"This just gets weirder and weirder," Robin confided in Batman once they were out of Harley's room.
"The explosion must've jarred her memory," Batman said, "It's like the last few years haven't even happened."
"That could be only temporary," the doctor tending to Harleen, a tall thin woman with blonde hair tied back and a trademark white coat covering her clothes, told the Caped Crusaders, "As of right now, we're still running tests on everything. It could be temporary amnesia that she'll soon recover from…"
"Or short term or long term memory loss," Batman replied, "A more permanent fix."
"It could be," the doctor concurred, "But right now we're not ruling anything definitive."
"And if she gets her memory back and tries to escape to find the Joker?" Robin asked.
The doctor shook her head, "She has broken bones, busted ribs, fractures and contusions, she's not going anywhere soon. An educated guess is she's going to be in recovery here for at least 7-8 weeks."
"Any chance the Joker could find out she's here?" Batman asked.
"No," the doctor seemed positive about that, "We had her admitted as a Mary Brennigan, less conspicuous than the typical Jane Doe, officially she's here for long term care due to being simultaneously pregnant and in a coma. If the Joker can decipher through all that, he's a genius."
"He prides himself on being an evil one," Robin commented.
"It's unlikely though that he'd ever put it together," Batman replied.
"We're taking all the security measures we can," the doctor explained, "Right now only the two of you and Commissioner Gordon and the paramedics that brought her in are aware of her presence here."
"Just hope there's not a leak somewhere," Robin said.
"We do what we can," the doctor said.
"Now it's our turn," Batman told her as they headed down the hall.
The doctor watched them leave, then turned and headed back into Harleen's room, and looking at the unconscious woman laying in the bed, she gave a small half smile and said, "Well Miss Brennigan, so far things seem to be going fairly well for you."
Harleen forced one eyelid half open and murmured, "My name is…Harleen Quinzel."
"Of course you are," the doctor replied as she adjusted the covers for her patient, "But for the time being, as far as anyone's concerned, you are Mary Brennigan."
"How come?" the former psychiatrist asked weakly.
"So that nutcase from Arkham can't find you," the doctor told her.
"Oh…" Harleen turned her head against the pillow and fell back asleep, "Okay."
The doctor left the room, disappeared down the corridor to the ladies' room, reached into an inside pocket on her coat and took out a small pill bottle. Two of these babies and you'd be good to go for six hours. She couldn't remember how long it had been since she slept. And she'd get none tonight either, she couldn't be sure but she anticipated there might be a late call, requesting another house call from her, at the Joker's hideout. And now that psycho clown had the girl back again, the same girl she'd had to treat last year when she spiked a fever of 105. The Joker had nearly killed her last time, she could hardly wait to see how this time turned out. For the time being she had to keep herself available incase her other patients requested her presence out of the hospital. Being a key physician to the criminal underworld might've been a good way to make a living but staying on the up and up for appearance's sake coupled with it was one candle hardly worth burning at both ends.
First do no harm. An oath she'd managed to uphold throughout her entire career, but she was the one to interpret what qualified as 'harm'. She had a code of ethics, she'd never betray her clients, never drop a dime to the cops about any of their whereabouts, no matter how easy it would've been. That however worked both ways. She worked a lot of cases with Gotham's police force, repairing crime victims and witnesses…she could've unloaded a ton of confidential information to the criminal syndicate, but she never sent a single word their way either. She never played the two sides against each other but she profited off of both; she saw no conflict of interest whatsoever in repairing Harleen Quinzel to the best of her abilities while keeping her location secret from the Joker, and doing a job for him when and where needed. Many was the night she was dragged out of bed on call to realign the crazy clown's nose or set a dislocated shoulder or stitch up that liquid-paper white face, any time he managed to shake Batman and the cops but not unscathed. He was but one of her other patients, though by far the most notorious and to date most recurring one. And, she had a sneaking suspicion, if he didn't get himself killed this time, she would be tending to him yet again sometime in the near future. And if not him, definitely that kid of his.
That, that was the only thing, the only thing making her question her ethics. It wouldn't be anything to make an anonymous call to Commissioner Gordon himself and they could raid the Joker's hideout and get the girl out. But in the end, for better or worse she decided she wasn't going to pick now to start violating her ethics. Instead, she decided she'd work around her ethics.
"What in blinking blue blazes are you doing here?" the Joker demanded to know.
"Word tends to travel fast when you blow up a hospital," the doctor told him as she showed herself in, "It occurred to me you might be in too horribly excruciating a condition to actually call on me, so I figured I might as well come over for myself and check it out."
"Humph, a likely story," the Joker said.
"Believe me, I've got better things to do than make house calls to you," she told him as she pressed two fingers against his eyelids and separated them to open his eyes as wide as possible, "Medicine might be a business but we really don't take kindly to repeat customers."
The Joker's eye snapped back into its regular shape as she let go of his face. "Yeah, but who pays you better?"
"Even for you, Joker, my patience has limits," she said, "Roll 'em."
The Joker did a double take and grumbled under his breath as he rolled up the sleeves on his jacket so she could see his wrists and forearms were still as ghastly white as ever, with no infection set in.
"Hmph," he snorted, "If you're so concerned, how come you're just getting here now and not last night?"
"So sorry," she replied sarcastically, "You know the song, overworked and understaffed, and we just got done with a whole ward full of people turning blue on us, turns out somebody spiked their oatmeal with sodium nitrite."
"You expect me to believe that?" he asked.
"You have the option not to," the doctor told him.
"Harumph, you're just lucky I like you," the Joker warned her.
"And you're lucky my services are available, no other doctor wants to touch you with a 30 foot branding iron," she replied.
"Promises, promises," he sneered.
"Where's the girl?" the doctor asked out of the blue.
"The what?" he asked casually.
"Don't talk to me like I'm one of your thugs," the doctor said as she examined his hand, and then suddenly jerked his thumb clear back, drawing a pained response out of him, "I know you have her."
"Oh really?" the Joker sounded ominous, "And exactly how did you come to figure that out?"
"Because I've had Batman and Commissioner Gordon in my hospital all night demanding to know if anybody matching her description has been brought in, had them breathing down my neck all shift long, just finally got rid of them. The way they tore everything up, they must've really expected to find her, which says to me they're desperate to find her, and if she's not in the hospital and she's not just missing, then that just leaves one possible alternative, that being that you have her, again."
"So what?" he asked nonchalantly.
"So the last time you had her, I got a call in the middle of the night because she had a fever near 106 and was unresponsive. Remember what I said about repeat customers."
"Oh pish and tosh," the Joker told her.
"Well?" she asked firmly.
He stared at her blankly for a minute, before finally pointing over to a door and saying to her, "Feel free to knock yourself out, just remember whose house rules you're playing by here."
The doctor went to the door, opened it up, looked into the room and saw Jacqueline blindfolded and gagged, with her hands tied to a set of pipes in the wall.
"Cute," the doctor dryly commented.
She went over to the woman laying on the floor and checked her vitals, all good so far, she removed the blindfold and saw that Jacqueline had somehow actually fallen asleep like this.
"The little bugger finally got smart and quit struggling about an hour ago," the Joker explained.
"I see," the doctor said, "And the point of this was?"
"Oh you know how kids are," he said cynically, "Always get a rambunctious one in the mix somewhere."
"And if my memory serves, the last time you decided she didn't need to be restrained, she put a hole in your wrist."
"Not that you ever got your hands on it," he remarked in a borderline threatening tone.
"And yet it seems to have healed quite nicely, notwithstanding," she responded snidely.
The Joker glared at her through the corner of one eye, then turned his head and glared at her through the corner of the other, and he said to her, "I think you missed me."
"Don't flatter yourself," the doctor advised him, "Besides, I read the papers about that woman they found in the rubble at Arkham, one of your cronies no less."
"So what?" the Joker wanted to know.
The doctor glared back at him and answered, "If you get so much as a single thought about recruiting me as her replacement," she lifted her medical bag full of necessary surgical tools for on-the-go appointments with her underworld clients and emphasized, "I'll use these on you in ways they were never intended."
"Don't flatter yourself, hon," the Joker advised her, and added, "It's not like I hold auditions for these things."
"You know, the whole thing just begs the question," the doctor said to him, "Why would you choose to stay in Arkham for so long, and then the night you decide to make your grand exit, you encounter her again?"
"What can I say?" he shrugged, "Sometimes the cards just fall your way."
"And sometimes the deck's marked," she replied.
"My dear," he sneered, "The deck's always marked, that's how I always win."
"And what's in the cards this time?" she inquired.
"Sorry," he wagged a finger at her scoldingly, "No help from the peanut gallery. Now I'd strongly suggest you get out of here while your face is still in its original shape."
The doctor stood up and collected her medical bag and told the Joker, "If I get another call in the middle of the night because she's about to croak from an infection, a virus, she gets a cold, and Batman is going to be the least of your worries."
"He already is," the Joker grinned psychotically.
Jacqueline just about dislocated her shoulder but she managed to get her arm positioned just right she could pull her upper body up and set her teeth against the restraints on her wrist. She'd heard the doctor arguing with the Joker, and waited until they were both gone and the door shut to open her eyes and get to work. Fortuitous for her, in the midst of the conversation, the Joker had forgotten to reset her blindfold and gag, so now she at least had something to work with. She bit into the strap of the restraint and chewed it with her teeth, determined to weaken it or somehow tear it apart, then once she had one hand free she could just untie the other. She didn't know how long she'd been in this room but it was way past the amusing state. Her memory was a little blurred but she remembered arguing with the Joker about something, and then she got ambushed by three of his men who ran her into here and tied her up. She'd initially struggled but then she figured it might be better to play dead for a while, and see if she was able to hear anything through the door. Most of the noise had been muffled until the doctor came in, she hadn't been able to pick up anything that might be of actual use to her.
The more she chewed and bit at the restraint, Jacqueline could feel it starting to expand away from her wrist. With any luck, maybe she could get it to snap clear off. She gripped it in her teeth again and pulled her head back, loosening the strap against one side of the wrist but drawing it tight against the other side. She bit it again and pulled it again, and again, and again. Sooner or later, she knew, something had to give. And finally something did, and had Jacqueline's other wrist not still been tied up, her whole body would've skidded across the room as the battered restraint snapped under pressure and broke apart, as it was she just got knocked back from the impact but was still forcefully in a semi-upright position. One down, one to go. She flexed and curled her fingers to get some feeling back into them, and then grabbed at the other restraint to get it undone. This one took considerably less effort but still effort, after a couple minutes it came undone, and she was free, from the pipes anyway.
Now what? If she tried the door, and someone was on the other side, they'd know she'd gotten loose, and then what? And if she waited here quietly until somebody did come in, how long would that be? And either way, what did it matter? Jacqueline's mind started racing, how did that doctor get here? How did she get in? How did she get out was the better question. How did she even know to come here? And from where? She wondered…the Joker was a lot of things, paranoid didn't seem to be one of them, all the same he wasn't entirely reckless, she wondered if there were surveillance cameras set up around this place? If there were, if she could find the monitors, maybe she could find a way leading out of here that she could detour around the Joker and his gang.
And then what? She asked herself, if she could get out, so what? What she needed to do was find a way to get the police to come here, how? She didn't even know where they were.
The windows were barred, but you could still see out them. If there was a phone somewhere in this place, maybe Jacqueline could get a hold of Commissioner Gordon on the phone, and maybe there was something visible from the windows that would pinpoint their location. It might be worth a try, it was worth looking into anyway, but first she had to get out of this room.
She went over to the door and pressed her ear against it, she couldn't hear anything from the other side, even by holding her own breath and trying hard, she couldn't even hear somebody breathing on the other side. So, she assumed the coast was clear. She grabbed the doorknob and tried turning it, it did turn, she opened the door and took a step out…
And came face to face with the Joker.
Jacqueline raised her hands in a gesture of surrender and said to him, "Okay, this round's yours."
He stared at her as if he was trying to bore a hole in her, with those piercing, demented eyes, and he grinned that terrible grin at her that just oozed something sinister and evil.
"This one?" he repeated in mild disbelief, "Don't kid yourself, dear, there's only going to be one winner here."
"That might be," Jacqueline said as she walked by him, "But it sure wasn't your mother." She raised her arms and held her hands in front of her like an animal and dryly added, "Bow-wow, arf-arf."
"Hmph," the Joker watched Jacqueline walk out of the room, then turned back and said to himself, "Oh well, I'm in a good mood, I'll let her live."
"Out of my way," Jacqueline told the Joker's henchmen as she passed them in the corridor, and she noted they were only too happy to oblige in getting far out of her reach. To make sure nobody got the wrong idea, she told them as she headed for the stairs, "I'm going to bed, I'm too depressed to stay conscious."
She was halfway up the dark stairwell when she noticed an almost blinding light shining in from somewhere above. She looked up and saw a window high above her, far out on a wall impossible to reach, and saw the moonlight shining in. Just the moon. She had hoped…and she got an idea. Jacqueline ran up the rest of the stairs and came to one of the empty rooms and went over to the window and lifted the glass up as high as she could. Even here true the windows were still barred, but she tried looking out into the night to see if she could spot anything that would help her figure out their current location. She wasn't sure what she was looking for but she would've settled for anything, even a series of lights across the way indicating a building of some kind nearby being occupied by living people. But nothing. Even with the full moon, Jacqueline couldn't see anything staring out the window into the night.
Feeling her hopes dashed once again, Jacqueline felt the wind go out of her sail and let her body sag against the metal bars in despair. She'd have to wait until morning and see if anything useful was actually visible from any of these windows. Another night in this madhouse with that three-ring circus downstairs. She would, it killed her to acknowledge having to do it, but she could make it another night in this makeshift psycho ward. She'd thought she'd had a plan, now she'd have to make sure of it and that it would work. It was too late in the game for any mistakes to be allowed now.