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: You know you've got problems when Frank Castle is lecturing you on the importance of friendship.
Or: how Matt's broken leg becomes the least of his concerns.
Warnings: Spoilers for season 2.
Author's Notes: The surgical procedure performed on Matt is called a fasciotomy. In crush injuries, a small section of the fascia tissue is removed to make room for the limb to swell. Based on my research (which is amateur at best), it's the best chance to restore full mobility to a crushed limb and is most commonly performed on shin fractures.
I am not a doctor; I just write about them in fanfic. I strive for as-close-to accuracy as possible while reserving the right to hand-wave as the story demands. As such, medical professionals, I beg pardon and forgiveness for glaring inaccuracies.
Frank has a few tics in this chapter to compensate for his brain injury. I don't want him to read as unintelligent; the character is obviously very bright. I was merely aiming to express how lost he can get. Please let me know if there are any errors of narration that can be improved for his depiction.
Readers, lovely Readers, I so enjoyed the feedback from the previous chapter! I especially enjoyed the speculation about the doctor's fate. Thank you so much for joining me in this fic! I'm afraid there'll be about ten days between now and my next update thanks to work. Please enjoy this chapter until then! Cheers!
"Loneliness is a place that I know well.
It's the distance between us and the space inside ourselves.
And emptiness is the chattering in your head.
It's the call of the living
And the race from life to death
…and I know
Yeah, and I know
What you feel."
~Annie Lennox, "Loneliness"
Chapter Four
Doc gave him a list, and Frank rereads it to shit, till the square of paper is rumpled and glossy with use. A tear appears across the middle. He solves the problem by taping the note to the wall above Red's head, next to his IV.
He's not an idiot - not an idiot. He gets lost sometimes is all. Head's a noisy place since the carousel, and he can't let Red become part of the fireworks constantly erupting inside his skull, not when the kid's leg might start rotting off.
That's actually part of the note. One of Doc's bulleted points has to do with the wound turning black. Frank remembers because it's an automatic Abort Mission. He's dropping Red off at the hospital and letting them figure out how a lawyer from Hell's Kitchen ended up in the Bronx with an infected crush injury.
He made a supply run on the way home last night while the kid was conked out in the backseat. The doc's kit had most of what he needed for the first twenty-four hours, but because of the procedure – fascia, fascio, fash-whatever. An –otomy of some kind – she didn't close the surgical site completely. Red's muscle puckers out of the incision, secured in place by a loose row of stitches. Fitting that she works out of a butcher's shop; Doc left Red's leg looking like a roast corseted in black butcher's cord. Dressings have to be changed 2-3 times a day with saline soaked gauze so nothing sticks. The wound has to be closed up within 5 days' time or else Abort Mission. Get Red to the hospital.
The rest of Doc's note includes numbers: milligrams of Fentanyl and antibiotics, the hours to administer; flow rate of saline; how long the leg needs to be elevated and immobile for; how long Red needs to stay immobile for. That's where Frank gets a little blurry. Details get lost in the firestorm he's got in his head. Like how he knows his family's dead but can't remember what they ate for breakfast that morning; how Lisa's eye colour is a mystery but her begging to be read to every night replays on an endless loop. The dose he gave Red in the car last night weighed on him until he heard the kid wake up in the backseat, and he triple-checked the dosage on that. Frank's brain doesn't do details unless they're staring up at him through the scope of a gun.
The leg has to be elevated and immobile for at least a day if not two, and Red proves himself to be a wormy little shit. A steady diet of Fentanyl can only slow him down. He sleeps for a while after each injection, but eventually he starts moving. He twists on the cot, pushes the blanket off his shoulders, tugs back when Frank tries to remove it completely. The blanket is all Red's wearing, Frank having stripped him down for convenience, and the way Red shirks it off before burying himself in it makes Frank think he's got a fever. One touch of his forehead, though, with Red swerving as if to dodge a blow, tells Frank the kid's not sick. He's fucking annoying is what.
At one point the blanket snakes around his good leg from all his squirming, and Red digs in his heel to stop Frank from freeing him. He grumble – fucking growls, as if berating Frank to back off, get his own blanket. This one is useless and uncomfortable but it's fucking his.
"You got it, Red," Frank backs off, but he isn't two steps away before Red is shivering, gasping; his fingers curling sluggishly at the edges of the twisted blanket that Frank just finished trying to give him. Frank has half a mind to let him struggle back to sleep until Red starts flexing the thigh muscles on his broken leg to move. His gasping turns into keening, and that's when Frank returns to save the poor kid. He drapes the blanket over Red, who immediately falls back into druggy stillness, exhaling in relief.
A few seconds later, the blanket is on the floor. Red tries and fails at turning onto his left side. Frank sits beside the cot and watches him collapse from the effort. His eyes swing rapidly under his closed lids. He works his mouth in frustration, releasing a series of low grumbles and moans. Then he's back under, so deep that he doesn't move when Frank replaces the blanket up to his waist.
Frustrating as the kid is, Frank knows the feeling. He's antsy as hell waiting out Doc's orders. Coffee makes it worse, as do the reports from his police scanner, but there's nothing else to do with Red on the move. The wound looks healthy. Red's foot has strong circulation. Nothing turns black or smells rank. Urine's clear, so no kidney damage. His broken ribs are set neatly with tape. Frank can't bring himself to risk Red ruining it all in a drugged haze, even if it means planting himself by the cot to watch the blanket wrapping around Red's good leg again.
The alarm on his phone goes off. Frank grabs the pre-loaded syringe and injects the contents into the kid's IV line. Red fades. He seems to drain out of a hole in his chest, curling slightly inwards before disappearing. One his hand flops across his waist, fingers limp, and Frank doesn't know if it's to pull the blanket closer or push it away.
It's dark when Red breaks out of the spell. He kicks his good heel into the frame of the cot, drawing himself into a sitting position. He fumbles for a handhold at his sides, behind him, above him, finally finding the window frame with a clumsy grip. The muscles in his arm strain, but his face is open, shockingly vacant. Whatever doubts Frank had about Red's eyes are gone. The kid stares sightlessly, meaninglessly, while he fumbles for words with a slackened mouth.
"Red," Frank moves to stop him, but Red's body does the work for him. His sudden change in elevation sends blood shooting back into his leg while the effort sets off his broken ribs. Red hugs an arm around his chest – bad idea, one that lands him back on the cot with a twisted yell.
One hand flies to his face, scrubbing hard, like he's trying to clear the blindness out of his eyes. The other screws up into the blanket until the tendons pop out of his arm. Every exhale brings another desperate, ragged huff. Frank checks his alarm: Red's next dose isn't for a while, but Doc's note has a point about managing breakthrough pain. He gets a needle, draws the dosage. "Hang in there, Red," he pops the needle into the IV, "I got you. I got you."
Red looks about ready to drive his hand through his eye sockets and out the other side of his skull. Nevertheless, he begs, "No. No more, Frank. Please. Please, no more."
Frank gives him a second to change his mind. Red doesn't. He carries on with his breathless pleads of no more and please until Frank withdraws the syringe from the port. He recaps the needle, then grabs Red's free hand out of the blankets, shoves the syringe into his palm, and guides him to the windowsill. "In case you change your mind," Frank says.
Red nods in thanks, releasing the syringe. He pulls his hand back towards his broken ribs and gets his breathing under control. His shoulders peel away from the cot, curling upwards in self-defence. Frank sighs, "Got no interest in hurting you, Red," but the kid answers by tugging the blanket slightly higher on his waist. He's embarrassed, not to mention uncomfortable. The second he lets go of the blanket, his arms tense at his waist. He picks softly at his wrists and forearms.
"Narcotics'll stop itching soon," Frank reassures him.
"Yeah," Red agrees. He digs his hands into his waist to hold them steady. "Where am I?"
"My place."
"Yeah, but…but where in your place? I can't…" he tilts his head this way and that by degrees only. His lip quivers in spite of his self-control. "Describe it to me."
Frank looks around. What the hell is there to describe? "Four walls, a ceiling; couple windows…"
"Way to help me out here, Frank."
"Don't know what you're expecting, Red. You need to know how many paces to the front door, that sort of thing?"
"I don't want to be here. You should have…take me home," he stacks his face into a series of resolute lines. "Take me home."
As soon as possible, Frank thinks. He looks towards the mount of flesh, bone, and bandages elevated at the bottom of the bed. "You want me to describe something? Your calf muscle's looking to fall out through your skin. You can't get out of bed for the next twenty-four hours."
The kid's eyes are impassive. His mouth, however, is shaking. Fuck, he looks young. Fear takes the bravado right out of him. Frank takes that as a sign that he's finally getting it, "You wanna leave after your leg's sewn up, I'll take you anywhere you wanna go. But you better have somebody to wait on your hand and foot. Doc said you're non-weight bearing."
"I'll get crutches."
"Jesus Christ, Red, you listening to yourself? You'll get crutches," he scoffs. Because crutches will make it all better. "You're gonna clean up after yourself too, I bet? Shop for yourself? Take your meds? You didn't scrape your knee. Your leg was crushed. Doc had to cut part of it out to get the circulation back in your foot. You'll be back on your ass and in a hospital if you go home alone."
Red's mouth stops quivering. He tilts his head toward Frank, glowering effectively despite his gaze being fixed away. Bravado gone, replaced with something dark, something wicked. Frank caught a glimpse of it on the roof that night, and here it is again, rawer this time, angrier. "Yeah, and what the hell do you care, Frank? This is what you wanted, isn't it? You wanted me out of your way? Well, I'm out, Frank."
"This isn't what I wanted," not exactly. Frank has to admit that the kid's a fucking nuisance in and out of the suit, but a crushed leg is a shit way to bench a decent fighter. Not to mention the fact that he's the reason for it. "I wanted you to give up your little crusade yourself. Kind of expected you to after what happened with the Japanese. But there you are on their turf, following Fisk's guys."
"I wasn't following Fisk's guys."
Not the answer Frank was expecting. "What the hell were you there for, then?"
Red isn't about to say. He zips his mouth up tight, almost doesn't answer, but his face sags in resignation a second later. "I was looking for someone."
He might as well have not answered.
Frank is about to ask who when Red looks to him, "Those men in the basement – they work for Fisk?"
"He's got a few groups in the city. Found a few of 'em poking around in the Japanese's old properties."
Red sighs, "He's mobilizing."
"That would be my guess," Frank agrees. "Only matter of time before he's out of Super Max."
"Great," Red stares into the ceiling. He shakes his head slightly, not at Frank this time. This is all self-loathing. Resentment for his injured leg, for being stuck in bed, for not protecting the city. Frank recognizes the expression all too well; he's wearing a similar one on the inside. Resentment for getting Red into his mess, for having to keep him here, for not taking care of Fisk in Super Max when he had the chance.
"Say it, Frank."
For a second, Frank worries he already has, and Red's looking for him to repeat himself. "Say what?"
"You want to say something. Say it."
"You a mind reader, Red? That how you get around so well?"
Red shakes his head, laughing darkly, cynically. "I'm a lawyer. I'm used to figuring out who wants to talk and who doesn't. You got something to say, say it. I'm not going anywhere."
Frank considers it. Telling him the truth about the basement. Red obviously doesn't remember or, if he does, hasn't assigned blame yet. Sure, ceilings fall, but this one wouldn't have landed on Red if he hadn't leapt under it. If Frank had listened instead of standing there, shooting.
"Just can't get over you not having anyone," he says at last.
"People change, Frank."
"Yeah, but I never took you for changing. You lose your girl in the fight with the ninjas a while back," and boy, she was his girl, that red-clad dame on the rooftop who died in his arms that night. Frank knows that expression too, the one Red makes now, like the air's been pulled straight out his chest. His nerves lit up like fuses for an explosion that never comes. Somebody like her dies, setting a spark that burns and burns and burns, and it's a hard contest as to what would be worse: to have that fire of her death go out, or to have it keep burning.
Frank sighs, detaching himself from the firestorm in his brain. The gunfire, Lisa's open face, Frank Jr. in pieces, Maria…he gets back on topic, "Your firm goes under."
"No thanks to you," Red remarks pointedly.
"Don't you pin that shit on me. You walked into my hospital room falling apart. That partner of yours – what's his name? Foghorn? Foggy? He didn't want to be there. The only people who wanted my case was you and your secretary. And you weren't there, Red. Too God damn busy playing half-assed vigilante," Frank can't believe he didn't put the pieces together then, in the hospital room. His voice sounded so familiar. But it didn't seem possible that a blind guy could do all the shit Red could. "You were itching to get the hell out of that partnership."
Red says nothing. In fact, he says the exact opposite of nothing. His silence is deafening. He draws the air out of the room with his anger. Good. Let the kid seethe. Frank's guilty of a lot of things, but screwing up Red's rinky-dink law firm ain't one of them.
"And don't you go saying that it was to help me," he adds. "All that shit you said while I was on the stand. You wanted to help yourself. Make yourself feel better about what you do."
"I don't feel bad about what I do."
"But you sure as shit feel bad for you," Frank notes, "especially now that you've got no one."
"Oh, like you're one to talk. Who the hell do you have, Frank? Whose cot would you be lying on if it had been your leg under that beam?"
Fuck, the lawyer's back, lunging his way out from the Fentanyl drowse holding the devil at bay. "I didn't ask to be alone."
"But you are. We both are," and fuck, Red hates himself for that most of all.
Frank can't say he likes himself much for that either. "Yeah," he stares at Red's busted leg, the one he helped bust, "Fucking alone together."
Happy reading!