Spirit and Liberty
by Gotham Knights
Chapter 1
He didn't believe it, but the sign was turned to read 'open' and the lights were on, a scant three hours after. 'Open,' mouthed the sign; so he went in.
What does one do after a near-death experience? There were no rules, telling him what to do.
One of two waitresses looked up as he entered, seeming as startled as he was. He took his hands out of his pockets, palms facing her. She relaxed to see him empty-handed, but still glanced over one wide shoulder to the surveillance camera behind. Breathing a little sigh through bright, crinkled lips, she led him to a smudged table, letting fall a menu before shuffling off.
He opened the menu's grimy plastic pages, looked at line after line of nonsense.
What comes next? He knew that thousands of brains besides his own were racking themselves for the answer, at this very moment.
I could have died. It was hardly a complaint or a clucking admonition. It was fact. He could have been the final numeral in a death toll.
"Coffee," he called out when he saw the waitress make her slow, reluctant approach. She nodded and disappeared into the back; his eyes followed her, then lifted to the clock hanging over the kitchen doorway.
3:26 a.m. Everything was still a mess, he knew. But it was so much easier to sit in a no-name diner, pretending to be normal, listening to songs his parents used to listen to. Deaf to the sirens and panic. This strange peace would only last so long for him, after all—Dr. Drake Connelly of Arkham Asylum would soon be frantically working to restore his institution to normalcy.
Coffee arrived, and he met the waitress's skeptical, eyeliner-lidded gaze.
"I'd just like the grilled cheese," he mumbled childishly.
A quick scribble on her notepad, and again she left him to his own thoughts—which this time centered around the thought of all his colleagues, laughing as they watched him regressing into an infantile state. It was ridiculous, how he sat here, pretending his cell phone either didn't exist or couldn't be turned on. He didn't want to flip it open and see the missed calls, the frantic voicemails.
He'd made just one phonecall while on the ferry. He couldn't call his parents again, not after the hysteria he'd heard when he had told them he was evacuating the city. So he'd called his sister, in Chicago. She'd heard from his mother and was surprisingly calm.
Weather, holidays, travel, work. They'd spoken of the ordinary things and then said goodbye. He'd turned off the phone and found a seat on the back of the ferry, steeling himself for what had seemed inescapable.
He'd been primed to handle life-threatening, stressful situations. But with criminally insane patients, it had always been a matter of predicting what might happen, staying a step ahead. Never had he been forced to sit there, helpless, waiting. He'd watched the passengers around him fret and fight over what to do. He knew he was obligated as a servant of society to help. But he hadn't. Only sat there, thinking, knowing. I am going to die.
Wrong. He wasn't dead. Nobody on that ferry was. They might die tomorrow, next week, next year. But not yet. No, he was here, waiting for—
The golden-brown sandwich was placed before him with a sharp clink of plastic plate on linoleum table. Cheese oozing out comically from one greasy crust, almost nudging to the wan pink slice of tomato on the side.
"Thanks." His only reply was a new crinkle in the crinkling lips. Shrugging off her indifference, he added some creamer to the cooling coffee and began to eat.
It was also childlike, the way he tried to involve himself in the meal and not think about anything else. He didn't want to think about the ragged limbo he'd waited in last night, hovering between alive and dead. He didn't want to think about the hideous, cutthroat will to survive that had manifested itself in some of them. He'd heard their muttering. He hadn't been there for the final decision—to do nothing—but he had seen the ugly, Freudian ego leap out of the textbook and take hold of seemingly normal people.
The first bite of sandwich was exactly what he'd expected: pure comfort. He mechanically chewed, then swallowed, pausing to sip some of the bitter coffee.
Things were going to change, he knew. Even beyond the simple alterations he was already seeing. It was inevitable. There were no rules for these things. No laws governed them.
He finished the sandwich quickly, finished the coffee slower. He listened to the sirens in the distance, shrill against the muffled oldies songs playing on the diner radio. The TV set perched in a corner of the place was silent and black-screened—for that, he was grateful. He could pretend it was just a joke. He could pretend he'd woken up from a funny dream and decided to go get an early breakfast before going into work.
The clock read 4:11 a.m. when he drank his last refill of coffee and waved for the check. He felt a pang of regret, thinking about the frantic calls he was missing with each passing minute. Who was tending to the city's wayward butchers and psychotic deviants? Who was taking care of business as Arkham's head—the asylum's youngest and most inexperienced in years—sat in a diner and digested his grilled-cheese sandwich?
He paid for the meal in cash, taking a small pleasure in counting out the money, the currency that had wound its way through the city's veins a thousand times over before now. Standing, he shrugged into his coat and left the place, wanting to hold his breath as he re-entered the streets.
Time to be responsible. Time to be grown-up. He switched on his phone and glanced both ways before heading across the street towards his waiting car.
Safely inside the vehicle, he started the ignition and dialed up the first of his missed calls, putting on his seatbelt as he pulled out and waited to be answered.
"Dr. Lofton? Drake here. Yes, I'm back. Let's get this show on the road."
Chapter 1 was written by Blodeuedd.
Philippa will be up next, with Chapter 2!
