Chapter 1
Some days are better than others and today certainly was not Harleen Quinzel's day. It was two o'clock in the morning and the blonde psychiatrist was working night shift at Arkham asylum. Usually night shift was rather quiet, most inmates either fell asleep on their own or were sedated. However tonight the asylum was in chaos and as Harleen sat in complete darkness in her small closet sized office, she put her forehead on her wooden desk, rubbing her temples and resisted the urge to scream. The coolness of the mahogany against her skin was soothing and helped her to relax as she took a deep breath and prepared to go back out into the madness of Arkham. At six thirty that evening one of the low security patients had been found dead in her cell. The women in her early 40's who had been admitted for a previous suicide attempt had smuggled cleaning products, which the janitor had left in the common room into her cell and drank them.
It was a gruesome discovery and unfortunately Harleen was the doctor who had to officially proclaim the poor women dead. Seeing death especially suicide within the asylum wasn't uncommon but it always disturbed Harleen, she had become a psychiatrist to help people with these dark thoughts and took failing very personally. By the time the body had been taken to the morgue Harleen was having some dark thoughts of her own. She hadn't been that women's doctor but if only she had somehow known something was wrong Harleen was positive she could have helped.
News of the death spread through the asylum like a wild fire. Certain patients were shouting and kicking walls, proclaiming that they were all going to die here. The more people started yelling the more it spread and almost became a riot, until Harleen and another psychiatrist Doctor Leland, accompanied by two armed guards entered the cells of the trouble making patients and injected them with a sedative.
By that point it was almost eleven o'clock and Doctor Leland signed off for the night and went home leaving Harleen as the only doctor in the asylum. Praying that there was no more unexpected surprises for the night, the young doctor made her rounds checking on the now quiet patients. Everything seemed to finally be in order until she reached the high security ward. As soon as the light on the door turned green accepting her key card and opened, every pair of very much awake eyes turned to face her. They looked at her like she was the one in a cell not the other way around. As she made her way around each cell she heard many chuckles of, "How many offed 'em selves?" and "Thanks for the entertainment doc."
It was really starting to bother Harleen but she put on a blank expression and tried to act professional. She was thanking her stars when she reached the last cell of her rounds until she remembered who the occupant of this cell was. The man's dark hair was ruffled, rectangular spectacles were perched on his nose magnifying his already large sapphire coloured eyes, his long legs were stretched out as he lay on his bed with a book in hand and thoughtful expression on his face. Jonathan Crane looked up as his Doctor approached.
"Ah Harley long night?" He said, perfectly pleasantly.
Doctor Crane had been head psychiatrist at Arkham before his "break down" as the staff called it. Harleen had been his intern for over a year and his resident for four, so it was no surprise that he referred to her by her nickname. Treating Doctor Crane always made Harleen cringe as it did with every doctor here. He had been their boss, their mentor and their peer and then he had been caught preforming illegal experiments on Arkham inmates using a "fear toxin" he had invented. Crane's specialty was phobias and psychopharmacology, so it was no shock that he had the ability to create such a chemical however it was horrifying that he actually done made it let alone used it. After Doctor Crane was dismissed from his position at the asylum and had his medical licence revoked he had sworn revenge. Months went by and nothing happened but then a series of robberies and attacks on the university that Crane used to teach psychology at before being dismissed and coming to the asylum began. All of the victims claim they had seen their "greatest fear" and had almost gone into terror induced cardiac arrest. Eventually Batman caught Crane now referring to himself as "Scarecrow" and he had ended up locked up in his own asylum. It turned out Crane had been fired from Gotham University for similar reasons as his dismissal from Arkham but the records had conveniently vanished at the time of his employment at the mental hospital. Seeing her mentor fallen into the depths of insanity made Harley realize that this job can really mess with you if you allow it to, she hoped she never ended up like Doctor Crane.
"You know very well it's been a hard night." Harleen replied, flatly trying to hide her heavy Brooklyn accent. People never took her seriously when they heard her speak, as if being from Brooklyn made her unintelligent.
"Do not worry yourself child people die here all the time you know that." Jonathan said, still not looking up from his novel. "However a good psychiatrist would have known if a patient was in a dangerous mind set, so you are partly to blame."
This was one of the worse parts about treating Doctor Crane he was a psychiatrist…a very good one and knew how to play mind games and get into his doctors heads.
"Enough, if you want to play psychological games, do it after I've had coffee and sleep please."
A small smirk played on Crane's lips but he remained silent and kept reading. Harleen left the ward turning out the last of the lights and securing the doors. She made her way through the eerie corridors and made herself a cup of coffee in the staff room. That was when she ended up in her office with her head on the desk.
After a few more minutes Harleen lifted her forhead off the wood, took a deep breath and walked back into the chaos because even when everything was quiet in Arkham there was always a sense of danger in the air.
All Harleen could do was hope that tomorrow would be better and remained herself that she chose her profession to help people.