I awoke to an icy cold sensation and a deep pain in my chest. It took me a few minutes to remember what had happened. When I finally came to I realized I was lying on a steel medical table in some sort of building. It wasn't a warehouse, instead it looked like a rundown circus. I tried to sit up and fight the pain, but I became light headed and fell back on the table with a thud. Breathing became a chore all too quickly and I wondered how I was still alive after taking a bullet to the chest without medical attention. I've been shot before, but never in such a dangerous spot, and one way or another, an ambulance arrived and took me to the emergency room. This time I was in some weird place with what seemed to be just a bandage covering my wound.
I heard the footsteps of someone and I tried to get up and hopefully get away before whoever it was got to me. I just wanted to be done with this. I killed everyone, but the Joker himself. I considered that enough protection for the drug house for now. I wanted to leave and go home and tell Doozie everything was fine and to let Jimmy off the hook. No such luck did I find because by the time I had fought the aching enough to sit up my heart was pounding and I felt light headed again. I couldn't continue to sit up unless I wanted to vomit.
"Lay down, sugah," a high-pitched voice said. I looked over and saw a woman with pale white skin, a black mask and black shoe on one foot and a red one on the other. She was dressed in a trampy nurse outfit, with the little hat and the thigh-high panty hose.
"Who are you?" I demanded. I had to lie back down, but I tried to prop myself up on my elbow.
"Call me, Hawley…Hawley Quinn." Beneath that thick Boston accent I understood what she said. Harley Quinn, the Joker's female counterpart. From what I've heard, she's just as crazy as the Joker and just as obsessed over the whole clown get-up.
"What do you want from me?" I demanded yet again. "Why am I here?"
"You've been shot. A little mishap with Mistah J. is all. It happens sometimes…" she answered. "But not to worry, sweethawt. I dabbled in the medical field for quite some time. I got ya all fixed up."
"Let me go! Now!"
"Ya can't leave!" she hollered. "Ya much too frail! Ya gotta stay here until that hole is all healed up…and maybe even longah. Dependin' on what Doctah J. says."
"Who's Doctor J.?" I asked.
"Why that's me, my boy!" said a familiar voice. The Joker walked up to the table, how he got to me I didn't see. He was wearing a white coat with white pants a light strapped to his head like a doctor from the fifties. "Doctor J., at your service," he said bowing dramatically. "Now listen, my boy. That wound is a lot deeper than it looks. It needs a little TLC…which is going to be very painful and you probably won't live to see it healed. BUT! I have decided to donate to you all of my superior medical skills and take the risk of killing you to fix you up. Understand?"
"Just let me go and I swear I won't say anything about the drug house," I bargained.
"I think that's a yes, Nurse Harley!" Harley started clapping and giggling. "Alright, let's begin," he said. Harley started strapping me to the table. I swung my arm at her but the Joker caught it and held me down. I was much too weak to fight him off. I was then strapped to the table, unable to move. My heart was racing from the fear I was feeling. I knew this would not be pretty. I had heard so many stories of people dying awful deaths because of the two weirdoes. I didn't want to be another story.
"The patient is ready for surgery, doctah," Harley said.
"Excellent," the Joker grinned. "Get the torch, please." Harley came back with a small blow torch. The Joker lit it up to see if it was working. "Now whatever you do, my boy, don't move." Harley removed the bandage from my chest and the Joker approached me with the torch.
"Get away from me!" I yelled. They both just grinned with pleasure at my fear. "Get away!"
The Joker took the torch to my wound, searing the already tender flesh. I screamed in anguish.
"Hmmm," he sounded. "I think we need to go a bit deeper. What do you think, Nurse Harley?"
"I'll get the scalpel!" I heard her digging through a drawer and when she returned she had a machete. "I couldn't find the scalpel, puddin', so I got this, instead."
"Now, Miss Harley, please be professional. We don't want people to get the wrong idea about us."
"Or do we?" she asked leaning over the table. They giggled and rubbed their noses together while he scratched the underside of her chin.
"Now make a small incision right through the wound, nurse." She slid the edge machete roughly across my open sore. I gritted my teeth the entire time. Once she was finished, the blade had my blood smeared across it and then the Joker started torching my skin again. The only way to describe such a painful sensation is the tips of a thousand cigarettes were all being put out on my bullet hole wound at the same time, filling the air with the smell of burnt flesh and flame.
"Looks like we're all done here. You should be better in no time, sir," the Joker smiled. Harley had a piece of paper in her hand, she peeled off smiley face sticker from it and stuck it to my cheek. "Aw, how kind, Nurse Harley. Isn't she a sweety?"
"What's….wrong with you…people?" I managed.
"Now, now," the Joker continued. "Don't be so rude. I'll give you a nice sedative to take the edge off….or stop your heart!" He then busted out laughing. He grabbed a syringe and stuck me with the needle and injected into me some kind of liquid. I was afraid it was something not made to be injected into humans. I figured I would not wake up again, but maybe that's a good thing.
Soon after the injection I began to dose off. Joker and Harley started picking everything up and they left arm-in-arm. I had never seen anyone so mentally ill as the Joker and his crazy girlfriend, Harley Quinn.