A/N: Disclaimer: I am not a first responder, or a Park Ranger. I work in a city that is almost as far from a forest as you can get. I'm basing my knowledge of Ranger medical expertise on what I know police and firemen First Responders are taught in my state, as well as some cursory internet research. It might not be totally accurate, but it makes for a better story anyway. Enjoy the final installment of "A Night to Remember to Forget"!

Part 5: Saved

The world returned in bursts of pain first. Matt's surroundings appeared bit-by-bit, until, as it had in the car and every other time before, the world exploded into fire.

Matt jerked up. "Foggy!"

A woman was instantly by his side. She was pressing on his sternum, trying to get him to lie flat. Matt let her push him down before he became aware of her words.

"…Mitchel found your friend. He's with him now. I've already called for emergency responders. You and your friend are going to be airlifted out of here," the woman was saying.

"What?" Matt was having trouble focusing on her words. Matt felt his arm, noting his left hand was swollen, and realized it was wrapped in layers of bandages and secured in a splint. It felt like someone with first-aid training had done it. Matt felt the pull of a temporary adhesive wrapping on the cut above his eye. "Where's Foggy? Where am I?"

The woman's breath brushed against Matt's face as she sighed. "Your friend is with my Ranger partner, Mitchel. You're at a Forest Ranger station. Mitchel says it looks like your car hit a moose."

Matt relaxed into the couch someone must have put him on. "Yeah. It came out of nowhere."

"I figured. Happens a lot around here. Your accident was pretty bad. It's amazing you were able to get to us."

Matt didn't bother responding. His ears had picked up the sound of an off-road vehicle pulling up in front of the cabin. He could just hear Foggy's heart beat in the back. He swung his feet off the couch and nearly made it across the floor until he was stopped simultaneously by a desk running into his thighs and the woman putting her hand on his arm.

"Ooph," Matt said as his chest bent over the desk. His broken ribs made themselves known again.

"That answers that question," the woman said.

Matt forgot his goal for a moment and turned to her. "What question?"

"Mitchel and I had a bet going for whether you are blind or not. I've just won a week of the good type of coffee."

Before Matt could reply, a male yelled from outside, "Vicky, I need you! This guy's in shock!"

"You moved him? You know you're not supposed to touch him!" The woman, Vicky, Matt supposed, had forgotten about Matt for the moment and was heading outside. The screen door slammed behind her and Matt winced.

"I hooked the car up to the truck. It was blocking the middle of the road," Mitchel explained.

"You know the rules! Damnit, Mitch, what is it about leaving the scene of the accident like you found it too difficult for you to understand?"

Matt heard the man shrug. "I took pictures, but this guy needs help now. And they didn't hit the moose there anyway, so it wouldn't have told them anything. Now are you going to help me? Where's the 'copter?"

"On its way. You're getting the flack for this, Mitchel," Vicky said, even as Matt heard her look into the car. "Shit. Get some blankets. He's in shock."

Matt listened as Mitchel came up the steps. He didn't notice Matt standing at the door until he nearly ran into him.

"Whooh! How are you feeling?" Mitchel asked. He barreled passed Matt into the cabin and returned with the requested blankets. Matt didn't respond; he was too focused on listening to Foggy's vital signs to dodge.

Foggy's pulse and breathing didn't change as Vicky and Mitchel covered him in blankets. Matt slowly walked toward him, keeping his senses trained on Foggy. He stepped off the last step and nearly tripped. He hadn't been paying any attention to his feet. His ankle gave a mild twinge, but it was nothing compared to the rest of his injuries.

Matt wouldn't have let it stop him from getting to Foggy, but Mitchel had seen his stumble. He came forward and grasped Matt's shoulders. "Help is on the way. You shouldn't be walking around."

Against Matt's wishes, the burly ranger led Matt back into the cabin. He planted Matt in a chair. "Are you okay? Vicky said she patched you up for transport. Where is the pain?"

Matt tried to hear what Vicky was doing to Foggy, but he wasn't sure what he was hearing, so he decided to trust her for the moment and focused on Mitchel. "Better question is where isn't the pain? But I'll live. How's Foggy?"

"We're doing the best we can for him. We're just first responders. We don't have full EMT training, but we've called the ones who do." Mitchel's radio squawked. "Speak of the devil."

Matt heard him unclip the radio from his belt and press the talk button. "Station 5 here."

The radio crackled. "Aid 'copter 2 en route. ETA 5 minutes."

Matt felt the change in air pressure as Mitchel nodded. "10-4. We've got the landing zone lit for you. We're ready."

"10-4," the radio replied.

"See? Oh, um, hear?" Mitchel corrected himself. "They're on the way. Now, I need to ask you some questions."

Matt pulled himself away from tracking Foggy's vital signs. "I figured."

"What do you remember about the accident?"

Matt blinked and rubbed his free hand against his face. For the first time, he noticed that he'd lost his glasses somewhere. He suddenly felt extremely naked.

He could almost feel Mitchel staring at his blank gaze. His father had tried to convince Matt that people didn't stare at them because they were scarred, and while Matt had learned to trust him when he said that, Matt had never gotten comfortable with letting the world see them. Foggy and now Claire were the only people Matt felt free enough around to let them see his eyes.

He made his best guess on where Mitchel's eyes were and tried to get his gaze to go there. He wouldn't let Mitchel see how uncomfortable he was. Then he answered the question. "Foggy was driving, obviously," he gestured to his eyes in an effort to get that out of the way, "and we were trying to figure out where we were. He must have taken his eyes off the road, because the next thing I knew, we were swerving and something had collided against us."

"That would be the moose," Mitchel said unnecessarily.

"Yeah, I figured. I think I lost consciousness for a bit, but I don't know how long. When I came to, Foggy was still out. I shook him awake, but he seemed really dazed. I tried to figure out how he was—my father was a boxer, so I know a bit of first aid," Matt added. "But I couldn't tell much. I tried to call for help, but my phone was smashed in the accident and Foggy said his phone had no signal. We decided, or I guess really Foggy decided, that we needed to get help. He started driving before I could stop him. I don't know how long we were driving until he stopped, maybe 10 minutes? He told me there was a sign that said you guys were around," Matt hoped that was what the sign had actually said, and Mitchel's pulse told him it had been a good guess. "Then he lost consciousness again. I followed the gravel path until I got to the cabin. You know the rest."

Mitchel nodded, and then registered what he'd done and answered verbally. "Yes. I guess we do. You came in and fainted. Vicky assessed you while I radioed for medical and then left to find your friend."

"I figured."

At that moment, Matt's ears caught the sound of a helicopter. It was the most beautiful sound Matt had ever heard. He couldn't help the smile that formed on his face, the swollen cheek be damned. "They're here."

ooOOOoo

Matt hated hospitals. They reminded him of waking up right after his accident and then the long hard months of rehab. They smelled like blood and antiseptic and sadness and exhaustion. But Matt had to admit that he'd never felt more relieved to be in one.

The staff had tried to give him medication for the pain, but Matt refused. He almost regretted it when they set his arm, but he did what he always did to distract himself from the pain and focused on something else.

This time, Matt focused on finding Foggy among all the other patients. It was a difficult task that required Matt to use all of his concentration on locating Foggy's heart among all the other sounds. When he finally located his best friend, he put all of his energy into listening and forgot about the pain.

He heard Foggy being wheeled out of what sounded like an operating room on a gurney with a squeaky wheel. A machine that monitored Foggy's vital signs was beeping at a steady rate in a rhythm that was almost what Matt had learned to identify as uniquely Foggy's.

"He's lucky the swelling wasn't so bad," a nurse pushing Foggy down the hallway was saying. "Dr. Kendall said it could have been much worse."

"I'm surprised his lungs didn't deflate," another nurse commented.

"You want to hear something weird? As I was prepping him for Dr. Kendall, I saw a puncture mark under his clavicle."

"So? He was in a crash. The guy probably had a ton of marks from the glass."

"That's what I thought at first, but then I saw that there wasn't any other marks around there."

"And you think someone did it on purpose?" The second nurse didn't seem all that convinced.

Matt heard the first nurse lean over Foggy and her voice became a whisper. Matt had to strain to catch it. "It looked like someone cut him to release a pneumothorax."

"Come on, Betty, the only other person in the car was a blind guy. How would he have known where or how to treat a pneumo?"

"Maybe he was a doctor or a medic? Just because the guy is blind now doesn't mean he always was. We both know that this guy's injuries should have resulted in a pneumo."

"Occam's razor, Betty," the second nurse replied. "You always jump to the long shot first. I say this guy is just damn lucky."

"Or he's got a guardian angel, I suppose." Betty admitted.

"Mr. Murdock?" Matt jumped and attempted to face the young resident, but the collar the EMTs and doctors had insisted he wear for at least a week while his neck muscles healed limited his movement.

"Yes?"

"Could you hear me?"

Matt smiled humorlessly. "I hear everything, doctor. I was just meditating. Helps with the pain."

The resident sounded both nervous and embarrassed when he replied, "Good. I was afraid we'd missed something on your CT. I called your name three times."

"I'm sorry about that. Did you need me to do something else?" Matt had already been x-rayed, stitched up, and asked about his and Foggy's medical history for the hospital's records. He'd had to play the bumbling blind-man card to explain the evidence of past broken bones on his x-rays and the many scars on his arms, neck and chest from his nighttime activities. He hadn't realized before just how many injuries he'd accrued before he'd begun to wear Melvin's suit. He had to admit, Claire had had a point. He couldn't believe the hospital staff had accepted all his excuses for his scars! It shocked him, even after so many years, just how little people questioned his blindness. How did they think a blind man, even a clumsy one, got a five-inch incision in his side?

"No, sir, I was just going to tell you we're all done."

"Excellent!" Matt felt his ribs and then the new cast around his arm. "May I go see my friend now? The man who came in with me?"

Ten minutes later, an orderly who'd introduced himself as Aaron was leading Matt to recovery, where Foggy had been placed.

"Here he is, Mr. Murdock. Franklin Nelson. He's on your left," Aaron said, placing Matt's hand on the back of what Matt quickly identified as a chair.

"Thank you, Aaron. How's he look?" Matt could hear Aaron hesitate. Matt's heart skipped a beat. To him, Foggy sounded better than he'd been for the last seven hours, but heart and respiratory rates could be deceiving. "Tell me the truth. I can take it."

Aaron sighed. "He looks super pale, and they've wrapped his head like a mummy. His leg's in a thick cast, like yours."

Matt nodded, but fear still gripped his heart. "So what's the problem? Why did you hesitate?"

"Well," Aaron said, "They couldn't do anything about his face."

"What?" Matt quickly made his way around the bed until he could get to Foggy's head. He wanted to touch it, but if it was damaged, he could make it worse. How had he missed something wrong with Foggy's face? He'd been so careful! The only thing he'd found was a hairline fracture. Could he have missed something?

Then he heard Aaron's smile. "He's still stuck with the same one he came in with."

Matt's relief was tangible. "That was a mean thing to do to a blind man, Aaron," he criticized, even as he couldn't help the smile from forming on his own face. His cheek had swollen, so it hurt, but Matt thought the pain was worth it.

"It's not like I could do it to a person who could see," Aaron explained.

"He…has a point."

Matt completely forgot about Aaron. "Foggy! You're awake!"

"Hurts," Foggy replied.

Matt felt around for the chair he knew was close. Again, he found himself smiling as he pulled the chair closer to Foggy's bed. "Means you're alive, counselor. Means you're alive."

"Good," Foggy answered. "Better than dead."

"My thoughts exactly. I'll go find a nurse to see if you can get any more meds."

Foggy blinked lazily. "Meds are good."

"Yeah." Matt stood up. He was about to go find a nurse, noting that Aaron had disappeared somewhere, when Foggy spoke again.

"Didn't get the autograph. Candice will be sad."

The last of the weight on Matt's heart lifted at Foggy's mumbled words. "Next time, I swear."

"Next time, we take the bus."

Matt put his hand on Foggy's undamaged leg. "Promise."

"Good. Matt?"

Matt turn back to face Foggy, "Yeah, Fog?"

"What are we going to tell the rental people?"

Matt's stomach sank. He made his way back to Foggy's head and leaned down as much as his wrapped ribs would allow. "We're lawyers. We'll figure it out, but if anyone asks, you drove to the ranger station."

"Do I want to remember how we actually got there?"

Matt attempted to shrug but mostly failed because of his ribs. "Probably not."

"Matt?"

"Yes, Foggy?"

"Thanks."

Once more, Matt's cheek burned as he pulled the muscles of his face up into a small smile. "Never needed. Now, I'm going to get you the best pain killers they got in this here town."