Dangerous Discussions
Chapter 1:
Dr. Jeremy Harkins sat impatiently at the small table, staring down at and continuously shifting the varied materials spread out before him; a case file which might as well have been a novel, a fresh note pad, a pen, and some blank paper. That was it. That was all he had been allowed to bring with him in to the small room. The pen had been a point of contention. He felt uneasy, for some reason. He had been stead-fast in his determination not to let the task at hand intimidate him or to come in to this assignment with anything less then total self-confidence. He put the subtle nerves down to anxiousness, wanting to get started, and left it at that.
He had been briefed, at length, by Arkham's leading psychiatrist regarding the patient he was soon to undertake. Dr. Bartholomew was not shy with his bluntness, especially when it came to The Joker, the institute's most notorious patient, and Gotham City's most feared criminal mastermind. None of the other resident therapist's wanted to touch the inmate with a ten foot poll and Dr. Bartholomew was too busy running the asylums schedule and organizing the daily routines of each patient to be anyone's regular doctor.
Dr. Harkins was new, had only come on board a few months previous, but was eager to establish himself. He had campaigned for the job, hard, taking time out of his day, every day, to discuss the matter with Bartholomew, presenting a different argument each time as to why he felt he was qualified to take on the one case which was widely regarded throughout Arkham to be the only, truly hopeless cause. Harkins had finished top of his class from Harvard Medical and already had built up an impressive resume in places like Metropolis and New York. He had dealt with some real nut jobs, some very dangerous and disturbing individuals in his residency at those places, and felt he was ready for anything Arkham could throw his way.
"You don't know The Joker Jeremy." Dr. Bartholomew said, looking warily at the fresh faced psychiatrist who sat directly across from him. "He's incredibly dangerous. I can't stress that enough."
"I'm aware of that Sir." Dr. Harkins tried to reassure. "But no one else has offered to take him up and I doubt very much that it's going to win you brownie points if you force one of our doctors to treat The Joker against their wishes."
Dr. Bartholomew sighed, removing his seeing glasses and rubbing absentmindedly at the bridge of his nose.
"I know." He mumbled. They sat in silence for a few brief moments before the older man spoke again.
"Listen, Jeremy, I'm going to let you do it. But you must listen very, VERY carefully to me."
Harkins sat attentively, unable to mask the delight he felt from finally getting what he wanted.
"Yes Sir." He sat waiting.
"If it were up to me, nobody would even be treating The Joker at this point." Bartholomew began. "But state law requires that all inmates here at Arkham receive rehabilitative treatment, and that includes therapy sessions at least once a week."
Dr. Harkins nodded.
"I've held several sessions with him myself, and I got no where with him. Do you understand? Absolutely no where."
"I'm aware of that Sir."
"But that's not what concerns me." Dr. Bartholomew paused, looking around the room as though searching for the right words.
"When I say he's dangerous, I don't just mean physically Jeremy. The physical threat he presents, and it IS substantial, takes a back seat to the psychological danger he poses… He's incredibly intelligent, frighteningly so."
"I know Sir, but his mind is also a fractured one, and I'm certain I can hold my ow…"
"You're not listening to me son." Dr. Bartholomew cut him off. "The Joker may be insane, but that's what makes the contrast of his intellect all the more startling. His mind is as sharp as they come Jermey. I've never encountered anyone with the kind of depth perception he has. He sees everything… everything."
Harkins just nodded.
"He'll see things in you Jeremy, weaknesses that you weren't even aware existed, and he'll exploit them. Do you understand? He'll turn you on yourself if you aren't careful."
Dr. Bartholomew was looking the young doctor straight in the eye and held an expression as though he himself had fallen victim to what he was relaying. Harkins again nodded.
"On top of which, Jeremy, he's a genius. He has a deep and intricate understanding of chemicals and how they affect the brain and body. If he wasn't mad, he would probably be this country's leading chemist and geneticist. All of those poisons you hear about him using, all of those gases…"
Harkins listened.
"He developed all of those on his own. He's brilliant. It's almost a shame he can't use those gifts to benefit man kind. But he's a monster, and I've lost all sense of hope in his case. I probably shouldn't even tell you about the time he escaped here by mixing cleaning chemicals from one of the janitor closets, God-damned cleaning chemicals. He made a less potent form of his signature gas. If he'd had all the regular properties, I'm sure he would have made it to kill. None the less, the guards and orderlies he used it on were in the hospital for months before the stuff finally began to wear off, and some of them still have paralysis in their lower jaws.
Dr. Harkins looked startled, but Bartholomew continued on.
"I can't stress enough how important it is that you watch yourself around him. Watch what you say to him, because he'll use it to hurt you. Don't tell him anything about yourself Jeremy; don't answer any of his questions about you or try to appease him. Did I tell you about Dr. Lewis?"
Harkins shook his head no.
"Jesus…" Bartholomew grumbled to himself. "Dr. Lewis was similar to you Jeremy in that he was top of his graduating class, highly accomplished at a young age, had already dealt with numerous sociopaths and psychotics by the time he got to Arkham…" The doctor stopped, shaking his head in apparent disbelief.
"This was a good few years' back now. He came to the conclusion that the only way to treat The Joker was through what we referred to in our circles as "definitive therapy"…or more commonly known as a lobotomy."
"But, lobotomies, those aren't legal any lon…"
"Yes, yes, I know." Dr. Bartholomew waved him off. "Up until a few years ago, they were very rarely considered a treatment option; they were looked down upon in almost every circle of the psychiatric community, seen as barbaric. No one until Dr. Lewis had ever even suggested such a thing for any of our patients here, not even The Joker. It was radical. None the less, the suggestion was accepted by the board of review…"
He paused again. Dr. Harkins waited patiently.
"So… what happened?" He finally asked.
"What happened!?" Dr. Bartholomew half-laughed. "More like what didn't happen. Basically what banned lobotomies as a treatment option in every state in the damned country, that's what happened. Wholesale ban, no exceptions."
"So?" Jeremy asked again.
"The Joker somehow switched places with Dr. Lewis and the operation was performed on the sorry sap."
Harkins looked confused. "I'm sorry? What?"
Dr. Bartholomew sighed.
"The Joker somehow knew about Dr. Lewis' proposal to the board, and he made him pay for it. We still don't know how he snuck all those materials in, the dye, the chemicals, the make-up. He made Dr. Lewis look just like him. Woulda' fooled just about anybody who didn't look really closely. Even pumped him with another non-lethal version of that chemical of his, put a face splitting grin on the poor guy, died his skin bone white, his hair green. He couldn't talk 'cause The Joker had also somehow mixed in a chemical which scrambles the part of the brain that controls speech patterns. The surgeons performing the operation had never seen The Joker before then, so they didn't know. And the guards in this place never pay attention to anything like that. The Joker made him self out to look just like poor Dr. Lewis, waltzed right out of here without anyone ever taking a second glance, and just to be certain the doctor got what he thought he deserved, Joker also subscribed him a heavy sedative so he was knocked out through the next morning. Nobody knew what had gone wrong until the next day, until after the lobotomy. Following that screw up, the procedure was made totally illegal…"
"My God." Dr. Harkins whispered, more to himself then to anyone else.
"Yeah, Dr. Lewis now resides in a low maintenance nursing home in upstate New York."
The two psychiatrists remained silent for a good half-minute.
"So just be careful, okay?" Dr. Bartholomew finally said. "Don't tell him anything about yourself, don't let him talk you in to an argument, don't try and outsmart him. Keep the focus on him and him alone. And don't ever, ever underestimate him. Do you understand?"
Harkins nodded.
"You want me to tell you about Dr. Quinzel?"
"No, no, that's okay Sir. I think I get the picture."