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Chapter Text

Part One

            Matthew Murdock’s white cane swept and tapped against the hard concrete sidewalk. After a few more steps, a sudden change of surface vibrated up through the tip of the cane all the way to his hand. Instead of cement, the cane had contacted something pliant, squishy, and almost spongy: grass turf.

 Matt inhaled slowly to grant his nose extra time to analyze and examine all of the compounds passing through it. As the air funneled through his nostrils, Matt’s ultrasensitive sense of smell untangled the finely threaded molecules of scent: musty dirt soaked with the petrichor of last night’s rain; eager shoots of grass stretching toward the sky; the cheery bouquet of cherry blossoms buffeted across the park from the Japanese garden; optimistic daffodils unafraid of a late frost; steamy, savory hot dogs from the cart vendors seeking to capitalize on a vibrant spring day.

New York City’s weather suffered from bouts of bipolar disorder, or perhaps schizophrenia, during March and April. On one day, a chilly rain might sprinkle the city with dreary despair, but on the next day, the city might erupt with new flowers and new hope under a bright warm sun.

Today was one of those latter days: a day when the sheer exuberance of April washed, dried, and spun New York City like freshly clean laundry. Today, Matt Murdock insisted that he and his roommate Franklin ‘Foggy’ Nelson do their law school reading in Central Park.

As Matt’s cane and feet penetrated the grassy turf, Foggy sneezed several times.

“This is why I don’t live near the park,” Foggy grumbled. “Allergies.”

“Oh really? Allergies are why you don’t live near the park? Not the fact that you go to Columbia Law School, or your parents live in Hell’s Kitchen, or you cannot afford to live near the park?” Matt teased.

“It’s definitely the allergies,” Foggy insisted.

Matt abruptly halted as several high-pitched shrieks drilled into his ears. His own heart revved at the signal of danger and fear. He concentrated in the direction from which the shrieks came. The next few squeals and cries contained more glee than panic, which suggested some kind of exciting activity which satisfied that sweet spot between exhilaration and terror. Something like a roller coaster, but as far as Matt knew, there were no roller coasters in Central Park.

Matt focused his hearing so he could sense the physical outline of the scene to his left. The flat plane of the lawn was broken by some kind of wall—a wall sticking straight up out of the grass. A couple of human forms were superimposed on the wall like… A faded, indistinct visual memory percolated up from the bottommost layers of Matt’s brain—only a thin, silken filament of an image: a spider clinging to a perfectly vertical wall, its black legs contrasted against the white wall of the apartment. Yes, that was what the human forms silhouetted against the wall reminded him of.     

Matt furrowed his brow in confusion. How could human forms be silhouetted against a free-standing wall?

Foggy noticed Matt’s befuddlement and helpfully explained, “There’s one of those portable rock-climbing wall attractions set up off to our left. There’s a platform for stability, and then a bit of wall is sticking out of the platform, maybe thirty feet high? I’m bad at estimating measurements. The wall has these projections sticking out that mimic the surface of boulders or cliffs—that’s what you hold onto or put your feet on as you climb. A couple of kids are on the wall now. They’re wearing harnesses, thank God.”

“Now I get it,” Matt responded. “I know what you mean by a rock-climbing wall. I’ve gone rock climbing.”

“You’ve gone—gone—achoo—rock climbing?” Foggy asked through a skeptical sneeze. If Foggy had to write a list of “activities that completely blind people might have a bit of trouble with,” he would put rock climbing on that list. Then again, Matt Murdock was as allergic to the words “no,” “cannot,” “do not,” and “should not” as Foggy was allergic to pollen.

“On an artificial wall, like the one you described,” Matt clarified. “It was at summer camp when I was a teenager. Like I told you before, I went to this summer camp which offered a bunch of adaptive activities. A couple of times they brought in a fake rock wall. I was supposed to wait for a sighted camp counselor to verbally describe what I should do and where I should move, but I—”

Matt paused and grinned.

“You what?” Foggy pressed, although he already knew the answer: Matt figured out how to do it on his own. Just like Matt figured out how to do so many other things on his own. Just like Matt refused to adhere to any pre-conceived notions of what a completely blind person was able or unable to do.

“I figured out how to do it on my own, by touch,” Matt said almost dismissively.

“You always have to be the daredevil, don’t you?” Foggy needled playfully.

“I know that climbing a real rock face out in the wilderness would be harder, but I could probably figure out that, too. I’ve heard there’s a push to get para-climbing into the Paralympics.”

“Para-climbing?” Foggy repeated.

“A visually impaired athlete climbs with a sighted partner,” Matt explained nonchalantly.

“This looks like a good spot,” Foggy declared as they reached a stretch of flat meadow. “I’ll set up the table.” Foggy lifted off one of the bags slung across his torso, which contained a collapsible camp table borrowed from his Uncle Tim, who typically used it for tailgating at Giants games.

Matt lifted off two of the bags slung around his torso, which contained collapsible camp chairs also borrowed from Uncle Tim. He unzipped the bags and unfolded the chairs.

“Hey Matt, why didn’t you compete in the Paralympics during high school or college?” Foggy asked as he settled into his camp chair. “You really are kind of a daredevil with physical stuff, and remember what Uncle Tim said after you played football over Thanksgiving: you’re a natural athlete. I agree with him, and I don’t even know much about sports. I have seen your abs, though.”  

Matt smiled shyly. He did secretly take a great deal of pride in his athletic ability, and he did wish he could safely show it off more frequently. Demonstrating his physical prowess, though, risked revealing his enhanced super-senses to the world. And if he did that—

If he did that, then examinations, experiments, and probing both literal and figurative would follow. Doctors, scientists, skeptics, and believers would crawl out of the woodwork to investigate and audit him. One side would call him an abomination, a freak, and a phony, while the other side would label him a miracle, a savior, and a savant. Legitimate researchers would glue electroencephalogram sensors on his head, slide him into MRI machines, and treat him like a lab rat, while quacks would want to put him on television tabloid shows. Admirers would hang around him like rock star groupies, but detractors would slam him as just another Las Vegas illusionist. Matt barely tolerated cursory medical appointments, and in the past six or seven years, he consented to only one brain MRI, and that was only after several rounds of begging from his ophthalmologist. Matt dreaded ever becoming a “guinea pig,” as he heard the phrase used—a deeply dehumanizing term to his mind.  

“Matt?”

Foggy reminded him of the pending question: why did Matt not compete in the Paralympics?

“Well, the visually impaired track events in the Paralympics involve a sighted partner,” Matt began. “I never had a sighted running partner, and I had no idea how to get one. There are blind swimming events, and although I do know how to swim, I never had regular access to a Paralympic-sized pool for consistent training. Plus, the swimming events involve a sighted partner who signals to the swimmer that they’ve reached the end of the pool. I probably could have qualified for the Paralympic judo events, but I could not justify investing so much time and money on an activity with very little real-world application. Colleges don’t give out scholarships for para-judo. Para-judo was not going to help me a get a job. I was never going to get a professional sports contract out of it, or an advertising endorsement deal, so it made more sense to focus on the debate team.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions like that,” Foggy admonished. “I bet a lot of people would enjoy seeing Matt Murdock on a Wheaties box, especially Matt Murdock in Speedos or tiny running shorts. Maybe you could get an endorsement deal for sunglasses. You’re only twenty-three, so there is still time for Paralympic glory. My Uncle Tim would leap at the chance to coach you or be your swimming spotter. He could probably find a running buddy for you in ten minutes. You could be Matthew Murdock, law student by day, gold medalist by night.”

“I’ll think about it,” Matt promised lightly. Foggy sneezed.

“I wonder if anyone has ever cheated in the Paralympics,” Foggy mused. “If they pretended to have a physical disability and really did not. That would be an absolutely horrible, shitty thing to do.”

Matt agreed that it would be an absolutely horrible, shitty thing to do, which was one of the other reasons why he never seriously strove for Paralympic glory: because his ultrasensitive, superhuman hearing, smell, touch, and taste granted him a distinct advantage over other blind athletes. If anyone ever discovered that he used his mysteriously enhanced senses to win gold, they would brand him as a cheater and he would fall instantly into ignominious disgrace.

“The Paralympics require rigorous medical exams for that very reason,” Matt explained. “The Paralympics do not allow someone to simply self-identify as physically disabled. If you want to compete in the Paralympics, you have to get a thorough examination that tests and evaluates your impairment. The examiners classify athletes into categories, so that athletes in the same competitive category are roughly matched in terms of the nature and severity of their impairment.”

These days, the extent of the work performed by Matt’s longtime ophthalmologist was a brief peek into his eyes with the ophthalmoscope. The doctor would then yet again document in Matt’s medical records that Matt’s retinas were nothing but gritty ash and that Matt’s optic nerve canals contained only scar tissue, rather than nerve fibers. The doctor would then provide Matt with an updated letter to use for any accommodation request.  

From what Matt heard and read, Paralympic classification screenings involved a far more detailed examination than Matt’s typically abbreviated ophthalmology visits. Paralympic examiners would not stop at the scope, but would perform more active tests of Matt’s functionality. Matt knew he would easily pass the flashlight test, since his eyes did not react to light, but what if they asked him to walk without a cane, run without a guide, or throw a ball toward a target? What if they tested how well he anticipated someone touching him? What if they surreptitiously handed something to him and he grasped it easily and fluidly? Would they test if he could detect a swimming pool wall before he smacked his head straight into it? Concealing supersenses from a Paralympic examiner would be considerably more difficult than concealing them from someone who did not regularly interact with any other blind people. Say, someone like Foggy.   

“Wow, that sounds like an actually fair process,” Foggy enthused. “Who knew an international sporting body could create a legitimately fair process? Maybe there is hope for the rest of the sporting world.”

“Should we do some rock climbing after we finish our reading?” Matt proposed.

It was Foggy’s turn to say, “I’ll think about it,” but he needed only two seconds of internal review to decide he did not want to attempt the rock wall. Foggy did not need anyone to see him tangled up in a rock-climbing harness. “What case do we have for Constitutional Rights today?”

Matt opened his spiral-bound booklet and spread it flat on the camp table. “Washington v. Glucksberg, United States Supreme Court, from 1997.”

Foggy opened his own book to the correct case, rapidly skimmed the first page, and let out a low whistle. “This case is about assisted suicide. ‘The question presented in this case is whether Washington’s prohibition against causing or aiding a suicide offends the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.’”

Matt’s outstretched fingers briefly curled away from his Braille page and inward into his palm. Before Foggy noticed Matt’s clenching fists, though, Matt unfurled his fingertips and forced them back onto the elevated Braille bumps.

According to the opinion, the plaintiffs in the case asserted “the existence of a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment which extends to a personal choice by a mentally competent, terminally ill adult to commit physician-assisted suicide.” The intermediate appellate court concluded that “the Constitution encompasses a due process liberty interest in controlling the time and manner of one's death—that there is, in short, a constitutionally-recognized ‘right to die.’” The United States Supreme Court reversed that decree. The Supreme Court narrowed the issue and found that the Constitution did not protect providing or receiving suicide assistance.

Matt read onward as the Washington v. Glucksberg opinion summarized historical Anglo-American laws regarding suicide, both from the American colonies and from further back in merry olde England. The opinion then recounted more recent legal changes prompted by profound shifts in healthcare and longevity. It also listed the many ballot initiatives and voter referendums regarding assisted suicide in various states.

***The Due Process Clause guarantees more than fair process, and the "liberty" it protects includes more than the absence of physical restraint. Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U. S. 115, 125 (1992) (Due Process Clause "protects individual liberty against `certain government actions regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them' ") (quoting Daniels v. Williams, 474 U. S. 327, 331(1986)). The Clause also provides heightened protection against government interference with certain fundamental rights and liberty interests. Reno v. Flores, 507 U. S. 292, 301-302 (1993); Casey, 505 U. S., at 851. In a long line of cases, we have held that, in addition to the specific freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights, the "liberty" specially protected by the Due Process Clause includes the rights to marry, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967); to have children, Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U. S. 535 (1942); to direct the education and upbringing of one's children, Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390 (1923); Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925); to marital privacy, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); to use contraception, ibid.; Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972); to bodily integrity, Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165 (1952), and to abortion, Casey, supra. We have also assumed, and strongly suggested, that the Due Process Clause protects the traditional right to refuse unwanted life saving medical treatment. Cruzan, 497 U. S., at 278-279.

But we "ha[ve] always been reluctant to expand the concept of substantive due process because guide posts for responsible decision making in this unchartered area are scarce and open-ended." Collins, 503 U. S., at 125. By extending constitutional protection to an asserted right or liberty interest, we, to a great extent, place the matter outside the arena of public debate and legislative action. We must therefore "exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field," ibid., lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the Members of this Court, Moore, 431 U. S., at 502 (plurality opinion).

[…]

Turning to the claim at issue here, the Court of Appeals stated that "[p]roperly analyzed, the first issue to be resolved is whether there is a liberty interest in determining the time and manner of one's death," 79 F. 3d, at 801, or, in other words, "[i]s there a right to die?," id., at 799. Similarly, respondents assert a "liberty to choose how to die" and a right to "control of one's final days," Brief for Respondents 7, and describe the asserted liberty as "the right to choose a humane, dignified death," id., at 15, and "the liberty to shape death," id., at 18. As noted above, we have a tradition of carefully formulating the interest at stake in substantive due-process cases.

[…]

The Washington statute at issue in this case prohibits "aid[ing] another person to attempt suicide, "Wash. Rev. Code § 9A.36.060(1) (1994), and, thus, the question before us is whether the "liberty" specially protected by the Due Process Clause includes a right to commit suicide which itself includes a right to assistance in doing so.

[…]

The history of the law's treatment of assisted suicide in this country has been and continues to be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to permit it. That being the case, our decisions lead us to conclude that the asserted "right" to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. The Constitution also requires, however, that Washington's assisted suicide ban be rationally related to legitimate government interests. See Heller v. Doe, 509 U. S. 312, 319-320 (1993); Flores, 507U. S., at 305. This requirement is unquestionably met here. As the court below recognized, 79 F. 3d, at 816-817, Washington's assisted-suicide ban implicates a number of state interests.***

The nylon surface of the collapsible camp chair scratched and squeaked as Matt shifted in his seat. He crooked one ankle over a knee, then straightened his legs, then reversed, then leaned back, and then leaned forward. The anxious fidgets of his body mirrored the anxious fidgets of his brain. The opinion, and the entire subject of assisted suicide, irritated and nettled his mind.

“These chairs are really uncomfortable,” Foggy commiserated. “But I remind you that it was your idea to read in the park.” He sneezed.

“The chair is fine,” Matt muttered. “The chair’s not the problem. It’s—”

Matt doubted that Foggy could truly understand or appreciate one of the several reasons why the case opinion made Matt uncomfortable. Foggy likely never dealt with the implication or expectation that he would be, or should be, suicidal. Foggy never sat in stunned silence after hearing the words spoken aloud, “If I was blind, I would kill myself.”

It had happened to Matt twice. The first time was during his junior year of high school. As a debate team practice session stretched on into the evening, one of the other students rather patronizingly complimented Matt on his mental flexibility and memory—“it’s amazing how you can remember so many rebuttal points without scribbling down notes”—and then abruptly blurted out, “If I was blind, I would kill myself.” It was one of the very, very few instances during Matt’s debate team tenure that he did not immediately provide an intelligent response to a proffered position. Despite his mental flexibility, his improvisational talents, his quick tongue, and his deep well of snappy comebacks, he was unable to summon a satisfactory rebuttal. The comment sputtered and died on the table between Matt and his teammate. The other guy probably forgot about it five minutes later; Matt still recalled it six years later.

The second time occurred during Matt’s second year of undergraduate university. After a grueling Saturday morning gym session, Matt went to the campus dining hall for breakfast. A young woman sitting at a table nearby hopped over and started flirting with him, probably attracted by Matt’s swollen biceps, his sweaty shirt, and the Saturday morning stubble shadowing his jaw. After a few rounds of flirtatious repartee, she asked, “what’s that?” After figuring out that she had pointed toward the folded cane resting on the table, Matt said, “it’s a cane.” Then he tapped the frame of his sunglasses and breezed, “I’m visually impaired.” The young woman whispered, “you mean, like, blind?” Matt confirmed, “yeah. Blind.” She babbled, “If I was blind, I think I would kill myself.” Matt stuffed a piece of toast in his mouth because he literally could not think of anything to say in response.

Matt also surmised that Foggy had not been dogged by persistent inquiries into his mental health. Matt fielded the intrusive questions all the time: did he think of harming himself? Did he ever contemplate ending his life? Was he aware of crisis hotlines? Did he need information in braille on mental health resources? It happened at every routine doctor’s appointment. It happened when the high school guidance counselor called him to her office for a “friendly chat, just to check in.” It happened on the first day of college orientation when the Resident Advisor on his dormitory floor came to introduce herself. Apparently the entire healthcare apparatus and the entire educational apparatus simply assumed that Matt was suicidal.

Matt presumed Foggy did not know that within disability rights circles, the topic of assisted suicide was more incendiary than a Molotov cocktail. Matt dipped his toe in and out of the disability rights community like it was an unheated swimming pool, but whenever he fully submerged himself beneath the water of the disability rights movement, he discovered vehement voices on both sides of the argument. The Anti contingent believed that legalizing assisted suicide was a slap in the face to people with disabilities; that such laws basically signaled, “your life is not worth living;” that a slippery slope descended from assisted suicide on down to mandatory euthanasia; that what disabled people really needed was a functional medical system. The Pro contingent believed that legalizing assisted suicide was the natural extension of the right to bodily autonomy for which disability rights activists had fought so ferociously.

Matt predicted that Foggy read Washington v. Glucksberg as just another Supreme Court case and just another set of legal principles to memorize for a final exam. Matt predicted that Foggy did not want to sit in the urban utopia of Central Park and listen to Matt unload his complicated, complex thoughts and feelings about assisted suicide. By the time Matt unloaded all of those thoughts and feelings, they would probably both be sunburned.

“Oh shit, it’s the Catholic thing, isn’t it? That’s what’s making you uncomfortable,” Foggy proclaimed. “The Catholic Church really hates suicide, doesn’t it?”

Matt raised his chin from where it had fallen against his chest. And there was yet another factor that influenced his perspective on assisted suicide.

“It’s partially the Catholic thing,” Matt fudged. “You are correct. The Catholic Church has spoken out very strongly against assisted suicide. Way back in 1980, the Catholic Church published an official Declaration on Euthanasia. Or rather, a declaration against euthanasia. However, we are in law school, not divinity school. I can and should put aside my personal religious beliefs and concentrate on the Constitutional argument,” Matt announced, eager for a chance to divert his thoughts away from the personal and toward the professional.

“Do it. Separate church and state. Hit me with the Constitutional argument,” Foggy prompted. He blew his nose.

“The real issue in this case is when to elevate a right to the status of a Constitutional right. Most rights and privileges derive from statutes passed by state legislatures or by Congress. Those statutes come and go. On Monday, a state legislature could pass a law allowing assisted suicide, and on Tuesday, the same state legislature can revoke the law and instead prohibit assisted suicide. Statutes can change frequently, and state legislators can respond to the will of voters. Constitutional rights weigh much more heavily. The Constitution is the ultimate law of the land and forms the backbone—no, the spinal cord—of our country. When the Supreme Court defines something as a Constitutional right, it places that right alongside rights like free speech and free exercise of religion. The Supreme Court cannot casually recognize a Constitutional right to something. The Court cannot hand out Constitutional rights like Halloween candy.”

“I get that,” Foggy agreed. “And the Court needs to be cautious, because once the Supreme Court identifies something as a Constitutional right, it would be pretty embarrassing to take it away. There’s kind of a ‘no backsies,’ or ‘no takebacks’ on Constitutional rights.”  

“Exactly. That’s why in this opinion, Washington v. Glucksberg, the Supreme Court narrowly defined the right at issue. The plaintiffs wanted to make this about a right to end one’s life, but the Supreme Court said that wasn’t precise enough. This is really about the right to assistance in ending one’s life.”

“Don’t you think that was a bit of a chicken move by the Court, though?” Foggy sniffled and blew his nose again.

“Chicken or not, it was a very shrewd move by the Court,” Matt countered. “Assisted suicide is one of those issues that deserves to be publicly and politically debated. It implicates religion, like you pointed out, it implicates technical aspects of medicine, and it implicates a whole variety of ethical considerations.”

“Yeah, I can see how this issue is not ready for prime time. And the defense in this case did point to some very valid reasons for prohibiting assisted suicide. Let’s see…” he mused as he skimmed the opinion. “The state has an ‘unqualified interest in the preservation of human life,’ the state has an ‘interest in protecting the integrity and ethics of the medical profession,’ and the state ‘has an interest in protecting vulnerable groups—including the poor, the elderly, and disabled persons—from abuse, neglect, and mistakes.’”

Foggy snorted as he finished reading the sentence. Perhaps he would not have snorted if he read that sentence sitting in a room by himself, but he snorted because he happened to read that sentence while sitting across from Matthew Murdock. Sitting across from Matthew Murdock, Foggy laughed at the notion that disabled persons needed protection. Anyone sitting across from the invulnerable Matthew Murdock would laugh at that proposition.

However, most disabled persons were not Matthew Murdock. Anyone reading Washington v. Glucksberg in a room by himself would likely agree that disabled persons were vulnerable and did need protection. Indeed, the case itself went on to say, “An insidious bias against the handicapped—again coupled with a cost-saving mentality—makes them especially in need of Washington’s statutory protection.”

“Isn’t the word ‘handicapped’ outdated and offensive?” Foggy queried aloud. “This case is from 1997. I thought that word had been phased out.”

Matt waved a hand in the air as if he was waving away the offense, or waving away the word. “I don’t care if people continue using that word. I am too busy to be offended by the word ‘handicapped,’ and plus, the etymology of ‘handicapped’ is hotly debated. Maybe it’s offensive, maybe it’s not. People who get their panties in a twist over the word ‘handicapped’ should focus on more important things, like actual discriminatory treatment, lack of educational support, or lack of job training. I do hate the word ‘handicapable,’ though, but I hate it because it is childish, condescending, and a crime against grammar.”

“I will never call you ‘handicapable,’ I swear,” Foggy promised. “The State’s interest here goes beyond protecting the vulnerable from coercion; it extends to ‘protecting disabled and terminally ill people from prejudice, negative and inaccurate stereotypes,’ and ‘societal indifference.’ ‘The State's assisted-suicide ban reflects and reinforces its policy that the lives of terminally ill, disabled, and elderly people must be no less valued than the lives of the young and healthy.’”

Again Foggy snorted into his book. He also added a few guffaws. Anyone harboring prejudice against disabled people, anyone holding negative and inaccurate stereotypes about disabled people, or anyone acting indifferently toward disabled people should spend a day with Matthew Murdock. The coercion of Matt’s charm, intelligence, and muscles would soon erase all traces of prejudice, stereotypical thinking, and indifference.

“What’s so funny?” Matt asked sharply.

“It’s not funny ha-ha. Not humorous. It’s funny stupid. Funny, as in, easily dismissed,” Foggy clarified. “Come on, DUH, the lives of disabled people should be no less valued. And by the way, the opposite of ‘disabled’ is not ‘young and healthy.’ Not all disabled people are old and unhealthy. Some disabled people are actually young, very healthy, and in very good shape.”

Matt threw his head backward, smiled, and laughed. “And handsome, right?”

“Yes. And handsome,” Foggy readily agreed.

“Thank you for reminding me of that fact.”

“Does it bother you?” Foggy asked very tentatively and very softly. “These stereotypes that disabled people are vulnerable, easy to coerce, or old and unhealthy?”

Matt’s lips twisted as he chewed the insides of his cheeks. He again squirmed in the sticky nylon camp chair. People’s everyday reactions and responses sometimes bothered him. Premature assumptions bothered him. People believing he was weak, fragile, powerless, or dumb bothered him. However, what also bothered him was complaining about those beliefs, letting those beliefs penetrate his armor, allowing those beliefs to shake him, and buying into the assumptions. One of the only things worse than actual weakness was whining about that weakness.

Matt had never been a whiner; his father, Stick, Father Lantom, the nuns at St. Agnes, Bill Fitzgerald, and many teachers and professors made absolutely sure of that. Quietly acknowledging negative prejudices, biases, premature assumptions, and ignorance was one thing; loudly complaining about those realities was quite another thing. Instead of whining about how much the prejudices and stereotypes sucked, Matt strongly and stoically set about proving that he was the exception to every one of those stereotypes, that the assumptions were wrong, that the biases were misplaced, and that the prejudices were unfounded.

“Honestly, yes they do,” he reluctantly admitted. “Like I told you when we first met, I hate when people dance around me like I’m made of glass. But I try to think strategically,” he continued in a stronger tone. “If someone underestimates me, it’s their loss. Underestimate me at your own risk. I’ll use your underestimation to my advantage. And when the assumptions, the prejudices, and the bias start to really aggravate me, I repeat ‘Illegitimi non carborundum.’”

“Sounds Italian, but Italian is too simple for Matthew Murdock. Latin?”

“Nonsense Latin,” Matt answered. “Not real Latin. One of the priests at St. Agnes taught it to me. He knows actual Latin and can recite Mass in Latin, but he also likes little bits of dog Latin. It means, ‘don’t let the bastards grind you down.’”

“Nice. I’ll remember that one.” Foggy rubbed his scratchy eyes.

“Anyway, in Washington v. Glucksberg, the defense also had a very compelling slippery slope argument,” Matt continued.

“I’ve never really understood what people mean by slippery slope arguments,” Foggy confessed.

“A slippery slope argument is the claim that if you allow a relatively basic thing, let’s call it Thing A, then you open the floodgates to allowing bigger, more severe, more extreme things, until you find yourself allowing Thing Z. Basically, a snowball effect. For example, legalizing medical cannabis will lead to legalization of street heroin. Loosening office dress codes will lead to people wearing sweat pants to work. It’s called a slippery slope because you start at the top, you slip down to the bottom, and you can’t stop the slide.”

“I think I see here how the Supreme Court addresses the slippery slope argument,” Foggy said. “The case says, ‘the State may fear that permitting assisted suicide will start it down the path to voluntary and perhaps even involuntary euthanasia. It turns out that what is couched as a limited right to physician-assisted suicide is likely, in effect, a much broader license, which could prove extremely difficult to police and contain. Washington's ban on assisting suicide prevents such erosion.’”

“Right, so the Supreme Court just used the fancier term ‘erosion’ instead of ‘slippery slope.’ It is a really persuasive argument in this instance, because no one wants to start the ball rolling down the hill if the ball comes to rest at murdering elderly and disabled people,” Matt sneered.

“I guess the slippery slope argument works better when there is something obviously terrible at the bottom of the hill,” Foggy reasoned. He sneezed.

“I’m sorry I dragged you out here, Foggy,” Matt apologized. “When you said the park would aggravate your allergies, I thought you were being your typical exaggerated self.”

“Don’t worry about it. It is probably better to read a case about assisted suicide outside on a gorgeous spring day in a blooming park than in a dark, cramped, stale library study room. Despite the allergy-inducing pollen, today the park is a giant anti-depressant.”

Matt held up his hands so he could feel the wind rush through his fingers. The skin of his fingers, hands, lips, face, and scalp sensed microscopic grains of pollen, slivers of flower petals, and wisps of water vapor. And God, he swore he heard individual blades of grass growing. They crunched as they scratched through the dirt, and they sighed like yogis as they stretched toward the sun. The trees sang like a gospel choir as they lifted their arms up in the sky. Everywhere he smelled the scent he associated with the color green: herby, fresh, healthy, and watery. Everywhere Matt heard and smelled the never-ending struggle for life and the persistent instinct of survival.  

“Out of curiosity, what is the Catholic Church’s logic for opposing assisted suicide?” Foggy interrupted Matt’s reverie. “Just that life is sacred?”

“Not only that life is sacred, but that life is an expression of God’s love. Therefore, suicide or assisted suicide repudiates God’s love. More specifically, a big part of Jesus’ life and teaching involved healing people in both body and mind. Suicide, or assisted suicide specifically, dishonors Jesus’s comfort and care for the sick and dying. Also, the Church’s 1980 declaration explains that suffering can bring someone closer to God and help him appreciate God. Human suffering also helps us understand Christ’s sacrifice and unites us with Christ. Speaking of which, I just realized—” Matt paused.

“You realized what?”

“Easter is one week from tomorrow. Holy Week starts in two days.”

“Oh, that’s why Professor Stewart mysteriously cancelled Friday’s class,” Foggy reasoned. “For Good Friday. But wait…you’re not equating…Jesus…with the case we read…that’s not…”

“No, I’m not arguing that at all,” Matt interjected. “Suicide and sacrifice are pretty much total opposites. Yes, they both involve death, but they have entirely different motivations, purposes, and effects. The Latin root of ‘sacrifice’ is ‘sacre,’ which means ‘sacred’ or ‘holy.’ Sacrifice makes something holy. Suicide makes something unholy.”

Foggy sneezed four times in rapid succession.

“I’m so sorry for dragging you out here,” Matt moaned. “We should get you back inside.”

“What about the rock climbing?”

“Come on Foggy, you don’t need to pretend with me. I know you do not want to go rock climbing.”

“It’s the allergies, Matt. If not for the allergies, I would strap on that harness and climb to the top of the wall like a spider monkey.”

“I totally believe you,” Matt lied. “Foggy Nelson is a legit spider monkey.”

Part Two

            As Matt and Foggy left the park, as Matt and Foggy walked back to Columbia, and as Matt and Foggy completed the rest of their reading in the library, Matt could not get the rock wall out of his head. The rock wall bored into his skull like an especially aggressive earworm.

Matt enjoyed climbing the faux rock wall at summer camp. He liked reaching upward and groping around for the next peg. He liked the satisfactory cramp in his hamstrings as his knees and hips contorted around the holds. He liked realizing that he was entirely unafraid of heights.

Sighted people could look downward, see the ground far beneath them, and cower in fear. The stomachs of sighted people might flip and spasm as a sheer drop—or a slippery slope—yawned beneath them. Matt, though, sensed that distance without the dizzying interference of sight. Matt was unable to see the ground, which perhaps eliminated the fear provoked by seeing the ground so far away.

As the afternoon crept forward, Matt considered tossing some lame excuse at Foggy and returning to the park. He could definitely get away with wearing sporty sunglasses while he climbed the rock wall. However, the operators of the rock wall probably required all climbers to sign a liability waiver, and Matt could not see or read a printed liability waiver. Even if he faked a read-through of the waiver, he might sign it in a totally wrong place, or he might miss blank spaces for initialing, or he might not catch spaces for the date, his birthday, his address, or other information. If the operators of the rock wall took cash, he could pay without detection, but if they asked for a credit card, he would not be able to see the screen of the machine.

Even if he hurdled those obstacles, someone would likely notice that he never looked up. Sighted climbers would naturally tilt up their heads to visually analyze which peg to grasp next. Sighted climbers would not keep their head down and eyes level. Pretending to be sighted at a rock-climbing wall was simply not going to work. It was not nearly as simple as pretending to be sighted for a pick-up basketball game.

If he wanted to climb the wall, he would have to do it blind. He would go down there, he would unashamedly announce, “I’m visually impaired,” and he would not take no for an answer. Or he could wait—

Or he could wait until dark.

The idea was crazy. Not only was it crazy, but it also involved trespassing. He might need to jump a fence or pick a lock. If he fell, he might seriously injure himself. Straight-A, Ivy League law school students did not illegally climb rock walls in Central Park in the middle of the night. Straight-A, Ivy League law school students did not blatantly disrespect both city property and private property. They did not do such daredevilish stunts.

And now that Matt thought about it, New York City’s omnipresent light pollution might illuminate midnight Central Park enough to expose his daredevilry. New York City never slept, and that meant even middle-of-the-night Central Park might not hide him.  

Still, it would not hurt to explore the area a bit. Only to scope out the restrictions. To investigate whether he might return the following afternoon. To appreciate more of the glorious springtime in the park. To remind himself of the craziness of the idea. To tame the daredevil instinct that told him to climb straight to the top of that wall.

Foggy’s allergies worsened as the afternoon and evening wore on. He decided to take a Benadryl and go to bed early. The allergy pill zonked him so thoroughly that by 8:45 he lay fast asleep under his covers.

Matt listened to some news through his headphones while Foggy snoozed. At 9:30, he set aside the headphones and exchanged his metal-framed sunglasses for some sporty plastic ones. He pulled on a baseball cap and quietly exited the dorm room. He did take his cane, but once he reached the end of the block, he collapsed it into a neat pile that he carried in his left hand.  

Matt retraced his earlier steps to the meadow in Central Park. He keened his ears until he “spotted” the wall jutting up from the lawn. A chain-link fence surrounded it. Matt approached the fence and noted a large padlock. Well, then, that was that. A fence and a padlock. Tomorrow he would find a rock-climbing gym, call them, explain his situation, make an appointment, take it slowly, and allow a sighted person to guide him.

Matt dug one hand into the pocket of his pants. His fingers brushed against something vaguely metallic. He pulled a paperclip from his pocket.

A paperclip? How did a paperclip find its way into the pocket of his gym pants?

If he had a paperclip, he might as well…if he came all this way, he might as well…Matt stood still and listened. No one within one hundred feet. He checked his watch. 10:37.

Matt sighed. He should not do this. But he wanted to do this.

Matt unwound the wire of the paperclip and slipped it inside the padlock. He listened intently as he wiggled it, jiggled it, and guided it through the lock. The bolt smoothly slid open, and he slipped past the chain-link fence. Matt listened for alarms but heard nothing. He removed his jacket and baseball cap and placed them on the ground along with his folded cane. He padded softly to the wall. He placed his palms on the wall and swept them over the surface.

He climbed. He climbed easily and fluidly, reaching up for the next peg only a millisecond after securing the last one. He meandered a bit sideways simply for variation and interest. His ears, hands, and feet worked in perfect harmony to plan the next moves. His fingertips, strengthened and callused by so much Braille reading and so much tactile examination, gripped the slimmest projections like the tensile tentacles of an octopus. Even through his sneakers, his toes sensed the pegs and scrabbled on to them like the prehensile toes of a spider monkey. Unlike a sighted climber, he did not need to look down to know where to place his feet. He moved up, down, across, and over the rock wall as smoothly as a chess piece gliding over a board.

Matt reached the top of the wall and maneuvered back down. He shifted sideways and went up again. About halfway up, he abruptly flattened himself against the wall. Laughter. Voices. Three people approaching the back side of the rock wall. Coming around to the front.

Matt pressed his chest against the surface of the wall. He straightened his knees and elbows. His sinewy fingers clamped the pegs. He definitely possessed the perfect fingers and hands for rock-climbing. Years of reading Braille, holding his cane, typing, piano lessons, boxing, weightlifting, judo, guiding food onto forks, sticking fingers into cups as he poured drinks into them, recognizing clothing, and generally using his hands as eyes had plastered thick layers of callus over his fingertips, his palms, his knuckles, and even the outside edges of his hands. The calluses hardened against cold, heat, wind, water, paper, cotton, flesh, skin, stone, brick, and any other surface they met.

The exquisite sensitivity of Matt’s hands and fingers still penetrated the calluses, though. The hands that performed double duty as eyes could still, say, appreciate the unique grain of a wood carving or lovingly detect the microscopic marbling of a woman’s skin. Matt’s hands were the hands of a virtuoso cellist, a steelworker, a sculptor, a boxer, a carpenter, a tailor, a Major League pitcher, a masseuse, and a brain surgeon, all rolled into one.

The voices and laughter faded into the distance. The three visitors walked on across the lawn. In their festivity and drunkenness, they did not notice the person surreptitiously climbing a fake rock wall in the dark. Still, Matt decided not to risk further exposure. He climbed down, retrieved his jacket, cap, and cane, locked the padlock, and slipped into the trees at the edge of the park.

Matt headed back uptown toward Columbia, but before he reached campus, he ducked into an alleyway between two buildings. His ears identified one building as a small apartment complex seven floors tall. The other hosted a Lebanese restaurant and offices within its five stories. As a gust of spring wind blew through the alley, Matt noted drainpipes, fire escape stairs, window ledges, awnings, and a couple of trash cans.

Matt once more set down his cane. He jumped and grabbed the bar of an awning, then swung over to the lowest bar of the fire escape stairs. Using any projection he could find like the pegs of a rock wall, he monkeyed up the side of the apartment building. His last move was to hoist himself onto the roof. He stood with his back to a chimney vent and surveyed the scene below. The whoosh and whish of the April wind illuminated the city for him. Wind was for Matt what spotlights were for sighted people. For Matt, the spring breeze painted a vivid, detailed landscape of New York City rooftops.

One of the few movies Matt remembered from his seeing days was Mary Poppins. Particularly, he remembered the scenes on the rooftops of London. Now, looking out over the rooftops of New York City, Matt did not perform an elaborate tap dance routine, but he did step nimbly and swiftly across the terrain. His footfalls created just enough of an echo for his ears to map the space between ceilings and sky.

The screechy whine of a siren wrenched him from his contemplation.

“I’ll come back,” Matt whispered aloud to the sky, the roofs, and the city. “I’ll come up to see you again.”

He shimmied back down the building via pipes, ledges, jutting bricks, and fire escapes. On the way down, he remembered the day’s earlier discussion of slippery slopes. Perhaps there were legal slippery slopes in Matt’s future, but there were definitely no physical slippery slopes in Matt’s future. No out-of-control sliding or slipping. No tumbling or somersaulting. Only a series of careful, graceful leaps and bounds until he landed safely back on earth.  

Matt picked up his cane, unfolded it, and walked back to the dorm.

Despite his nighttime adventures, Matt did not sleep in on Sunday morning. With Easter only one week away he felt compelled to go to Mass.  

As Matt dressed, Foggy yawned and rubbed his eyes.

“Matt, I think that Benadryl messed with my head,” Foggy moaned. “I woke up at some point in the night and panicked because I didn’t see you in your bed. I think I may have even gotten up and walked over to your bed because I was so worried. Where’s Matt? Why isn’t he here? I should ask Dr. Google if Benadryl causes hallucinations.”

Matt froze in the midst of pulling socks from his bureau drawer. Could he really let Foggy believe that he hallucinated? Could Matt really let allergy pills take the blame for his midnight absence? Could he do that when he might offer a plausible, quasi-legitimate excuse? In the past twelve hours, Matt had trespassed and picked a lock. He was not about to add gaslighting his best friend to his list of recent sins.

“It wasn’t the Benadryl, Foggy,” Matt admitted sheepishly. “I did go out in the middle of the night.”

“You did? For a booty call? Is this a new girl? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“No, it wasn’t a booty call,” Matt responded. “My circadian rhythms get out of sync sometimes. I wake up at weird times or can’t get to sleep at night. When it happens, I usually stay in the room and read, or listen to music, or do sit-ups or squats. Last night I wanted to get some more springtime air.”

The part about Matt’s circadian rhythms getting out of sync was absolutely true. The implication that it occurred last night was…less than true.

“Your what rhythms?” Foggy asked.

“Circadian rhythms are your body’s twenty-four-hour light-and-dark cycle. Your body keeps a twenty-four-hour cycle and knows when to sleep within that cycle. At least, your body does, Foggy, because circadian rhythms run on light. Your eyes automatically detect light changes, and your perception of the difference between day and night keeps your internal clock running on cue.”

Matt sighed and wearily pulled on a sock. “My eyes, though…” He wearily pulled on his other sock. “My eyes cannot perceive light, so my internal clock occasionally runs fast or slow or just stops.”

“You’ve been waking up in the middle of the night for eight months and I’ve never noticed?” Foggy gasped in horror. What an absolutely terrible roommate and friend he had been, snoring peacefully while Matt tossed, turned, paced, and panicked! Foggy cringed at the thought of Matt lying awake on his bed in the pitch-black dorm room, searching desperately for slumber. For whatever reason, in Foggy’s mental image of insomniac Matt, Matt’s glassy eyes stared fixedly at the ceiling. An odd twinge of pain fluttered Foggy’s stomach—the same twinge of pain that pinched him whenever he consciously thought about the fact that Matt could not distinguish a pitch-black room from a glowingly lit one. Night, day, eyes open, eyes closed; it all looked the same to Matt.

“No, no, no,” Matt rushed. “Not every night. Fortunately, my circadian de-synchrony is very mild. I don’t get it nearly as badly as most people without light perception.”

“Say those words again,” Foggy instructed. “Very slowly.”

“Circadian de-synchrony,” Matt repeated.

“That sounds like the name of an album by Pink Floyd or Rush,” Foggy commented.

“More Latin for you. ‘Circa’ means ‘around’ and ‘diem’ means ‘day.’ Anyway, my circadian de-synchrony is not that bad. My doctor has told me some people have it much worse; they can barely function because their body cycle gets so out of whack. These days, I can manage my sleep-wake schedule with a little bit of melatonin at night and exercise first thing in the morning.”

Indeed, Matt’s ophthalmologist marveled at Matt’s relatively stable sleep cycle. Matt hypothesized his own theory about why his body calibrated itself to a typical 24-hour period, but he did not proffer this theory to any doctor: Matt’s heightened senses perceived signals other than light that kept his body clock ticking perfectly in time. Diurnal birds singing in the morning and returning to their nests at night. Nocturnal bats flapping their wings and pinging their pulses of sonar. The hum of electricity decrescendo-ing as lightbulbs went dark, and then crescendo-ing in the predawn twilight. The ambient noise of the city falling as people returned to their homes, subways ran less frequently, and taxis lurched into garages. The ambient noise of the city climbing again as people rose from their beds, subways picked up, and engines combusted. The taste of brewing coffee and tea that pervaded entire streets beginning at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. The taste of Chinese takeout containers crammed into the bicycle baskets of delivery boys rushing toward waiting dinner tables.  

The smell of mint triggered an almost Pavlovian droop to Matt’s eyelids, because for years at the foster home, the smell of minty toothpaste and the sound of communal teeth-brushing signaled bedtime. Similarly, even if Matt himself could not discern the rising sun, he discerned multiple other foster children begin to squirm in their beds as the sun rose.

Together, all of those sensory inputs compensated adequately for his eyes’ inability to detect the gigantic ball of flame that rose in the east and set in the west.

It was one of the reasons why Matt opted in favor of a double dormitory room and a roommate. He could have gotten a single dorm as an accommodation, but he knew that the presence of a sighted body and seeing eyes in the next bed would help his own circadian rhythms stay in sync.  

Perhaps Matt also somehow detected electromagnetic differences between day and night. His eyes could not perceive light, but perhaps his other senses perceived waves beyond the visible light spectrum—ultraviolet, infrared, or electromagnetic. Perhaps he heard, felt, or smelled radio waves increase during the day and decrease at night.

Sometimes Matt thought he even felt the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. The waxing and waning of the moon’s gravitational force during the lunar cycle was responsible for tides, of course, and if the moon’s gravity worked on the water in oceans and lakes, perhaps it also worked on the water inside the human body. Indeed, once while sitting in a hospital lounge awaiting the brain MRI to which he had grudgingly consented, Matt eavesdropped on a debate between two neurologists about whether variations in the frequency of migraine headaches might correspond to lunar cycles. One neurologist wanted to dismiss the idea as preposterous woo-woo nonsense, but the other neurologist insisted that he had data strongly supporting the hypothesis.  

Of course, Matt fought long and hard for his stable sleep cycle. Some children battled the imaginary monsters under their beds, but for several years after the accident, Matt battled very real monsters outside his window: the sounds he could not stop hearing. He needed rest, yearned for it, begged for it, prayed for it. He tried to explain to the doctors that the problem was not his eyes, but his ears. They only prescribed melatonin, a strict sleep schedule, warm baths in the evening, cold showers in the morning, and earplugs. His father came to him and held him. Then Sister Maggie came to him and held him. Sister Anne came to him and slayed the monsters with a Discman loaded with melodious music. When no one came to him, Matt dug, clawed, shoveled deep, deep down inside his own chest and burrowed inside the tunnels of his own body. Once he learned to cocoon himself within his own skin, he fell into a sustainable 24-hour cycle.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Foggy cried accusingly. “Why didn’t you tell me that you sit here in the middle of the night, in the dark, awake and alone?”

Matt sighed again and pulled on his shoes. “Number one, I didn’t want to worry you. Number two, it doesn’t happen very often. Number three, I can’t tell the dif … I mean, it’s all the same…I can’t…I don’t mind doing things in the middle of the night. In fact, sometimes I really appreciate the peace and quiet.”

“But, but—” Foggy protested without knowing exactly what he was protesting. He hated the thought of Matt sitting alone in the dark. Maybe Matt did not mind the dark, but Foggy minded it, and he minded that Matt so easily accepted sitting up alone in the dark.

As Foggy watched Matt tie his shoes, pocket his cell phone, and select a jacket from his closet, Foggy realized something incredibly simple but strikingly profound: he was still afraid of the dark. And Matt was not afraid of the dark.

“Foggy, please do not worry. There is nothing you can do to prevent it or treat it,” Matt soothed. “It is just one of those bizarre quirks of biology.”

“Well, at least…look, I’m a heavy sleeper. So when you can’t sleep, feel free to make noise,” Foggy offered. “Do whatever you want to do. Listen to noisy stuff. Organize your drawers. Work out with your stretchy bands. Or wake me up and tell me that you’re going out. Please. In the long run, I will worry less if you tell me you’re leaving.”

“I will try to remember to tell you if I go out in the middle of the night. But if you ever wake up to an empty Matthew bed, do not panic. It was mostly likely the circadian rhythms, but maybe it was a booty call.” He grinned.

“Fine,” Foggy relented. “Where are you off to now, in broad daylight?”

“Church. You want to come?”

“I would, but you know, my allergies, man,” Foggy dodged. “I don’t want to sneeze during a really important part. I don’t want to obnoxiously blow my nose in front of all those nuns.”

“Sure. Your allergies,” Matt mocked. “You should come next week, though, for Easter. It’s always a very big, very happy ceremony on account of, you know, the resurrection.”

“Can I wear a pastel shirt? Can I wear a big hat? Can I hand out jelly beans?”

“If it will get you to church on Easter, then yes to all three.”

Part Three

            On Wednesday, Matt received a phone call from the fifty-year-old son of Bill Fitzgerald. Bill Fitzgerald was Matt’s former guardian ad litem: the court-appointed lawyer who represented the orphaned Matt and ensured that he made it out of foster care alive, educated, and adequately independent.

Whether because of a twangy arrow of luck or due to the heavy hammer of fate, William Fitzgerald, Esquire, walked into St. Agnes, and into Matt’s life, mere hours after Matt’s father died. Upon discovering a blind, fatherless ten-year-old in need of a guardian and advocate, Fitzgerald did not shy away, but instead volunteered for the task of shepherding Matt through Family Court proceedings, foster care placement decisions, Individualized Education Program meetings, and a complex lawsuit against the company whose toxic chemicals blinded Matt. Fitzgerald worked both with and against the state Children’s Protective Services department, and both with and against the nuns of St. Agnes, to advance Matt’s legal welfare, financial welfare, and practical welfare. Matt remained close with Fitzgerald even after Fitzgerald’s duties officially ended when Matt graduated high school.

The summer before Matt began law school, Matt’s supernaturally sensitive nose unofficially diagnosed the 82-year-old Fitzgerald with lung cancer. Matt’s early detection of the cancer allowed Bill to pursue less invasive treatment, but apparently that treatment had run out of road. Fitzgerald’s son now relayed the news to Matt that Fitzgerald had taken a turn for the worse and might have only days left.

After his Wednesday afternoon classes, Matt scurried down to St. Agnes Church in Hell’s Kitchen, lit an entire row of prayer candles for Bill, and then bolted further downtown to Bill’s townhouse in Chelsea. Matt joined the vigil around Bill’s bed, which had been dragged down to the cozy but dignified study because Bill loved the smell of his old books. Matt stayed for several hours and promised to return on Thursday afternoon for the Thursday-Friday overnight shift, since he did not have any classes on Good Friday.

When Matt arrived in Chelsea on Thursday afternoon, he found his old guardian ad litem sitting upright in front of a freshly-delivered, gooey, greasy pizza and a couple of bottles of wine.

“My favorite pizza from my favorite pizzeria,” Bill rasped. “Fitting for today.”

“What do you mean? Fitting for today?” Matt asked.

“Last Supper,” Bill whispered.

“I will choose to believe that you mean The Last Supper, not your last supper,” Matt announced.

“Do you have that part memorized? The Last Supper from the Gospel of Matthew?” Bill wheezed.

“Some of it,” Matt replied. “And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you.’ For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”

Matt briefly imagined Jesus and His disciples cracking open a few cold ones, or popping some corks, in Heaven.

After they chewed and sipped their way through the pizza and wine, for several hours Matt supported Bill as the elderly man perused his music collection. Bill selected various vinyl records or CDs for Matt to ferry over to the stereo system. They listened to bits and pieces of Frank Sinatra, Handel’s Messiah, Buddy Holly, Irish folk, French gypsy jazz, and more. When Bill dozed on and off between records, Matt pulled out his reading for law school.

Around 10:30 p.m., Bill abruptly awoke from his fitful rest, awoke Matt from his own fitful rest, and demanded Matt restart an old Buddy Holly record. After “That’ll Be The Day” wound down on the record player, Bill sank into his armchair, cleared his throat, and croaked, “Matthew, have you given any more thought to what you want to do with your senses?”

“Of course I have,” Matt snapped. “Between reading for school, thinking about which classes I want to take next year, and getting ready for my summer job, I should have no time at all to think about that, but I still do. Every day I think about what to do with my senses.”

“And?”

“Of course, I want to help people…I know I need to help people. I have a duty and responsibility to help people. But I don’t know where to start. I can go outside right now and hear hundreds of people who need help, in just a few square blocks. Figuring out where to begin, or differentiating between friends and foes, between victims and perpetrators… when I do open my ears, I get overwhelmed, not like I did when I was a kid, not overwhelmed by the sounds themselves, but overwhelmed by decisions.”

“A problem of prioritization,” Bill surmised. He seemed to approach Matt’s challenges as rationally and theoretically as he might approach the analysis of complex contract language or conflicting statutory terms.

“And a problem of judgment,” Matt added. “A problem of trusting myself to know that I am intervening in the right place at the right time, rather than worsening a situation even further.”  

“I suspect that if you choose an arbitrary place to start, your senses and your intellect will recognize a trail, or a pattern,” Bill said between coughs. “That trail will lead you onward to more productive paths. You can follow that path to the center of the labyrinth, where you will be assured of intervening in the right place and the right time.”

“But what if it is all random?” Matt cried. “What if there is no pattern, and nothing ever leads to the heart of the matter, or the king on the throne, or the terrible monster at the center of the labyrinth? What if there is no order, no boss, no kingpin, and instead there is only chaos? Then, no matter what I do to help, I will never make a dent in the problems of this city.”

“Matthew, if you save only one person…if you positively affect only one person’s life…if you pull only one person back from the brink…it will be enough,” Bill whispered.

Matt rose from his chair and went over to “look” out the window of the study. He so badly wanted to believe in what Bill said: that saving one person would be enough. It was hard to believe, though, when he heard so many people who needed saving. If he ignored them, if he failed them, then how could it ever be enough?

“Enough for what?” he sighed.

Enough to alleviate the guilt he felt for not using his senses more? Enough to lighten the load pressing down on his shoulders? Enough to counterbalance his disability? Enough to motivate him to find his mother, knock on her door, and proudly announce, “Hello, I’m your son?” Enough to pay back the energy and effort that Bill, the priests, the nuns, teachers, professors, and librarians invested in him? Enough to credit all the people who helped him along the way? Enough to honor his father’s memory? Enough to prove to himself that he was not a burden? Enough to prove to himself that he was a hero? Enough for Heaven?

How could he possibly save enough people, positively affect enough lives, pull enough people back from the brink? How could he ever do enough to fulfill the infinite potential of his senses? How could he ever do enough to prove himself worthy of the tremendous gifts he had been given?

Bill did not answer. Perhaps he had not heard Matt’s question.

“I, uh…the other night…I won’t bore you with the details, but I discovered that I am really good at climbing,” Matt confessed.

“Climbing?” Bill asked.

“Call it urban rock climbing,” Matt glossed. “Up buildings. On roofs.”

“Roofs, you say? I haven’t been on a roof since…” Bill was silent for a moment and then said, in a firm, loud, healthy voice, “Matthew, I want to go on the roof.”

“Bill! The roof! You can’t go on the roof! It’ll be slippery up there, you might fall!”

“Matthew Murdock, do not argue slippery slopes to me!” Bill admonished. “I want to go on my roof and see the stars while I still can. And how appropriate to go out this evening, on Holy Thursday. What’s the line Jesus says in the Garden of Gethsemane?”

Matt’s straight-A-student instinct and his steel-trap brain momentarily outweighed his worries about taking a frail 83-year-old to the roof.

“My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me,” he recited.

“My soul is not sorrowful, but I do want you to stay here and watch with me. Well, not here. We will watch on the roof,” Bill quipped. He heaved himself up from his armchair. “I am fortunate to own a townhouse with relatively easy roof access. We have to go to the attic and get a ladder, but it’s better than going up the side of the building.”

Matt grudgingly supported Bill on a very slow climb up several staircases. He did not bother bringing along his cane. When they reached the attic, Matt listened carefully for a moment to locate the hatch in the ceiling. When he did, he reached up and pushed open the hatch. Bill directed him to a ladder leaning against one wall of the attic. Matt climbed up first to inspect the roof for any unexpected hazards. He then went back for a couple of folding chairs, some blankets, and a scarf for Bill. Finally, he pushed and prodded Bill up the ladder, staying one rung below the elderly man. The roof adventure apparently pumped fresh air into Bill’s lungs and fresh life into his heart, for he did not tremble once as he ascended the ladder.

Easter fell late that year: much closer to May than to March. Genuine spring, not false spring or teasing spring or sneak-preview-spring, held the city, and Matt smelled summer already coming around the bend on the breeze. Matt set up the folding chairs, eased Bill onto one of them, wrapped the scarf around his shoulders, and spread a blanket across his knees.

“They are so beautiful,” Bill told Matt. “The stars.”

“I am sure they are,” Matt murmured.

There was really no aural or olfactory equivalent of stargazing, but instead of wallowing in his inability to see stars, Matt listened.

“I’m going to do it this time. I will end it. I cannot live like this anymore,” a frantic, terrified voice gasped.

Matt bolted upright. He rose so quickly from his floppy folding chair that it fell over.

“I tried leaving home, I tried coming here and losing myself in the city. I thought I could start over fresh here, but no matter what I do, it will never be enough. I can never erase what I did,” the voice choked through liquid waves of heavy sobs.

Matt ambled toward the voice. It came from a rooftop south of the one he currently occupied. The voice blew down from a building much taller than Bill’s townhouse. The voice belonged to a young woman, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four years old.

“I don’t have any other choice. There is no other way out for me,” the voice moaned.

“Matthew?” Bill called. “What is it?”

Matt rushed back to Bill. “Someone on a roof nearby. I think—I think she might be planning to jump. She’s in trouble. She’s saying crazy things to herself. I should—”

“Matthew,” Bill cut him off. “Go.”

“I can’t leave you up—”

“Go,” Bill commanded. “But take this.”

Bill unwrapped the scarf from around his shoulders. He held it out toward Matt.

“If you don’t want her to see your face,” Bill explained.

Matt tied the scarf around his neck for the time being. He would tie it around his head once he reached the woman on the other rooftop. He ran to the edge of the townhouse roof and paused to think.

A courtyard of leafy trees separated his roof from the woman’s roof. He could not leap across that distance. He could go down and then up, or he could go around and then up.

Raw, primal instinct yanked the joystick from Matt’s conscious grasp. He ran east on the roof, jumped over a small wall separating Bill’s townhouse from the adjoining one, and ran straight across the next roof. The next building was smaller and shorter, and after only a heartbeat’s hesitation he jumped downward. His keen hearing precisely judged the distance, and his finely-tuned balance landed him in a soft crouch like a cat. Then he turned south and pulled himself back up over several roof projections to reach the top of a taller building. Up and down he went, scrabbling for any kind of climbing aid: a fire escape, a chimney, an electrical box, a drain pipe, even a satellite dish.

 The frantic voice continued to plead with herself.  

“I wish someone would hear me. I wish I could tell all of this to someone, but I can’t tell anyone. I thought I would feel a little less alone in New York City, but I feel more alone than ever,” the woman sobbed, confessing to the stars because she had no one else to talk to. “Please, just give me a reason not to do it. A reason not to jump. A reason not to end it all. I need a sign.”

Matt was still two roofs away from her, but he roared in her direction, “Don’t jump! Please don’t do it! I’m coming over to you. Wait!”

The building upon which the woman stood was about ten stories high, and to get to the top of it, Matt had to rock climb up a series of corner balconies. He used the railings of the balconies to scramble up the side of the building.

“What the hell?” came the woman’s cry from above him. “What are you---? Are you crazy?”

“Please, just wait,” he gasped as loudly as he could, panting from the exertion and the adrenaline rush of running and climbing.

Matt heaved himself up the final balcony and summitted the roof. He moved toward the edge where the woman stood.

“Don’t come any closer,” she shouted.

Matt froze in his tracks. “I want to help you,” he shouted back.

“You can’t help me,” she whispered.

Matt heard it. “You think I can’t help you, but I can,” he called over to her. “You feel so alone in the city, but you are not alone, because I am here with you. You wish someone could hear you. Well, I can hear you. I did hear you.”

“What? What do you mean, you heard me?” she gasped.

“Can I come a little closer so I don’t have to shout?” he yelled.

She said nothing and did not move from her place near the edge of the roof. She faced toward the street and choked out a few more wordless sobs.

Matt untied the scarf from around his neck. He pulled off his sunglasses and slid them into a pocket. He re-tied the scarf around his head so that it covered his eyes, his forehead, and most of his nose and cheeks. Then he very slowly inched his way closer to the young woman standing at the edge of the roof.

Matt sensed a tall, slim figure. He tasted salt dried on her cheeks, which meant she had been crying for quite a while. He smelled spiced chai tea on her breath. Her body and hair smelled of French fries and snow, like she spent a lot of time in diners and a lot of time shoveling snow.

“I heard you say that you don’t have any other choice. I came to tell you that you do have a choice.”

“How could you possibly hear that?”

“Instead of talking about me, let’s talk about you. How about we start with your name? You don’t have to tell me your real name if you don’t want to,” he soothed, “but our conversation might go more smoothly if I can call you something other than ‘woman on the roof.’”

She snorted and did not answer for a moment. Finally, grudgingly, she murmured, “I guess you can call me…um…Rose, maybe?”

“Sure. Why Rose?” Matt honestly did not care what name the woman chose, as long as it kept her talking and kept her distracted from her jumping plans.

“Rose from Titanic. Remember the scene when Rose is going to jump off the back of the ship and Jack rescues her? ‘You jump, I jump,’” the woman recounted.

“I never saw Titanic,” Matt admitted truthfully. The movie came out about seven months after Matt lost his sight, and as a newly blind ten-year-old, he thoroughly resented all the boys at school bragging that they saw a lady’s boobs in a PG-13-rated movie.

“How is it possible that you never saw Titanic?” Rose sputtered.

“Movies don’t do much for me,” Matt shrugged. “I love audiobooks, though. And music.”

“Well, I loved Titanic. Rose is saved by a guy named Jack. Played by Leonardo DiCaprio. If I let you call me Rose, then you have to be Jack,” she reasoned.

“Fine with me. I can be Jack.” Even though there was a suicidal woman fifteen feet away from him, Matt smiled.

“Jack was my father’s name,” he told the suicidal woman. “Anyway, please do not jump. You should not jump. You should let me take you back downstairs,” he argued.

“Why shouldn’t I jump? Give me one good reason,” Rose retorted.

“Well Rose, do you want the legal reason or the spiritual-religious reason?” Matt asked.

“Start with the legal reason, I guess,” she muttered.

“There is no Constitutional right to suicide,” he explained. “Well, let me clarify that a little bit. There is no Constitutional right to assisted suicide, according to the case Washington v. Glucksberg. The Supreme Court has identified a liberty interest in refusing medical treatment, but the Court has not yet recognized any liberty interest in affirmative acts of suicide.”

“Are you a lawyer?” Rose queried.

“Not yet. If all goes to plan, I will be a lawyer in about two-and-a-half years. So, there’s no Constitutional right to assisted suicide, and Rose, you might also want to consider the possible consequences for me if you jump.”

“For you, Jack? You’re the one who volunteered to climb up here. I didn’t ask you to.”

“Yes, but Good Samaritan laws do not always work as intended,” Matt responded calmly.

“What are Good Samaritan laws?”

“Good Samaritan laws legally protect volunteer do-gooders if something goes wrong during the course of a volunteer rescue. Let me think of an example…You’re at a restaurant and you suddenly have a heart attack. A bystander comes over to give you CPR. In the course of giving you CPR, though, he breaks one of your ribs. If you then tried to sue him for breaking your rib, he would be protected by the Good Samaritan law principle.”

“So…say you come up here trying to save my life, you grab me to get me away from the edge of the roof, and you break my wrist. I can’t sue you for breaking my wrist?” Rose pondered.

“You can try to sue me, but I would have a defense. Another hypothetical: say something goes wrong when I try to grab you, and instead of pulling you back, I push you off the roof. Then your estate could sue me, and it would be very questionable if I could rely on the Good Samaritan defense. Sometimes Good Samaritan defenses don’t apply to reckless conduct committed in the course of a rescue. I’ll give you the classic lawyer line: it depends.”

“Is this real or are you just making it all up?” Rose scoffed.

“It’s totally real,” Matt insisted. “I learned about it in Torts class. After you climb down off this roof, Rose, you can go research it: the Good Samaritan defense. Like I said, there are limitations to it. And I really do not want test the limitations of the defense by having your family sue me.”

“So is that why you’re trying to talk me down instead of tackling me?” Rose pressed.

“Pretty much. I’ve identified several different strategies for intervention here, and I’ve assessed the legal risks of each of them. If I did try to tackle you, I would risk pushing you over the edge, and thus risk being held both criminally and civilly liable for your death or injury. So tackling you is out. The best strategy is to argue my way out of this. Plus, I really like the sound of your voice.”

“What? You like--? Did you really climb a ten-story building to lecture me on legal doctrines?” Rose asked incredulously.

“No. I climbed a ten-story building to prevent you from making a terrible, terrible mistake,” Matt responded. “I guess you could call me a vigilante.”

“A vigilante? Aren’t vigilantes those guys who run around beating up criminals? Who take the law into their own hands? Like Batman?”

“That’s the connotation of the word now, but the actual translation is ‘watchman.’ A vigilante is someone who holds a vigil, and ‘vigil’ in Latin means ‘watch,’” Matt explained calmly.

The longer he kept her talking, the greater the chance that he could convince her not to do it. Keep her talking, keep her interested, keep her away from the edge of the roof. Distract her from her suicide plan. If it took a whole night of talking, if he had to talk until the sun rose, he would do it.

“Vigil means watch?” Rose repeated.  

“Yes, in Latin. That’s how we get the English word ‘vigilant.’ And in Spanish, vigilante.” He pronounced it vee-heel-on-tay. “In Spanish, vigilante means ‘watchman.’ For me personally, it’s kind of an ironic term. I describe myself ironically as a watchman.”  

“Why ironically?” she asked. Her voice now sounded curious, not frantic.

“Because I cannot…my eyes…” he trailed off. He could not tell her that. He could not reveal his own peculiar way of watching. “Never mind.”

“I guess you can come a bit closer,” Rose relented.

Matt nudged a few more steps forward. He sensed Rose turn around to look at him.

“Wait—Jack—do you have a mask on?” Rose hissed. “Is that a scarf tied around your face?”

“For privacy,” Matt announced. “I can’t see your face, and you can’t see my face, so we don’t have to worry about recognizing each other if we ever meet again. It’s easier to be honest this way.”

“Honest?” she snorted. “You really want me to be honest with you? You, a strange man who hears me from the next rooftop, a crazy man who climbs up the outside of a building, who wears a mask, who lectures me about Constitutional rights and Latin word origins…you want me to be honest with you?”

“Yes, I do, Rose. I want to know the thing that you did—the thing you cannot erase. The thing you cannot move on from. The thing that made you leave your home and come here. The thing that brought you up here tonight.”

“I killed my brother.”

Several seconds of silence stretched between Rose and Jack. Matt wanted more time to choose his words carefully, but he knew he could not leave her in silence for very long. Not with the edge of the roof still so close.

“You can’t leave me hanging like that,” Matt said. “I know there has to be more to the story. The how. The why.”

“I lived in Vermont most of my life. All of my life until I moved down here. We were a perfect, happy family: me, my parents, and my brother Kevin. My parents ran a diner. Then my mother got cancer and everything started falling apart. She died, and my father kind of shriveled up. I started…well I started doing things I should not have been doing. Drinking too much. Drugs. Guys. I dropped out of college. I sold drugs. I moved out of the house and lived in a dumpy trailer with some stupid guy. Kevin tried to help me, tried to get me clean, tried to get me back on the straight and narrow. One night we had a huge family fight—me, my father, and my brother. I went out to my boyfriend’s trailer, and Kevin followed me. He fought with my boyfriend—I mean, with the guy I was living with. And then I…well I did something I can’t even tell a stranger on a roof…and after that, I drove away with Kevin. I was high. High on more than pot…high on pills, meth, coke, anything I could get my hands on. I should not have been driving. I crashed the car, and Kevin died.”

“I’m not here to judge you, Rose,” Matt announced. “I’m not even a lawyer yet, and I’m certainly not a judge or jury. To tell you the truth, I’m still in my first year of law school. I will not tell you whether I think you deserve any punishment for what happened. I will tell you that I am more convinced than ever that you should not jump off this roof.”

“Really? Because I am more convinced than ever that I should jump off this roof.”

“No. You jumping would not erase the tragedy of Kevin’s death. It would only create a new tragedy. Two wrongs do not make a right, and two tragedies definitely do not make a happy ending.”

“But my death would not be a tragedy,” Rose shot back. “The world won’t miss me. No one will even notice I’m gone. The world will be better off without me.”

“That is not true,” Matt proclaimed. “The death of a young woman with a beautiful voice like yours would be a tragedy. At least one person in the world would miss you: me. I would miss you and your voice. I would notice you were gone. And I am sure that you can do plenty of things to make the world better.”

“Like what?”

“We can talk specifics later. Let me ask you: did Kevin love you?”

“Yes, he did,” Rose answered. “He loved me, and he believed in me. He wanted to help me succeed. And I betrayed him. That’s why I came up here tonight.”

“Killing yourself would not do right by Kevin,” Matt argued. “Killing yourself would corrupt and demean the belief he had in you. Rose, you should keep living for him. You must keep living in order to show Kevin that his love for you was valuable and true. You must keep living so that he can live through you.”

“But it was my fault that he died,” Rose sobbed. “Why would he want to live through me? Why would he want me to keep going? Why should I keep going?”

“Rose, you probably don’t know this, but in American legal practice, lawyers predict what will happen in a current case by researching what happened in older cases. Basically, lawyers have to research older case decisions and compare those older decisions with the issue their client is experiencing now. Those older legal decisions are called precedent. Most of what I’ve been doing in my first year of law school is reading old cases to synthesize legal principles. For example, I’ve read several old cases that developed the Good Samaritan laws I told you about. I’ve read older case decisions analyzing whether there is a Constitutional right to assisted suicide. Lawyers use precedent as authority when they argue their case. The first lawyer says, ‘well, I have precedent A, B, and C to support my client’s position.’ And the opposing lawyer says, ‘I have precedent X, Y, and Z to support my client’s position.’”

“Where are you going with this, Jack?” Rose interrupted.

“I cannot directly answer why your brother Kevin would want you to keep living, but I can offer some precedent from another case. I can bolster my argument with an example from precedent.”

“Go ahead, counselor. Cite your precedent,” Rose directed.  

“I lost someone I loved,” Matt said softly. “He was not only someone I loved; he was my whole world. I lost him suddenly, tragically, and violently. And for a while, I thought his death was partially my fault. I blamed myself for some of the events which led to his death—not all of them, but some of them. And I also lost something else, something very precious and valuable, something many people cannot imagine living without. For a while, I blamed myself for that too. I thought it was my fault.”

“Did you ever think about…about doing it?” Rose whispered. “Jumping?”

“I did,” Matt confessed quietly.

Standing on a New York City roof in the midnight darkness with most of his face covered by a mask, Matt spoke more honestly and candidly than he had ever spoken in his life. He expected his voice to quaver and tremble, but to his surprise and his pride, his voice remained steady and in fact grew stronger as he continued his confession.

“I was a child when I lost that person and when I lost that other thing, and I suppose that because I was so young when those events happened, my survival instinct kicked in and carried me forward. The day-to-day business of living kept me busy, occupied my young mind, and drove me onward. The other force that kept me going was this voice in my head that told me to fight. It was the voice of that person I mentioned, the person I lost. He was a fighter. After he died, I still heard his voice in my head every single day. Fight. Get back up. Don’t stay down. Don’t get knocked out. Finish it. Go the distance. Punch away all the blame and the guilt. Punch away the fear. Punch away the self-pity. Punch the self-loathing. Fight back against the world. Fight back and prove that your life is worth living. Fight to prove that your life can mean something. Fight to prove that your life has purpose. Live that purpose. For a while, that voice was enough to get me moving every morning. I fought like hell to succeed and to prove that I was capable, that I was able, and that my life could be worth living.

“As I grew older, though, the enormity of my losses sometimes hit back at me like a sucker punch. Sometimes I toppled over—physically fell over—like someone literally hit me. The realization of what I lost, and what those losses meant, knocked the wind right out of my chest. I bent over double because I could not breathe, because it hurt so much, and because my feet felt so frozen that I could not possibly take one more step forward. In those moments, I wondered if I should do the same thing you contemplated doing tonight.”

“Why didn’t you?” Rose murmured.   

Matt drew a deep, expansive breath. His eyes teared a little bit beneath the improvised scarf-mask, but his heart thumped steadily, his lungs ballooned, his abdominal muscles slackened, and his tongue quickened.

“I thought of that person I lost. I thought of how much he loved me and how much he believed in me. I thought of how badly I would betray his love and his belief if I jumped off a roof. Then I thought of all the other people who helped me—all the people who believed that I could lead a fulfilling, successful life. There were people who took me in and cared for me after I lost that person. There were teachers and librarians who spent extra time with me; professors and debate coaches who gave me extra attention and encouragement; my guardian ad litem, who watched over me and advocated for my best interests; my own lawyer who represented me in an important case. There were people I only met once or twice, like paramedics, but whose service I valued dearly. There were so many people who did small things to help me, to teach me, and to emphasize that my life is worth living. I would betray their belief in me, and I would devalue their efforts, if I did not go on living. I did not want to corrupt or negate the faith those people showed for me. I had to keep living for all of them. I had to honor my fath—I mean, I had to honor the life of the person I lost. I had to honor his memory. I had to keep living to show that his love for me was valuable. That it was not in vain. And today, I have even more people in my life who believe in me. My roommate and best friend, who believes in me to an almost scary extent. Lawyers at the firm where I got a summer job, who believe I can do the work even if I do it a different way. The career services director who worked on interview prep with me. And of course, I still think of that person I lost. I need to keep living so that he can live through me.”

Rose did not speak. She let the silence sink comfortably.

“So, that is the precedent I cite to argue the position that you should not jump off the roof. In the precedent case of Jack versus The Roof, Jack won because he decided to fight, to live, and to honor the memory of his father.”

“You must do really well in law school,” Rose commented. “You’ll probably be a great lawyer.”

“I hope so,” Matt said. He allowed himself a small smile.

“This person you lost…Jack, you talk as if he looks down on you from somewhere. And you talk about Kevin as if he looks down on me from somewhere. You talk as if you think there is some kind of life after death,” Rose said in a tone half of awe and half of skepticism.

            “I do think that,” Matt confirmed quietly. “I don’t believe Heaven is simply a nicer copy of Earth where everyone lives in huge houses and eats ice cream all day, but I do believe that something—call it the soul, if you want—goes on. The people who have left us are not truly lost. We feel their presence, and they feel our presence. That’s why I think you should honor Kevin’s life, and honor his memory, by climbing down off this roof.”

            “Can I ask why you believe in Heaven, or that the soul goes on, and all that? Why do you believe?”

            Matt blinked hard under the scarf covering his eyes. He wanted to rub his eyes, but he also did not want to draw Rose’s attention to his eyes. He had never told anyone this—not Father Lantom, not Bill Fitzgerald, not Stick. Even though he never told anyone, it explained so much about his motivations, his actions, and his beliefs. It explained why he still went to Mass, it explained why he did not want doctors probing his ears and his brain, and it explained why he leapt across several rooftops to reach the young woman who stood before him.

            “I have experienced a…maybe not quite a miracle but…something inexplicable, something mysterious, something awe-inducing. I have experienced something damned near miraculous. I have felt the presence and the influence of something much more powerful than most humans will ever feel.”

            After several seconds of silence, to Matt’s great pride, Rose laughed. She teased, “You can’t leave me hanging like that. You have to tell me what it is.”

            “I heard you from several rooftops away,” Matt said solemnly. “I heard you crying and talking to yourself. I heard your whispers. I heard your plea for a sign. I can hear your heart beat right now, and I’ve been hearing it grow stronger and louder as we’ve gone on talking. I can hear heartbeats from twenty feet away. I can hear whispers from hundreds of feet away. I can hear people lying awake in bed, some of them awake because of sorrow or worry, and some of them awake because of joy and anticipation. I know it sounds crazy. But it’s true.”

            Finally, Rose stepped away from the edge of the roof. She shuffled along the surface until she stood about fifteen away from the precipice.

            “Do you still think it was your fault? What happened to the person you lost? Or how you lost the other thing?” Rose queried.

            “No, I don’t think that anymore. Neither of those losses was my fault. I still sometimes slip into guilt and shame, but I can catch myself when it happens. As I grew older, I discovered more and more facts about those incidents, and also more and more legal doctrines, that led me to understand that neither of those losses was my fault. Perhaps someday you will also come to the understanding that Kevin’s death was not entirely your fault. From the little bit you’ve told me, it sounds like many factors and influences played into one big family crisis. In the meantime, your stomach just growled. You should probably eat something.”

“Probably,” Rose agreed.

“Rose? Why tonight? Why did you come up here tonight of all nights?” Matt wondered.

“I don’t know. The realization of my loss, my fault, my blame hit me—like you said, it hit me like a sucker punch straight in the gut. Some days I do fine: I go to work, chat with coworkers, put on a smile. And then some days I cannot take a single step forward.”

“I ask because tonight is a special night. It’s Holy Thursday, which is the night of the Last Supper and the night when Jesus was arrested. Actually, let me check—” Matt fingered his Braille watch. “Actually, it is now Good Friday. Today is the day we celebrate Jesus willingly accepting His death. Jesus allowed himself to be crucified, but His sacrifice was the total opposite of suicide. He did not die because of His own sins; He died so we could be redeemed from our sins. He did not walk straight into his own execution because He felt guilty or ashamed; He did it to show us the possibility of eternal life. Sacrificing your life for others, or dying so others may live, is a holy act. That’s another reason why I never—why I never did the thing you contemplated doing tonight. When my life ends, I want that end to have meaning. I want both my life and death to be meaningful, to stand for something, for someone, or for a cause, instead of being a consequence of guilt or shame. Anyway, you definitely cannot jump off this roof today of all days. On Sunday, come to St. Agnes, in Hell’s Kitchen, for the Easter service. I’ll be there.”

“But I won’t be able to recognize you, Jack,” Rose protested. “Because of that mask you’re wearing.”

“Who knows? Maybe you’ll recognize me in some other way. Maybe I will recognize you in some other way,” Matt hinted.

“You talked about a purpose. You said I can do plenty of things to make the world better. What exactly do you have in mind?”

“Well, uh…you mentioned work. So you have a job, right?” Matt asked.

“A meaningless one,” Rose answered. “I work as a secretary at a big construction company. Just a lot of paper pushing.”

“You can make sure all the papers are in order,” Matt suggested. “That the company is treating workers well, following the law, doing things right. Little tasks like that. And if you see something suspicious, tell someone. It may not seem like a lot at first, but it could lead to bigger movements. Like a pebble rolling down a hill can set huge boulders in motion. There’s a line in The Lord of the Rings: ‘their coming was like the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains.’ In law, it’s called a slippery slope argument: that a small change at the top can lead to huge change at the bottom. You just need to get the ball rolling.”

“You think I can do that?”

“Absolutely I think you can do that. Or if you want a more concrete idea: you could learn Spanish,” Matt proposed. “Spanish is probably not very useful in Vermont, but it would definitely be useful in New York City, especially if you work in construction.”

“I could try to learn Spanish,” Rose agreed. “Jack? If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go get something to eat.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Matt assured her. “You want me to follow you downstairs?”  

“Maybe you could close the roof door behind me? And maybe wait a little while up here? To make sure I don’t come back?” she suggested tentatively.

“Sure thing. It was nice to meet you, Rose,” Matt said pleasantly.

“You too, Jack,” she responded. She walked to a tiny hut jutting out of the roof, which apparently was the access point for the stairs leading back down into the building.

“Thank you,” Rose called back.

She disappeared through the roof access door. Matt closed the door behind her and listened to her footsteps descend one floor, two floors, three floors, down and down and down.

Matt stayed on the roof for ten more minutes, but Rose did not return. He carefully and gracefully slipped down the ninety-degree slope of the building and bounded over to the adjoining rooftop. His heart, his stomach, his legs, and his ears sprung, danced, and leapt lightly on the way back to Bill Fitzgerald’s townhouse. His chest opened as wide as the sky above him. His feet fell confidently and securely. His fingers stretched to new heights. His legs surged with strength. His ears, nose, and tongue bathed, splashed, and swam in the sensory ocean, no longer overwhelmed by the rush of it but delighted by it.

Matt cherished this freedom of motion, this athletic joy so different than his crawling, cane-bound movements back on the ground. Up here, without the obstructions and distractions of the street, with the free-flowing air bouncing and shattering against the buildings, with the wind echoing back at him, he was more than sighted. He was better than sighted. Up here, he moved like a daredevil. Like a superhuman. Like a superhero.

Matt alighted on Bill Fitzgerald’s roof to find the elderly man still sitting placidly on his folding chair, still gazing placidly at the stars.

“Well, how did it go?” Bill asked hopefully.

“She did not jump. She went back downstairs,” Matt reported.

“Well done, Matthew,” Bill proclaimed. “Very well done.”

“You need to get downstairs as well,” Matt fretted. “You’re probably tired and frozen.”

“It was worth it,” Bill promised. “Worth it to know that you did a good deed. How does it feel?”

“It feels good,” Matt understated. “Really good. Like what I’m supposed to do. I definitely want to do it again sometime.”

“Matthew, did I tell you about what I put in my will?” Bill asked.

“I don’t need any more—you’ve done enough—” Matt insisted.

“I’m not leaving any money to you personally,” Bill interjected. “You will get my vinyl collection, because you are the only person I know who can actually appreciate the difference in sound between vinyl, CD, and digital. But you will not get any money. You have enough in your trust fund. What I have written in my will is that the proceeds from the sale of my very valuable Chelsea townhouse will endow a small firm start-up fund for recent law school graduates. If new lawyers want to start their own small firm to serve the ordinary people of New York City, they can apply for a grant from the start-up fund. New York City desperately needs storefront lawyers who can handle the legal problems of everyday folks. What do you think?”

“That is an amazing idea, Bill. Please, though, put some kind of conditions on the endowment so the money does not run out before I graduate and pass the bar,” Matt pleaded.

“I will do my best,” Bill promised.

Matt helped Bill rise from his seat, led him back to the roof hatch, and gently guided him down the ladder. They descended the stairs back to Bill’s study. Matt assisted Bill into bed and then sank into a comfy armchair.

Part Four

            On Easter Sunday morning, Matt slowly buttoned the light green shirt Foggy selected for him at Macy’s the previous day. After several rounds of negotiations, offers, counter-offers, and bargaining, Foggy and Matt had reached a settlement: Foggy would attend Easter church services with Matt if Matt wore a festive shirt in a pleasant pastel shade.  

            As he buttoned his new shirt, Matt asked yet again, “Are you sure I don’t look like an idiot in this shirt?”

            “I am sure,” Foggy repeated. “It looks good against your navy-blue pants, and it looks good with your auburn-y hair.”

            “You said it was light green, right? If this color was a food or a plant, what would it be?” Matt queried.

            Foggy’s face twisted in thought, and then he remembered to verbally describe to Matt his face twisting in thought. Foggy murmured, “Hmmm…I’m thinking…An avocado. A ripe avocado smashed in one of those little stone bowls they bring to the side of your table for guacamole. You look like a wonderfully ripe avocado, Matt. And I mean that in the most complimentary way.”

            Matt cocked his head, smiled, and laughed. “Matthew Murdock, the Avocado Abogado.”

“The what?”

“The Spanish word for lawyer is Abogado,” Matt explained.

Foggy burst into a full-throated, trilling laugh. “Matthew Murdock, the Avocado Abogado.”

 “What about your shirt?” Matt pressed. “You said it was pink, right?”

            “Well, somewhere between mauve and flamingo,” Foggy elaborated.

            “If it was a fruit or a flower, what would it be?” Matt queried.

“Cherry blossom,” Foggy answered.

            Matt inhaled deeply as if he could smell both cherry blossoms wafting on the wind and a heaping bowl of guacamole.

            “Ready?” Matt prompted as he gathered up his phone, keys, and cane.

            “Yep. You look like a perfect Easter avocado, Matt,” Foggy teased good-naturedly.

            “You look like a flamingo, Foggy,” Matt teased back.

            Down in Hell’s Kitchen, Matt’s nose caught the unmistakable scent of Sister Maggie from almost half a block away. That Matt’s sense of smell rivaled a bloodhound’s was crazy enough, but his particular ability to detect Sister Maggie’s scent was even crazier. Sister Maggie did not wear perfume, used very plain detergent on her nun’s habit, did not smoke cigarettes, and did not eat many spicy foods, but Matt’s nose still managed to single her out from any crowd in which she stood. Matt formulated plenty of hypotheses over the years about why his senses focused on this or that input, but he never reached a satisfactory explanation for why he so readily and so persistently recognized Sister Maggie’s scent.

            “You remember Sister Maggie, right? She’s on door duty,” Matt muttered to Foggy.

            “How can you---?” Foggy began to ask, but a cry from the front stoop of the church cut him off.

            “Matthew! Sister Maggie here! I was hoping you would come! And in such a festive shirt!” The nun stepped lightly down the front steps.

Foggy watched as Sister Maggie ironed out a few creases on Matt’s shoulders with her palm. Matt did not reflexively jerk back from the nun’s touch, but he did squirm a little bit as she primped him. The interaction and the motions immediately reminded Foggy of the way his mother casually smoothed his shirt, adjusted his tie, or popped his collar.

“Foggy picked out my shirt,” Matt reported. He waved one hand toward Foggy. “He said he would only come to church this morning if I wore something in an Easter pastel color.”

Sister Maggie turned her gaze on Foggy and skeptically, almost accusingly, raised her eyebrows. The nun’s expression plainly said, “You got away with it this time, Mr. Nelson, but you are playing with fire. If you ever make a fool of Matthew Murdock, you will answer to me.”

Despite the hard stare, Sister Maggie said in a more friendly tone, “How nice to see you again, Foggy. You made a good selection for Matthew. You look very nice, Matthew.  Your friend Bill Fitzgerald is waiting in the second pew, on the right.”

            To everyone’s great surprise, Bill Fitzgerald had miraculously risen from his bed for one more Easter Sunday. Publicly, Bill credited the balmy spring breeze and the enduring power of the Easter resurrection story for granting him a little bit more time on Earth, but privately, Matt suspected Bill’s renewed will to live had more to do with Matt’s Thursday-night-Friday-morning rescue mission.

            Foggy tensed as soon as he heard the name Bill Fitzgerald. He vividly recalled his last meeting with Bill Fitzgerald, which occurred five months prior, over Thanksgiving weekend. At that meeting, Fitzgerald told Foggy that it was time for Fitzgerald to transfer a very important client to new counsel. That client was Matthew Murdock, and that counsel was Foggy Nelson. Foggy promised Bill that he would support Matt, guide Matt, and be Matt’s friend. At the time, his vow had not seemed especially binding, but now, walking into a church to meet Bill once again, and literally guiding Matt along the way, a new weight of responsibility tugged down Foggy’s shoulders by a few inches. A damp patch began spreading throughout the armpits of Foggy’s very pink, very pastel shirt.

            Matt and Foggy turned to enter the church, but Sister Maggie reached for Matt’s elbow to delay him for one more moment.  

“By the way, Matthew. I was feeling unusually optimistic about the chances of you coming to church, so I dug out part of your Bible. It’s on the pew.”

Matt blushed. “Thanks,” he murmured.

As Matt and Foggy bumped their way down the very busy aisle, Foggy commented, “Sister Maggie reminds me of someone, but I cannot figure out who. She shot me this very intimidating expression at the door just now, and her face looked so familiar.” 
            “Yeah, over the years I’ve heard a lot about Sister Maggie’s intimidating expressions,” Matt sympathized. “For all of the other foster kids, one glare from Sister Maggie was usually enough to get them back in line. She didn’t need to shout very much, except at me of course.”

            “Ah, so you were a troublemaker even back then,” Foggy joked lightly. Although his voice joked, Foggy’s throat wobbled. Matt spoke straightforwardly and matter-of-factly about growing up for eight years in a foster home run by Catholic nuns, but Foggy could not help but view Matt’s experience as a tragic, forlorn one. Foggy supposed that, in typical Matthew Murdock fashion, Matt searched for and found the positive aspect to the story: that Sister Maggie cared enough about him to shout him back into line.

            “Yeah, I was a bit of a troublemaker for a while,” Matt admitted with a sheepish smile. “Sometimes I think back and wonder if I deliberately made trouble to compel Sister Maggie to shout at me. I wonder if I secretly liked the extra attention I earned from her. Sometimes when she took me aside or gave me a private talking-to, it felt like I had …”

            It felt like he had a mother.  

            Matt was fifteen or sixteen years old when the thought first occurred to him that he misbehaved in order to attract Maggie’s concern and that, in fact, he kind of enjoyed the sound of her voice even when it shouted at him. Not until Matt was twenty-three years old, standing in a church waiting for the Easter sermon to begin, sharing childhood memories with Foggy, did he finally connect all the internal dots. When Sister Maggie shouted at Matt, when she visited him one-on-one in his bedroom, when she pulled him away for a stern conversation, he felt like he had a mother.

            “Felt like you had what?” Foggy prompted.

            “Never mind. Sister Maggie looks familiar to you?”

            “Yes. Maybe if I knew what color hair she has, I could see the resemblance more clearly,” Foggy pondered. “One day it’ll smack me in the face who she reminds me of, but today all I can really say is that she looks like someone I know.”

            They finally reached the second pew. Bill Fitzgerald warmly and cheerfully re-introduced himself to Foggy and then announced, “Matthew, I believe this belongs to you.”

            Bill placed into Matt’s outstretched hands a large, heavy, very musty book. Matt flipped open the cover and swept his fingertips over the first page.

            “Braille Bible,” Foggy said appraisingly. “Nice.”

            “Only one volume of Braille Bible,” Matt corrected. “This is just the Gospel of Matthew. My entire Braille Bible took up a whole bookshelf.”

            Matt and Foggy settled into the pew. While Matt pretended to read the Gospel of Matthew in Braille, he listened to Bill confiding in Foggy his plans to create a start-up fund for newly barred lawyers seeking to represent the little guys of the world—the Davids against the Goliaths. Foggy adored the idea and, just as Matt had done, begged Bill to somehow ensure that the endowment fund would last for another two-and-a-half years—until Matt and Foggy graduated law school and passed the bar exam.

            Foggy sat in the pew and gazed up at the lofty, vaulted ceiling of the church. He had rarely prayed during his life, but now he prayed that he might prove a capable, worthy successor counsel to Matthew Murdock—as capable and worthy a counsel as Bill Fitzgerald had been.

            When Father Lantom strode to his dais, the church rumble finally quieted down. Matt, though, heard the front door of the church open one more time, softly and slowly. Dainty footsteps tiptoed inside, but the footsteps did not venture very far into the nave. Instead, the footsteps tinkled toward one side. A tall, slim body pressed itself against the wall of the church.

            Matt turned his head halfway around toward the church entrance. He inhaled the scent of the woman he met on the roof a few nights ago. The smell of diner French fries was still there, as was an icy remnant of Vermont snow. The woman had drunk another cup of spiced chai tea before stepping into church, but she also spritzed rose water onto her neck and into her hair. The aroma of roses now radiated from the woman he knew as Rose.

            “Jack, it’s Rose here. I really want to believe that you can hear me,” Rose’s voice stole into Matt’s ears, “even inside this huge church with hundreds of people inside of it. You told me to come to this church for Easter services, and I did. If you can hear me, please give me some kind of sign.”

            Matt very loudly and very ostentatiously emitted a fake, wildly exaggerated sneeze.

            “God bless you,” Father Lantom and Bill Fitzgerald said simultaneously. Father Lantom said it from his place up in the pulpit, and Bill Fitzgerald said it from beside Matt. Gentle rivers of laughter streamed around the church. A few children openly giggled.

            Matt grabbed hold of his fully extended white cane from where it rested against his chest. He briefly lifted it up so that Rose might see the shiny white stick from where she stood. Perhaps it might flash at her like a divine lightning bolt.

            “Thank you, Jack,” Rose said.

            “The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter twenty-eight, Verse six,” Father Lantom intoned seriously, although not somberly. “‘He is not here: for He is risen.”

            Matt leaned back against the solid wood of the pew. Inside his chest, his own heart rose. Something else rose inside of him, too: a new life. A new person. Not a resurrection, but a new beginning. The beginning of new purposes, new missions, and new explorations. Someone else rose inside of Matt: the daredevil who could leap across rooftops, hear prayers and pleas, and save lives. The woman standing at the back of the church breathed life into the form which now rose inside Matt’s chest. The daredevil. The superhuman. The superhero.