Harleen Quinzel knocked on the door before entering. "Dr. Arkham?"
An elderly man was seated at a handsome polished wood desk, bent over some paperwork. His wire-rimmed spectacles were perched at the end of his nose. He looked up at her, adjusting his glasses in the process. "Ah, yes, Quinzel. Come in."
Harleen shut the door behind her and took a seat in the chair in front of his desk, smoothing out her knee-length corduroy skirt in the process. "You wished to see me, sir?" she said through slightly gritted teeth, hoping to hide her annoyance. She had been called up to his office while she was in the middle of a session with one of her patients.
"Yes, yes I did, Quinzel." He clasped his hands together on the desk and started rubbing them together, a sure sign that he was going to be telling his young employee something she might not like. "As you may already know, the highly publicized criminal, The Joker, will be calling this asylum home."
"Yes sir. I saw the trial results on Gotham Tonight--"
"--Yes, yes," he continued, interrupting her mid sentence. She dropped her right fist to her side, clenching it, hoping that she would be able to maintain a stable temper for at least five minutes. "You see, Quinzel, our staff is highly qualified to deal with many types of mental disorders. Unfortunately, none of them are particularly willing to work with the new patient. You, being our newest doctor, would be an excellent candidate to work with him."
It took her a few moments to get an actual grip on what he was saying. "So, let me get this straight. You want me, the newest doctor at Arkham Asylum, to work with one of the most dangerous and insane criminals that Gotham has ever seen?" Her tone was desperate and confused.
Dr. Arkham nodded. "The patients that you already are analyzing are well on their way to a successful recovery. And," he said, raising a strict eyebrow at her, "There are many doctors in other cities willing to take your place, Quinzel, if you should decline this offer. Do you understand me?"
Harleen immediately understood what he was saying. It was either be locked in her room with a madman, or get into the unemployment line. She understood exactly what he was saying. Sighing, she looked up at him. "Fine…fine, I'll do it. When will he be here?"
"Tonight," The doctor replied simply. "But you won't see him until tomorrow. Your first session with him will be at 10 AM. You will have the authority to assign him any medicine or drugs he may need to take, as well as any freedoms he might be privileged to during his long stay here."
His tone was concluding, hence ending this little meeting.
As she made her way to the door, she had to clasp her hands together to keep herself from turning around and hurling herself at the elderly man.
When Harleen finally heard the click that told her his door was now a soundproof barrier between her and him, she punched an invisible opponent and yelled out, "Goddamn it, Arkham!"
She knew for a fact that Jeremiah Arkham had it in for her. He wanted her to take this job so that she will end up running for her life in the middle of the first session. But, she was going to prove him wrong, even if she was far from wanting this man as a patient.
Harleen Quinzel was definitely not a happy camper.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
The Joker was seated in the back of a patrol car.
In the front were two of Gotham's finest. The driver, a bulky man with squinted eyes and a mustache that reminded him of a walrus, kept eyeing him in the rearview mirror. In the passenger seat was a smaller man with obvious paranoia issues because he kept gripping onto the handle of his pistol. It had been like this for the past fifteen minutes, since they left the Major Crimes Unit in downtown Gotham City, just after Batboy gave him a "talking to."
The Joker's hands were handcuffed, as were his ankles. Obviously, they didn't want to risk a single occurrence on their way to Arkham Asylum. He smiled to himself, noticing the silent tension in the car.
"Hey, fellas, wanna know how I got these scars?" But they didn't answer, except for a deathly glare from the driver and the passenger's continuous gun groping. Instead, the sound of thunder, followed by the soft beating of rain came. He thought it was a shame they weren't interested in the mystery surrounding his scars; he had a rather good story involving the swift licking of envelopes of bills he wanted paid on time lined up for them.
He turned his head to stare at the faint, dark reflection in the window. They had scrubbed his face raw of all the face paint back at the station. These green eyes that stared back at him seemed to be different without the black smudge paint that usually surrounded them.
He thought back to the past two weeks. After being found by the SWAT team after dear Batsy left him hanging (quite literally), he was held in a maximum security jail cell, guarded by nearly a dozen cops until his court date. His lawyer (who was frightened nearly to death of his client, especially after he showed him a magic trick involving a sewing needle, a piece of chewing gum, and a rather unwilling volunteer) had pled insanity in his defense, and the jury agreed to sentence him to a nice, long stay at Arkham.
Insane? He begged to differ. After all, he wasn't the one running around night after night in a cape, dressed as a flying sewer rat.
He sighed quietly to himself as they pulled through the asylum gate.
Some people really need to learn how to think straight.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Harleen kicked off her heels as soon as she entered her apartment, exhausted. She set her bag of groceries onto the counter and pulled out the carton of milk, putting it into the small refrigerator. She then sauntered over to her living room and fell onto the couch, stretching out her feet onto the coffee table. Grabbing the remote, she began surfing the channels until she found Gotham Tonight.
"…in other news, the Joker has been deported to Arkham Asylum. It is unknown for how long he will be staying there, but sources say that it is possible for life. The citizens of Gotham hope that this is a sign for the rehabilitation of Gotham City, especially after the sudden death of District Attorney, Harvey Dent." Mike Engel's once-charismatic voice was now rather shaky. Harleen remembered when he was broadcasted onto the television sets throughout the city, being held hostage and forced to read a statement from the Joker, with it ending in the clown's cackling.
She leaned back against the couch, remembering her new patient that she was to formally meet for the first time tomorrow. When she met formally, she was referring to the fact that she was in the Gotham National Bank when he was robbing it. She remembered him tying her hands, along with many other customers and employees, and placing a hand grenade into them.
Harleen had never been so terrified in her life.
She had watched him murder his accomplices as he paced the main lobby of the bank, eyeing his hostages. Though he was still in his clown mask, it was obvious to them that it was the Joker. Only he would do something so maniacal, so inhuman.
She rubbed her wrists, remembering the bruises the rope had left on her wrists. They had left burning gashes that took weeks to heal.
All this was at the hands who was destined to be her patient. It was a bit of irony, really. Tomorrow, he was bound to be in handcuffs and she was to be the jailer, completely opposite to the situation that had taken place a few months before.
Sighing, she turned off the TV. She knew that tomorrow was going to be a long day, so she might as well and go and try to get some sleep, trying not to think that tomorrow she would be alone in a room with the most dangerous man in Gotham.