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When the hour was over, Claire cut the ties and unwound them from Matt's wrists and ankles while Foggy pulled Matt's boots off. Matt sat up and groaned.

"You should take things easy for a few days," Claire said. "Because if you rip those stitches, I'll be tempted to tie you down again and not let you up until they're healed. But for now, I'm going to go home and sleep."

"It's not the stitches that are bothering me," Matt said, starting to wriggle out of his suit. Foggy helped, and when he'd gotten the top part off, Matt added, "It's the puncture wound. Feels like that jack is still in there, but I know I pulled it out."

"You couldn't have mentioned this earlier?" Claire sighed a little, then started pulling on gloves. "All right. Show me."

Matt lowered himself facedown to the bed and used one hand to expose his right buttock. Claire leaned close, then said, "I'm going to need a lamp."

"Try this." Foggy pulled something out of his pocket and clicked it; Matt thought it sounded like his phone. "Flashlight app. Is that okay?"

"Flashlight app is good, Matt's ass … is not so good. Help me out here, Matt." Claire wrestled with the waistband of his pants, and Matt stood up again, taking his suit pants off completely and pulling his underwear down before stretching out on the bed again.

"You say it feels like there's something still in there?" she asked, and Matt was aware of his involuntary flinches under her probing fingers.

"I'm going to try something," she murmured. "It might not work, and it will definitely hurt, but not as much as scraping it out with a scalpel."

She placed her fingers on either side of the puncture and gave a mighty squeeze. Matt gritted his teeth and clenched his fingers into his blankets as Foggy exclaimed, "Whoa! Giant pimple much?"

Then Claire let go and wiped something away from the top of the wound. "Yeah, here's a tiny bit of metal. I'd say it was the tip of that jack-dart-thing, probably broke off when you pulled it out. You're up to date on your tetanus shots, right, Matt?"

Matt hesitated, trying to remember the last time he'd had an innoculation, and Claire sighed again. "Well, you can get one when you go to the ER. You'll need antibiotics anyway; maybe those jacks were doused in some kind of poison, not just a drug, because this is already on the freeway to infection, and from there, it's only a short ride to death by septicemia."

"Death, Matt, she said death." Foggy added. "Now, are you coming voluntarily or do we have to tie you up again and throw you in the back of a taxi?"

"I can't go to the hospital," Matt replied automatically. "What am I supposed to tell them? That I was just walking along and got hit by a dart that came out of nowhere? What if Fisk's men have contacts there?"

There was a silence as they all considered the likelihood of such a possibility.

"Darts," Foggy mused, but then his voice speeded up. "I know! We can tell them that you and I were drinking and throwing darts … okay, so I was drinking and throwing darts, and eventually, I got so drunk that I missed the board and hit you in the ass. "

"While I was sitting down?"

"When you got up to go to the bathroom, man!" Foggy began to elaborate. "Yeah, you didn't want to be there and you kept nagging me to leave and go home, so I just got drunker and drunker, and then I missed the board on purpose and hit you in the ass because you were being a pain in the ass!"

Matt recognized a subconscious reversal of their life situation in Foggy's words, with Foggy not wanting to be the one sitting around and waiting while Matt was active, and it made him sad. He got to his feet, pulling up his underwear as an excuse to keep his head down.

"Works for me," Claire said, her shrug audible in her voice. "I've heard worse in the ER. But what if they ask about your black eye?"

Foggy reached over suddenly and smacked Matt directly over the puncture wound.

"Ow! Foggy!" He hadn't registered Foggy's movement as a threat, hadn't even reacted defensively, and now his entire buttock was stinging.

Foggy continued to spin the story. "But after I hit my best friend in the ass I felt so bad it that I let him take a swing at me in return. What? It's the truth, in a manner of speaking. We just fudge the timing a little."

Claire laughed, and Matt felt a reluctant smile come to his face, both at Foggy's use of the term 'in a manner of speaking' and what Foggy's little speech meant. Foggy was willing to keep Matt's secret, even if it meant portraying himself as a drunken idiot who threw darts at blind people. And when he'd slapped Matt, he hadn't even been afraid that Matt would defend himself with another punch.

"All right," Matt conceded with relief. "With a story that good, I guess I'll be safe in the hospital."

"Damn right," Foggy said. "I didn't become a lawyer without learning how to spin the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

"Foggy?" Matt turned in the direction of his friend's voice and held out a horizontal fist. "Thanks."

Foggy bumped it, and there was a smile in his voice as he said, "You're welcome. Now come on, get dressed before that septicemia takes over and I have to carry your dead ass all the way there."

Matt could have sworn that there was a warmth spreading from his knuckles up his arm, straight to his heart, and from there throughout his entire body. It felt like he'd gotten an injection of forgiveness and intravenous good-will.

The Patented Foggy Nelson Friendship and All-Around Feel-Better Shot.

Or maybe he could just call it the Nelson Shot.

The End