what they wouldn't do | DAREDEVIL

chapter fourty five

In the Emergency Room of Metro-General Hospital, Claire Temple was experiencing some serious déjà vu.

It had started off as a fairly slow night, but in the span of about twenty minutes that slow pace was shattered as ambulances and private vehicles alike began pulling up to the emergency dock—all of them, oddly enough, transporting injured people dressed up in formal attire. Claire and her colleagues had all gotten straight to work, and Claire was so busy with all the incoming patients that she hadn't initially paid any attention to the news chyrons winding across the nearby televisions:

Devil of Hell's Kitchen Behind Ambush On Charity Ball; At Least Two Dead, Dozens Injured

Local Journalist Target Of Vicious Attack By Devil of Hell's Kitchen

Vigilante Once Hailed As Hero Shows True Criminal Colors

She was in the middle of tending to a middle-aged woman in a velvet evening gown who had gotten a viciously deep gash across her forehead when she recognized one of the unconscious patients being wheeled in: Sarah Corrigan, pale as death and just as still.

As soon as she spotted Sarah she knew that Matt couldn't be far away, and that he would be looking for her. And the moment he crossed her mind, she had looked up at the television to see his alter ego plastered on every news station. Over and over they played clips of shaky cell phone footage from a dozen different angles showing Daredevil holding a woman in a dark green dress over a balcony, and then throwing her over the side with cold-blooded ease.

And that was what made the disturbing feeling of déjà vu kick in. Between the news headlines and the people flooding into her emergency room, Claire might as well have gone back in time to the night Fisk blew up half of Hell's Kitchen and blamed Daredevil for it.

The chaos in the ER meant that Claire wasn't able to step away immediately, but when she was able to break away she went down the hall to where several victims of the tranquilizers were being treated. The update she got from the nurse assigned to the group was about what she expected based on her previous experience with these darts: some patients were reacting badly, showing signs similar to an overdose. Others were already awake and slowly moving.

Sarah was somewhere in between: stable for now, but nowhere near waking up.

Checking her phone as she headed back towards the emergency room, she was surprised to see Matt hadn't called her yet. It wasn't possible that he didn't know, right? But that question was quickly answered a moment later when she found herself being quietly pulled into an empty exam room by a tuxedo-clad figure in the shadows.

"I didn't do this," Matt said as soon as the door closed behind them. "It was someone else."

Claire didn't need that explained to her, of course, and he should really have known that. Matt Murdock had many (many, many, many) flaws, but being a murderer and attacking a building full of innocent people weren't among them. In another situation, she might have reminded him of that with a gently sarcastic remark, but looking at him standing in front of her she found she didn't have the heart. The poor guy looked shell-shocked, and underneath the dried blood on his face he was nearly as pale as Sarah had been.

"I know," she said, keeping her voice calm. "I'm guessing you're here for Sarah."

Matt gave a tight nod.

"I've been listening in. They hooked her to up to some monitors...gave her an injection of something," he said.

"Yeah. With the number of those tranquilizer darts going around town, they've gotten the routine down pretty well. We've had a few other patients come in from that party who got hit."