"I remember reading about you in the news!" Bruce exclaimed, trying not to sound as excited as he was. "You're the director and head psychologist at the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane," he said, reciting what he'd read in the Gazette.
Crane smiled. "Yes," he replied simply.
Bruce bit his lip. "May I ask why you work at Arkham? Obviously you could have had any number of jobs in the upper city of you'd wanted," he said, remembering how the article had praised Crane for his brilliant intellect and outstanding record.
Crane's lips tightened. "The psychiatric hospitals in the diamond do not house criminals. They house rich, old, eccentric cousins or uncles. Only down in the lower city do you find the truly insane, the ones that are truly afraid." He bit his lip. "And you, Bruce Wayne, what made you choose to work at East End Public Hospital?" Dr. Crane asked.
Bruce grimaced, unprepared for the question. "When my father had his…accident, that's where they took him. He survived, but he was one of the lucky ones. Even so, he still has trouble breathing sometimes." Bruce paused, trying to get his words in the right order before he said them. "He had to stop working as a doctor. And since I was there when he…when he got shot…I didn't want anyone else to suffer- to go through what he did. Similar to what you said, I don't want to tend to people who have cancer. I want to save people who've been shot."
There was a long pause.
"I mean, obviously I want to cure cancer," Bruce amended hurriedly, "but right now the biggest problem's crime."
Jonathan Crane smiled. "Yes, crime is the biggest problem." Crane trailed off as his gaze drifted to a point behind Bruce's shoulder and his jaw clenched ever so slightly.
He licked his lips. "Hello, Mr. Wayne."
Bruce turned to see his father approaching.
"Good evening, Dr. Crane," he said shortly. Bruce was startled at the coldness of his voice. He thought Crane could sense it too, by the way his icy blue eyes hardened.
"I almost couldn't make it. I've had to cut down the number of staff members due to the lack of…" he paused, "funding," he smiled glacially, pronouncing the last word clearly.
"Ah well," Thomas Wayne said, "it's sad to see that there isn't enough money to go around." The words seemed weary and sympathetic, but to Bruce they sounded faintly laced with sarcasm.
"Have the two of you met before?" he asked, turning to face Dr. Crane.
Crane nodded.
There was an awkward silence as Bruce waited for Crane to elaborate.
He did not.
His father tapped him on the shoulder, then said politely to Crane, "May I borrow Bruce for a moment?"
Crane shrugged. "Go ahead," he said, spreading his spindly arms.
Thomas pulled his son aside and paced with him back to where his mother was sitting at a small table. The chandeliers above cast the whole room in a golden glow, like a contained sunset.
Bruce looked back to see if Crane would wait for him, only to see that the psychiatrist had melted into the crowd.
"Dad, what's with Dr. Crane that you don't like?" Bruce asked in a low voice.
His father pulled a tight smile as he glanced from side to side. "I lobbied against Arkham funding because it seems like a very corrupt institution."
Bruce raised an eyebrow.
His father drew a breath and let it out in one long wheeze. "Last year we gave them all the money they asked for." They reached Martha's table, and Thomas sat down heavily. He motioned for Bruce to join them, but his son declined with a wave of the hand. "Despite that," he continued, "their facilities have not improved, they began having major problems with their plumbing, and on top of that, several criminals that should have gone straight to prison have made successful insanity pleas."
Bruce shook his head. "Maybe they really do have mental disorders, Dad. As for the facilities, well… I'm not sure." He frowned, itching at his jawline.
His father rubbed his temples. "It's a lot more complicated than that. For nearly all the criminals, their mental disorders only came up very recently, among other 'coincidences'."
Bruce shrugged as if saying, well what can you do.
Thomas chuckled. "You should talk to Rachel. I think she just finished a case on lower-city corruption. Actually," he leaned forward, and Bruce had to bend over to hear what his father whispered next, "she's the one who tipped me off and got me thinking about corruption in Arkham in the first place."
Bruce blinked. Rachel? "Why didn't she tell me?" he asked in a low voice, pretending to be offended.
Suddenly, Thomas pulled back and looked up. "Back again Dr. Crane?" he said with false amusement in his voice.
Bruce turned.
"It seems so," Crane said, with a quirk in his lips. "I was just passing by to get another drink."
Bruce shot a look at his father like a teenager asking to go out with his friends. "I'll get one too."
Thomas slapped Bruce on the shoulder. "I'll let you go, just this once," he teased.
As soon as Bruce turned to Crane, the latter said, "I suppose you'll walk with me." He seemed annoyed, but made no attempt to stop the the other man.
After a few paces, their steps fell in sync. Bruce couldn't help but grinning.
"One question," the psychiatrist asked. "Of all the people at this party, why choose to talk to me?"
"Hah." It came out as a sort of laugh. "It wasn't my choice," Bruce said. "I broke my glass and you happened to be there, that's all."
"But why continue the conversation after that?" Crane asked as they reached the drinks table.
Bruce shrugged. "Honestly I didn't want to come to this party. I thought it would be a bunch of upper class snobs who think they know about medicine, but don't know a thing about how much Gotham needs help."
A few heads turned when they heard the words 'upper class snobs'. Crane chuckled quietly.
"So I suppose," Bruce said, "I was intrigued when I discovered that you worked at Arkham. You know what it's like in the East End. These people don't."
Crane nodded. "Most people aren't as… appreciative of that," he said ladling blood red punch into two glasses. He offered one to Bruce, who took it with thanks.
"It seems you wouldn't be terrible company," Crane remarked.
Bruce's face fell. Was Crane just trying to suck up to him like everyone else?
"Especially with coordinating between Arkham and East End Public. Too many people are going to EEP for mental help and attempted suicide and, no offence," he said nonchalantly, "but most of the folks over at EEP don't know how to deal with that sort of thing."
Bruce's eyes lit up and he nodded determinedly as he slurped his drink.
Crane lowered his glass, his lips stained a bright red, and smiled. "To future collaborations, Dr. Wayne," he said grinning wryly.
"Please. Just Bruce is fine," the other man insisted.
"Jonathan." Crane said, extending a hand.
Bruce shook it.
Jonathan's phone rang. He pulled it out, apologizing to Bruce. "Yes?" he said curtly. There was a pause. "What?" Another pause. "No, don't give him anything until I arrive. Record everything that happens." Jonathan rolled his eyes. "I'll be there when I pull up, now make sure he doesn't hurt himself by accident," he finished, licking his lips. He ended the call and dropped his phone into a pocket.
Jonathan took a long breath. "Here, take this," he said, pulling out a business card. "The number on the back is the work phone if you have questions," he said, rummaging for something in another pocket, "but if it's something urgent or you get stuck in voicemail more than three times, you should call," he paused, clicking a pen and scribbling on a corner to see if it had ink, "This… num...ber…" he finished writing the number on the flipside of the card and handed it to Bruce.
"Thanks," he said, but Jonathan was already walking briskly to the exit, tucking his pen back into his breast pocket.
Bruce was left to contemplate his fruit punch for the rest of the evening.
Bruce leaned backward in his roller-chair, bored out of his mind. Usually it wasn't this quiet in East End Public. Was it a holiday? He knew that the gangs usually quieted down during the holidays, especially for the big ones like Christmas and Thanksgiving, when there was a truce between most of the major mobs.
At least it means no one's getting hurt, Bruce thought. Comforting as the thought was, it didn't stop him from being bored.
As if the universe had heard him, the phone rang.
He picked it up with quick hands. "What's up?" he asked, pulling himself forward to lean on the desk. He nodded. "Be right over. See you soon."
The phone clacked back onto its charging station, and Bruce swept out of the room, swinging on his labcoat, pulling the door closed behind him.
"Damn," Bruce cursed under his breath. "Damnity-damn-damn." The scrawny kid lay on the operating table, skinny as a wire. "And he didn't have anything to eat beforehand?"
His fellow doctor shook their head. They both looked like the stereotypical surgeons, clad all in white with rubber gloves and face masks that made it hard to tell them apart.
They began to pump the patient's stomach, while Bruce tried very hard to pay attention. He hated when patients overdosed. It was because of the gangs. They were the ones flooding the lower city with drugs and taking advantage of people who had no other escape. "Dammit," he hissed once the procedure was over.
He walked to another tube and attached a bag of dark powder, active charcoal, to it. Almost immediately, the charcoal began trickling through it and into the mouth and stomach of the unconscious teen. The charcoal would soak up what was left of the drug and would be passed later.
Bruce hated these kinds of procedures. Sure, he could mop up the inside of someone's stomach, but there was no way of telling if they'd cleaned it all up, that everything was OK. He could set a broken bone correctly. He knew at a glance what it was supposed to look like when it was healthy, but this was an entirely different sort of unhealthy.
"You can go now," Bruce told his partner. "I sometimes stay until the patient's woken up, just to make sure, and today's not a busy day anyway. Plus," he added, "someone's gonna have to do the paperwork for this and I know you hate it, so go have some coffee while I do it."
The other doctor laughed. "You sure?"
"Yeah."
"Thanks Bruce, you're great," the surgeon said, giving Bruce a thumbs up before leaving.
Bruce took off his gloves, washed his hands, then put on another pair of gloves and took out a pen and took a clipboard with forms off of the equipment table. He began to mechanically fill out the form. Everything went smoothly until Bruce spotted something on the victim's upper leg. Their thighs were lightly striped with straight, thin, raised scars.
No way that was an accident.
He checked the victim's wrists. Nothing. He rifled through the medical forms and double checked the patient's information.
It clicked.
"Damn it all," Bruce spat, as he was sent straight to voicemail.
"I'm sorry, but," said a female voice, "Doctor Jonathan Crane," came Crane's cynical one, "is not available," finished the woman. "Please leave a message at-"
But Bruce was already dialing the other number, the one Crane had left on the back of his business card.
There were three long tones. "C'mon, c'mon…" Bruce said between gritted teeth.
Doctor Jonathan Crane was washing his hands in an operating room in Arkham Asylum. Something vibrated in his pocket.
Jonathan sighed. He'd been hoping for a stress-free day. There hadn't been much going on today, leaving him free to conduct his own experiments for once. But no. Work called, as usual, and whoever was calling had his… other work phone.
He'd really have to put an end to Falcone or whichever of his underlings was handing out his phone number, he reminded himself as the unknown number flashed across his cellphone's screen. He tapped answer.
"Jonathan Crane," he said blandly, resting the phone between his right shoulder and ear. He'd learned a long time ago that these sorts of experiments couldn't be done with one hand. "Who is this?" he demanded coldly.
"Uh, Bruce Wayne."
"Oh." Jonathan paused, looking back at the unconscious man tied down to the operating table. "What is it, Bruce?" he said, squatting down and opening the cupboard under the sink and pulling out a clean white cloth.
"Some kid tried to suicide by OD-ing and I don't know how to deal with it when he wakes up."
"Tell me why you think it's suicide," said Jonathan. Of course it would be Bruce. Of course it would be suicide. He was seriously tempted to hang up… but no. This was Wayne he was dealing with. He had to play it smart. He had to be patient.
"There were lacerations on his upper thighs and he hadn't had anything to eat before overdosing, meaning that the drug would move quicker through his system."
"Not on the wrists?" Jonathan observed, walking over to the limp figure on the operating table.
"No, but he wrote on his forms that he's on the volleyball team, so changing into uniform would be difficult without anyone noticing that he was cutting himself."
Jonathan rolled his eyes, and began to gag the unconscious man. It wouldn't do for Bruce to hear anything strange over the telephone, would it? "Well, drive him over when you're free," he said, screwing on the needle of a syringe. There was bound to be some useless intern lounging around somewhere who could deal with Bruce's patient.
"Today's not been very busy, so I'll be right over," Bruce said.
Jonathan cut the call and tossed the phone onto the tabletop next to the sink. It seemed the gag wouldn't be necessary at all. He'd hoped Bruce would be busy, but it seemed that the world was just not going his way today.
"Really, Bruce Wayne, you are just as big an annoyance as your father," he said dryly.
He glanced at the clock that hung above the door. Rush hour. Wonderful, Wayne wouldn't arrive for at least half an hour, he thought while examining the man's forearm to find a vein. That was some consolation at least.
He sighed as he injected the man with fear toxin. Two milliliters. Now, all that remained was to wait and see.
He stood up straight and went back to the sink, where he took pen and paper from a drawer.
Crane had long since perfected the fear toxin as an aerosol, if one could truly 'perfect' such a beautiful thing, but he'd found that injections were less conspicuous during work hours.
"Two milliliters," he mused, "Not enough to completely break you, I'm afraid," he said, leaning in close to the patient's face, "but enough to let me have a little fun when you wake up." His lips parted, and he closed his eyes, as if savouring the whimpers that now filled the room. He'd give the serum five minutes to flood the man's system, then... then Jonathan Crane would play on his fears like the best musician that ever lived.
