Things only got stranger the next day.
"Please lady, they're eating me! They'll kill me if you don't make them go away!" a female patient pleaded.
"Shh. It's alright. We'll make them go away," Julia reassured her patient soothingly, despite the fact nothing was on her.
"I'll get her a tranquilizer," one of the other interns said.
"That would probably be best," Julia replied.
"Will it make these things get off me?!" the patient asked frantically.
"Yes, it will," Julia reassured again. "They'll be gone soon. Now I want you to look at me, nothing else. I'm right here."
The patient quieted down eventually, but she kept looking frantically around her cell, from side to side, until finally the tranquilizer did what it was supposed to, and her eyes slowly closed.
"Something's wrong," Julia said, shaking her head.
"We all know that," a male doctor in the group, named Dave, said.
"I'm going to try again," Julia said. "Maybe I can get Crane to change their prescriptions."
"I think you should wait until break time to do that," he cautioned.
"Well, this is kind of important," she said.
But when she hurried up to his office, he didn't answer her knocks on the door. Maybe he's finally off doing something about these recent events, Julia thought, but something prevented her from turning away and re-joining her co-workers.
She looked both ways, and when she saw the hallway was clear except for her, she silently opened the door and stepped into the empty and surprisingly cozy office, complete with a velvet rug, an organized desk and a shelf full of books. The books were mainly works by Edgar Allan Poe, plus a few by Shakespeare - not as many psychological non-fiction books as she'd expected to see, though there were some on the bottom shelf.
Now I'M the one acting twelve. I should really be helping those people, Julia thought as she moved on to his desk. Harleen was wrong, though; she didn't "like" him, she just wanted to know more about him, things that she could never ask him herself but things she had to know, like why he was so into fear but yet had such a calm demeanor about him.
Something suddenly caught her eye when she looked down at his briefcase under the desk. She bent down to touch the odd material sticking out of the closed briefcase, and saw it was what looked like worn burlap.
No, Julia, no... But yet she still stubbornly unlatched the briefcase to find it was some kind of...
But she didn't have a chance to finish her thought about what it could possibly be. "Can I help you?"
Blood rushed to her face, and she made herself get up and turn around to face him. "I can explain this," she said, while trying to make her heart slow down to its normal pace.
"Oh, well, please do then," Dr. Crane said, eyebrows raised.
"I'm...I'm..." Oh, real smooth, Madison. "I know I shouldn't be in here, but..." Suddenly, a good answer came to her, even if it was a lie. Right now her job could be on the line. "I thought one of your books might have some advice to help our patients," she said quickly.
"And you thought my briefcase might have something as well?"
"Oh...well, when I looked away from the bookshelf I couldn't help but notice some material sticking out of there and..." The back of her head and the palms of her hands tingled. "Please don't fire me," she said in a near whisper. "I'm sorry."
"Curiosity is a normal thing," he replied, going around his desk and closing the suitcase back; she noticed he was extra careful this time to make sure the rough cloth didn't stick out. "And you may have a slight neurotic problem yourself," he added with a small laugh. "I won't fire you."
She couldn't have been more relieved. "Thank you...I promise I'll never do it again."
Dr. Crane smiled. "I know you won't."
Even as she hopped from patient to patient after catching up with her peers (and Harleen asking her with a smirk why her visit to the office took so long), desperately trying to calm each of their patients down and assure them that the things they saw weren't real, she kept thinking to herself, Why did I have to be so stupid? I really got off lucky this time.
Her stomach fluttered even more during break when she got to the table where she and the others usually sat, and she saw a note waiting for her.
Ms. Madison,
Meet me at the coffee shop when your shift ends, and I'll tell you everything you need to know.
-Crane
Julia knew there were tons of coffee shops in Gotham City, but knew which one he was talking about. Many times she'd driven past the one nearest to Arkham where employees often liked to go after work for one more burst of energy when they weren't quite ready to turn in for the night.
She quickly pocketed the note, thinking she was still alone, but Dave and Velonda, a friend of hers at Arkham, saw anyway.
"What was that?" Velonda asked.
"Please don't let Harleen see," Julia said with a half-hearted smile. "Just because I went to the library last night to ask Crane about the patients' behavior, she now thinks we're lovebirds."
Velonda just laughed, but Dave shuddered. "Well I'm glad you're not, because sometimes I don't know about him. The way he keeps his sentences so short and cut, and the way he looks at people out of the corners of his eyes..."
"I'm sure he's a good person," Julia said, waving away his worries. "I mean, I think they check people's backgrounds and records before letting them become chief administrator of a place like this."
"But what did that note say? I mean, if you don't mind telling us," Velonda said carefully.
"Oh, he just wanted to meet me at the coffee shop tonight after work."
Velonda and Dave shared glances.
Julia sighed. "Please, not you too. I assure you it's a business meeting, not a date."
Harleen waltzed in not long after Julia had said that, and she put a quick finger to the lips to signal her friends to say no more on the matter.
But still, Dave whispered across the table, "I'd take a weapon of some sort just in case. Something about this just doesn't seem right."
He sounded just like her father, but then again, Dave's words were none too comforting to think about. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn't.