After the injection, two large orderlies dragged him back to his cell and threw him inside. At least they might have taken off the straightjacket first, but while I wasn't clear about the details of the pudding incident, I gathered he was lucky he wasn't getting the full Hannibal Lecter treatment. Something about an institutional-sized can of Lucky Leaf chocolate pudding and a turkey baster…

Then the convulsions hit. Cramps so strong and painful I thought his bones would crack began in his stomach and spread out from there. Threads in the straitjacket popped audibly under the strain, and I could feel a wave of nausea pass over him/us. Then a burning tide of vomit surged up his throat, filling his mouth, his sinuses, his nose…

Tiny black explosions started going off inside his eyelids and the world started getting thin and fragile around the edges for both of us. He was aspirating his own vomit and drowning on dry land.

Less than three hours old and already dying, I panicked. Stepping out of his head, I tried pounding on his solar plexus, hoping it would work like the Heimlich Maneuver, but his chest was no more solid than air, or else my hands weren't solid, which was much more likely. I couldn't see if I had hands. I couldn't see myself. I snapped back into him as if a bungee cord bound us together.

The controls for his muscles had to be somewhere in there, in his head, in his spinal column. He was heavy, an elephant, a mountain, an ocean. All I had to do was turn him over. Something twitched, another muscle flexed. A little further, and then gravity would work for me instead of against me. Move! I had no more strength than a wet paper bag, but I was desperate.

He flopped like a gaffed fish when he rolled over. Then he spluttered and heaved and spewed, and I knew he/we would live. The black explosions went away and the world became solid again as oxygen flooded back into his bloodstream. The spasms, however, continued. No wonder he didn't take medications, if that was the sort of reaction he had to them.

Eventually the convulsions eased up, and he slept. I felt him dropping off, and I nearly fell asleep too. However, I stopped myself by getting as far away from him as I could. Not far. Only arm's length, but far enough so I wasn't living his every thought. His waking thoughts were bad enough, so how much worse would his dreams be? Also, I couldn't help but wonder if I would ever wake up again.

I watched him. I watched over him. There he lay, a madman, a villain, and a clown, beautiful and damaged as a fallen angel. He was handsome; the puckered scars that pulled his mouth out of shape didn't obliterate that. The dark taupe around his sunken eyes wasn't makeup; that told me he was sleeping poorly and not eating enough fresh fruit and vegetables.

A mass murderer and a terrorist. The world would be better off without him, that I knew, but I had saved his life because I was selfish enough to want to live. But was I alive? Who was I? What was I?

A few years ago, it seemed like every other mental patient had multiple personality disorder or disassociate identity disorder. An overwhelming psychotic break had splintered…I didn't know his original name. It had splintered whoever he had been into fragments, of which I was one. That would be the simplest explanation: I was what they called an alter. The Joker was probably also an alter, rather than his true self, the boy or youth he had been when—whatever had happened to him, happened. The Joker was strong, the Joker was fearless, the Joker was tough. The Joker could laugh anything off. The Joker could take the abuse, and he, whoever he was, could retreat somewhere deep down into himself and hide.

So why had he created me? Because he needed a better adjusted, saner persona to handle his new environment? All right, maybe I was assuming too much when I called myself a better adjusted and saner persona, but anyone short of a rabid badger on a bad acid trip would be a better adjusted and saner persona. Maybe I was meant to keep him from getting himself killed, his sense of self-preservation having finally woken up.

The Joker might think he wasn't suicidal, but one of the memories I gleaned from him was of a street on fire with Batman on a motorcycle bearing down upon him, and his own voice muttering, "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon. Hit me, hit me, hit me! I want you to do it, I want you to do it!" That was suicidal ideation if ever there was any.

Or maybe I was meant to be a companion who he couldn't drive away, who he couldn't hurt or kill. Someone who would never leave him. Someone who could never leave him.

It could even be a combination. Often there weren't simple answers.

That theory sounded good, but the problem was that multiple personality disorder had been largely discredited in recent years. Most of the cases were created by the diagnosing physicians out of suggestions and wishful thinking. And who ever heard of an alter achieving enough self-awareness to realize she was an alter?

Was I even a she? Well, I had much bigger problems to deal with than my gender identity. Besides, the ancient Greeks believed women had male souls and men had female souls, much like the Chinese notion of yin and yang, where each half had a touch of the other in it. I could be female until proven otherwise; no skin off my nose.

I couldn't stay out of his head forever; I could feel that all too clearly. The tie that bound us would only stay stretched so far, so long. I didn't want to go back in there. His mind was a mess; part sewer, part slaughterhouse, part fun-park, and all of it inextricably mixed together.

His psyche wasn't a kaleidoscope. It was one of those horrendously difficult thousand piece jigsaw puzzles without a proper rectangular outline, where all the pieces were shaped exactly the same so they fit together any which way. And it didn't come with a picture. Only the last three years or so of memories were clear. Before that—At least not all of it was bad. I'd seen moments of contentment with a girl who used honey-vanilla perfume, pleasure in executing a pen-and ink drawing, satisfaction in buying a new leather jacket. But the bad times outnumbered the good.

What was I supposed to do for him? What could I do for myself?

I didn't even have a name. I ought to have one, something that defined me, like the Joker defined him, but what? Something to do with chaos—like the butterfly that flapped its wings in the Amazon and caused cyclones in Nebraska. Butterfly? No. Too frou-frou.

What about Psyche? He's the Psycho, I'm the Psyche?

Stupid.

What had I said to him about the true nature of chaos? It didn't just destroy. It also created. Real chaos had the chance of grace in it.

…Grace was a woman's name, wasn't it?

'Hi. I'm Grace.' I tried. Still sleeping, he flinched a little at the intrusion on his dreams. 'It's all right.' I told him. 'It's just me. Just Grace. I'm here.'

Even if I didn't know why.