the inside out, and he tries to reach behind him, free himself, but the hands are strong and drag him over the edge of a window, his spine connecting with hard surface and pain shooting down his lower back. He clenches his teeth to fight the trembling of his stomach and flails wildly, but the blood in his nose is starting to choke him again and the person holds him tightly from his weak resistance.
The fight is nearly impossible and all around him the dead quiet pours in.
….
Señor Dios, lo toma bajo tu protección, que tus ángeles lo protejan. Hoy te pido que lo proteja del mal, que seas un escudo alrededor de el, que sea librado de peligros e de personas malas. El está bajo tu cuidado, que su vida esté firme.
Protegelo de la maldad, de la violencia, porque sé que lo amas.
Amén.
…
In all seriousness, until right now this day has comprised of a huge load of shit. Brett must be playing a special joke on him; it's most likely that, he decides. He must be in one of those rooms in the precinct laughing his ass off at Foggy, looking at him through a system of cameras. That or Foggy doesn't know what must have possessed Mahoney to call him frantic to run with Matt to MCB for a case he has no idea what's going on and that is as shady as some areas in East Harlem, just to make him run in this wild goose chase now after the information Brett said he would give. Why can't he pick his goddamn phone?
Foggy hasn't slept for more than a few hours during the night – why must that be, Matt? – and he can feel the drags of the day already starting to cloud his good judgment. He isn't like his co-workers, who can obviously work very well with a ridiculously low amount of sleep (he is actually human, thanks), and the whole ordeal with Fisk has worn his life batteries for a period of time he's decided to call more than appropriate for the next decade. Turns out he needs his beauty sleep, so sue him. He can already feel some senseless part of him giggling with tiredness, thinking: less than three hours of sleep, I feel great! Let's go do something! Let's go drink an eel! Let's go kill a dude! Well, nope.
He gives up on calling Brett for the time being, deciding to tell Matt what's going on and see what he's found on Violi. Which turns out is a nonsensical idea, because why would Matt pick his phone now of all things, if he hasn't been doing that for the past forty-eight hours? Annoyed, he calls the office. Karen answers the phone on the second ring, and isn't that refreshing?
"Nelson & Murdock, attorneys at law, how can I help you?"
"Karen, I need to talk to Matt, is he there?"
"Hey, Foggy. No, he didn't come back here. I thought he was with you?"
Of course. Why would he.
"Okaay. Thanks, Karen. We're not going back today, so lock everything up, will you?"
"Okay?" She seems to have caught something in his voice. "Is everything alright, Foggy?"
"Just peachy."
"There's something going on with Matt, I know, will you talk to him, please?"
"I'm trying," he answers, and wonders if he is, for real. He shouldn'tve let Matt escape so easily back at the MCB. "I'll catch you later, Karen. Gotta find him first. Oh, and if Brett calls before you lock it up, tell that son of a whore to call me, will you?"
"Alright."
He hangs it up and tries to call Matt again, with as much success as the last hundred thousand times. This won't make do. He needs information and he needs it now, because camping in front of the precinct won't bring him any answers. So he pulls his last card and calls Bess.
Bess answers the phone on the tenth ring.
"Who is this and why are you calling me during my soap opera?"
"It's Foggy, Bess." Trust her to have her snark turned on 24/7.
"Franklin? You know better than to call me during one of my soap operas."
Foggy rolls his eyes. "I'm sorry, I would never call you during The Haves and the Have Nots if it weren't important."
"Be quick with it, Jim Cryer is on screen and I wanna see what that son of a bitch is spinning."
"Absolutely. Is Brett there with his feet on the coffee table drinking hot cocoa?"
"Are you sober now, Franklin? Of course he isn't. He's on duty today."
Something in Foggy's stomach goes slowly cold. This is not right. "Totally sober, Bess. Are you sure he didn't arrive very quietly?"
She doesn't miss a beat. "I'm very sure. Are you sure you're sober? He'd never be here on duty day. Ask his partner, Willis and leave me alone, I need to see if Candace will find out the shit that's going on here."
"Alright, Bess. Give me Willis' phone, will you?" She recites from memory, clearly paying more attention on the TV. "Thanks a million."
"No worries, Franklin. It's been some time I don't see you and Brett playing," she says, as if they were four. "Come over with Matthew one day, I'll make you cake and we can drink some margaritas. You're much more fun pissed."
"Can't stay drunk, love. Neither my wallet nor my liver would permit such extended debauchery."
"I miss the cigars."
"I promise I'll get you some the next time. Later."
He needs to call Willis. However, he's leaving the precinct when another call finds him. He puts the phone against his ear and his eyes widen. He needs to find Matt. Now.
…
"Who are they?"
"Franklin Nelson… and Matthew Murdock."
"The names don't ring a bell. Am I supposed to know who these two fuckers are?"
"Not really, capo. Unless you read the news very attentively during the whole Wilson Fisk trial. They were the attorneys of that one Carl Hoffman."
"Hoffman?"
"The whistleblower."
"Comprendo. Fisk was a baby, to be topped by one masked clown and two little lawyers. Are these two even competent?"
"They managed to get him to testify and be sent to witness protection instead of Rikers. They did alright."
"Not overly exceeding, then."
"No. Their law firm is actually very young, registered seven months ago. Their practice license is also due to that time."
"Tot lawyers fresh out of their bar exams."
"Si. Should we interfere?"
"No. Let's see where this is going for a while, but speed up the process a bit, capisce? This tardiness annoys me."
"Capisco."
"What of Rocco, the bastard?"
"Arrested with his men, capo. Two of them in the hospital, all the merchandise burned."
"Who did this?"
"…"
"Who did this, Gio?"
"…Daredevil, signore."
"…"
"Are we to wait in this matter, too?"
"No. I'm done watching this clown burn our business. He's probably the one who blew our dealings in Chelsea too. Bastard thinks he's the king of Midtown West? He is bound to return to the compound. Set your men in the vicinities."
"What are we to do with him, signore?"
"What else, Gio? Burn."
…
His body is pulled through the edge of a window and, thrashing madly, the man loses his grip on him and Matt lands on carpeted floor in a confused sprawl. He scrambles to his feet, hands quickly holding him fast. The silent darkness swells in his brain, down through his spine to the rest of his body, igniting the length of his bloodstream, and, drawing his strength, he jams his elbow on the person behind him with a feral shove, fingers finding purchase in a wrist and yanks-
The man's body collapses to the floor and with his impulse he's jerked forwards too, ending up on his knees. Blood doesn't stop leaking from his nose, splinters crack through the stillness of his world. He's arching, his breathing too fast, blood dripping down his chin and the man stops trying to touch him.
For a moment Matt freezes, straining to feel what he needs in the cacophony of silence. He's still too weakened by the void and his arms almost buckle; there are strange tears of effort and rage trembling at the corners of his eyes, but they don't fall. Leave me alone, he thinks, distant, disjointed, all quivering muscles incapable to halt their shaky frenzy. He feels ill. Leave me alone, please, help me God, please, I'll be good, I'll be good, he begs, the plea blotting out all other thoughts. Leave me alone.
He tries to move away, unbalanced, his mind burning blue static, fear and disbelief crowding in as the absence of contact to anything makes his hands find panicked fistfuls of the man's shirt and he holds, nearly wrenching the fabric asunder, raging and terrified at the attacker, but unable to let go or do anything anymore. He can't be alone with the void and he feels the world open beneath him, yawning wide, and he hangs, suspended, bloodless and cold, clenching his fingers on the fabric not to fall through vast emptiness.
God- And it's then that Matt registers the sound of a high keening whine, full of air and anguish, in the back of his own throat. He is listening. He is… He was so crazy he hadn't realized the world on fire had come back. For a second he knows nothing but a relief so powerful that his limbs succumb and he is suddenly slumped on the floor, his head still anchored in the darkness, his fingers fastened to the man's shirt and he is trembling so much it's a wonder he hasn't splintered in fragments-
Oh God thank you, thank you, I'll be good, so good, thank you, please, thank you, good thank you–
His heart stumbles in his chest. He can sense, he can hear, and the sounds and tastes assault him all at once – the blood trickling inside his mouth, the old carpet on the floor, the skin of the man (he is old, no younger than sixty years old, but he's not afraid for himself due to Matt's violence, quite the contrary, he's afraid for Matt-). He waits for the old man to sit up, to say something, to remove Matt's hands from his shirt, kill him, or do anything at all. He keeps waiting. The old man doesn't move. Matt licks his dry lips and tries to grab enough air to speak when the voice reaches him.
"Young man?" the old man whispers urgently. "Can you listen to me now?"
Matt can't deem to answer.
For a moment, the old man is just as immovable as Matt, and then he shifts, his hands reaching over Matt's shoulders and Matt flinches, but doesn't move. Panic trembles under his skin, urging him to scream, to run, or to do something, but he crushes it ruthlessly, struggling to breathe. Now he can sense, he is liberated, he can run out the window back to the world, but he feels the void's after-effects fill his body like a stormy night beneath the shrouded sky. His spine is as hard as stone.
Get up, Matt. Get up. Fuck you, get up, move, move.
"Yes," he finally answers, and a damp, choked laugh, desperate and high in his throat, escapes from him. It doesn't even sound like his voice. He is so far away, lost in this unreal dream that still feels real. He can't think. He hurts so much he can't feel his brain.
"You're bleeding quite a lot," the man says, allowing him to continue to grip his shirt, getting up and reaching tentatively towards Matt's elbows and jostling him up too, effortlessly. "Let me help you," he says, and Matt starts as if really awake now, struggling to swallow the terror and pain, to keep it inside where it will never find him again. He feels it clawing up the back of his throat. He feels himself begin to crumble. He lets himself be led because this is better than having to move on his own. His brain is stuffed with plush.
The old man guides him to a couch, taking most of his weight while he slowly, slowly comes back to himself, whispering:
"I'm sorry…"
It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, Matty…
…
She spends her second night in The Tombs. The officers can't be any less accommodating and the place is a refrigerator. The other inmates across from her can't do much more than ask for toilet paper and wrap it around as many limbs as they can, even though the thin layer of paper provides very slight insulation from the cold cells. They look like mummies in the tombs. She wonders if she should be giggling at that.
She sits quietly in the bench, trying not to slide off it. The thing is made of some kind of polished metal that makes it extremely hard to lay down on without sliding off. She looks at the people all around the cell, making idle talk and cracking jokes, from the silence of her world. She wonders if Cesare is dead. She wonders if she'll ever set her feet in Sicily again. Why would Luciano send her two innocent attorneys? Was that the plan? What are they expecting of her?
Someone pats her on the shoulder and she starts. One of the officers is trying to talk to her, it seems. They still don't believe she can't hear them. She wonders what that is supposed to mean.
She gets up and walks to the cell bars avoiding stepping on legs of other people. They said her arraignment is supposed to be only in the following afternoon, so what do they want with her? She wonders for a moment if Gio has killed the two attorneys too, just like he did with Ford, the public defender. One of them is even blind.
She approaches and the SO seems to have forgotten yet again that if she isn't looking straight at him she has no chance to understand what he's saying. It takes three minutes for the information to be passed through, and it's not what she is expecting.
"Get ready for your arraignment."
…
The old man's name is Alexander Howard. He is a retired Lieutenant Colonel, commander of a battalion of the 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam War, awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by General William Westmoreland as a result of his actions during the Battle of Ap Gu in 1967. During the battle, Howard's troops had become pinned down by a Viet Cong force that outnumbered US forces by three to one, and in an attempt to survey the battlefield he'd boarded a helicopter and flown to the point of contact. His helicopter had been shot down, and two days of bloody hand-to-hand combat had ensued, with him landing amid a hail of fire and doing whatever he had been capable to survive and protect his men. The terror of the war and the fear had branded him so incapable to cope after all that, that life had seemed it'd never be the same again. But he had powered through it. Saved his men, come back to his country, raised his children and loved his wife.
Howard tells him his story while attempting to calm Matt down and settle his nose back to place in a way that won't hurt him more than he already is. He doesn't ask Matt to remove the mask (he had forgotten he was dressed as Daredevil), just tilts it a little, setting Matt's head backwards and dabbing cotton gently to stop the bleeding. He'd come back home from a group session of veterans just to find Daredevil wheezing on his fire escape (he hadn't said Daredevil, he'd said 'the young man who returned the neighborhood I'd longed to protect from the outskirts of Vietnam back to peace').
I know what you're feeling, Howard says. I understand. I understand. It may feel like all the world is compressing your chest, but that is not true. Be calm, it's not your fault, don't hurt yourself.
And he can breathe again.
…
Foggy finds him curled up on the sofa. Matt knows he is beached at the top of the couch and canted at a precarious angle (as if he has been thrown there), but he doesn't make the effort to move. He just lifts his hand a little when Foggy approaches, signing to him he knows he's there. Foggy draws nearer and leans over him, clearly inspecting.
"What happened to your face? Wait. Don't tell me. Were you daredeviling when I thought you were working on the case?"
Matt ignores the inspection because everything hurts and he won't move if he doesn't have to. He frowns at the 'daredeviling'. He has a verb now? And a stupid one at that? "I was working on the case," he says, because he was. (In a way.)
Foggy throws himself on a cushion, noticeably annoyed. "Karen said you never made it back to the office. Cut the crap, Matt, you were out there punching thugs. At least have the grace to admit it."
"I wasn't fighting. I fell. On the stairs." (And, to his chagrin, he isn't even lying.)
"On the stairs," Foggy repeats, and his voice right now is so skeptical of everything in Matt's existence he might as well be Stephen Hawking.
"Yes."
"You," he's almost sure Foggy is pointing at him, "are a lying liar who lies."
Matt makes a pained face and closes his mouth, his head hurts too much to argue. Foggy continues. "I thought we were past the 'I fell while doing insert inane activity here'."
A short pause.
"I have a headache."
"You fell down the stairs because you have a headache? You expect me to believe that shit?"
"It's not a common headache, Foggy. It's a little bit more insistent."
"You expect me to believe you fell on the stairs because you have a migraine?"
If his head weren't hurting so damn much he would roll his eyes.
"It's not like that. I've had constant headaches since the accident and never had a problem dealing with them. It's just that…" he stops, swallowing dryly, the pain needling him. "It's been a little harder to stand it these days. I was dizzy, I slipped. That's all."
Foggy goes quiet for a moment and Matt instantly knows he said too much.
"Are you telling me you've been through chronic pain for twenty years?"
Matt sighs, slowly sitting up. "When you say it like that it sounds worse than it is. It's just an insistent little pain, a bit annoying, nothing else."
"That made you so dizzy you fell on your face down the stairs."
"That's beside the point. The thing is-"
"No, I don't think it's beside the point at all." There is a bite in Foggy's voice and Matt shuts up, trying to find a position that doesn't make his spine throb in retaliation. "Jesus, I don't even know if I prefer that you're lying."
"I'm not lying," he huffs in annoyance.
"Then you're in enough pain to fall down the stairs, which isn't much better," Foggy reasons, and Matt wants to cringe. "After all the shit I've seen you power through, if this damn headache is doing this number on you, tell me what stops me right now from taking you to the hospital to have a CT scan?"
Matt starts at that, feeling his temper climbing. "My free will?"
"For God's sake, Matt! Can you be sensible for once? I know you're going through something right now that you don't want to tell me, and fine, it's not like we have a signed contract of best buddies in which a clause specifies you have to tell me every single thing that happens in your life, but, goddamnit-"
"Langua-" Matt starts to intervene, but Foggy cuts him.
"-you don't get to shun me like this anymore! I doubt you have even taken a single Tylenol for this crazy headache you're having and that's-"
"That thing tastes like burning car tires-"
"-batshit crazy! That you'll prefer to get to the point to roll down the stairs and break all the bones of your face while you're-"
"You're exaggerating, Foggy-"
"-daredeviling instead of working in this absurd case Brett gave us and-"
"There you go with this ridiculous verb again-"
"-Brett disappeared, Willis doesn't answer my calls and the MCB's just called us saying Valente's arraignment will happen in ten minutes and we're not even close to-"
"What…?"
…
When they get to MCB Matt's head is buzzing so loudly he can hardly make it out of the cab. The pain and the lack of control rake at him because he can hardly separate the thresholds. For a moment, he envisions himself in the trenches of Vietnam and tells himself he has to do this or the ones he's supposed to protect will suffer. He wonders if Howard has thought about the same.
Foggy hasn't realized his disorientation yet, and schools him out of the cab and under the umbrella with the ease of habit. The rain falls softly over plastic, but the drops are loud inside his head. This isn't the void, it's just a headache, why is he suffering so much with it?
It's late at night and this is not right. Of course, MCB is one of the only Central Bookings that are supposed to work 24/7, but arraignments at this hour are as common as trustworthy mobsters. This is not customary, someone is trying to get at this woman, he is going through this blindly – hah – without being capable of finding information before this mess and his body is fighting him. What the hell is going on?
They make their way through the corridors fast enough to make him dizzy, when a phone rings. The ring is so loud, ricocheting through the walls, that it makes him nauseous. Saliva collects in his mouth and his head spins. Foggy curses and answers the call, halting their frenzied run and Matt leans slightly against the wall, breathing deeply.
"Willis!" Foggy says, shooting his arm up in a 'finally!' motion. "I've been trying to contact you like crazy!"
Matt swallows, tapping his fingers over his wristwatch. They have two minutes. If they don't go right now the judge will start the arraignment without them. He tries to focus to listen to the other side of the conversation, but his senses only return with static. He is so nauseated he can barely move his head.
"What do you mean?" Foggy asks, his voice rising, slightly panicked. "Shit!"
"What is it, Foggy?" He manages, through lips that seem sewn.
"Yes, yes, I'll talk to you later! Keep me posted, okay?" Foggy finishes the call, walking in circles in a frenzy for a moment, until returning to where Matt is barely standing. "Matt! What the fuck! Brett is missing!"
And it's all he hears before he keels over.
…
"Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!"
Psalm 130:1-2, NRSVCE