Chapter 36: Mad as Birds
"It's kind of late for a session, Doctor Crane."
Awake, then. And a lot more aware than he had expected. "How do you know?"
Rebecca motioned around her as best as one could with their arms strapped to their chest, "Lights out. At least half an hour ago. So it's maybe... eleven? Bed time."
"Lights out was nine and a half hours ago." Crane lied, easily, walking over to her to undo the straightjacket, "It's time to get up, time for your medication."
She looked at him, cocking an eyebrow, "I don't take my medication anymore, remember?"
He managed an emotionless smile, "Then it's just time to get up." He tugged a little at her now freed arm, and, as usual, she stood, compliantly, "Come on. Let's go for a walk."
She hesitated at the door, a hand catching onto the doorframe as if to stop herself from falling. "I'm so so tired."
He pulled a little harder. "You won't be soon. Come on."
The girl obeyed, with a slight, strange laugh, stumbling forwards a little as if she'd had a few too many to drink, "Arkham Asylum... A stranger has come to share my room in the house not right in the head, a girl mad as birds..."
He ignored the recitation, very used to it now, instead leading her silently down the corridors.
"Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume. Strait in the mazed bed, she deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds."
"Dylan Thomas, Love in the Asylum. Well remembered. High school English, was it?"
"Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room, as large as the dead, or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards."
"How are you feeling today?" he asked these questions blandly, automatically, expecting no real answer.
"She has come possessed who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall, possessed by the skies."
"Are you feeling any better?"
"She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust yet raves at her will on the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears."
Nearing the door now. Crane could hear the buckles on the jacket clink together as she walked, her hands open and by her sides. He knew he didn't need the restraints while she was in this mood. Later, when the anger hit, or the fear, maybe. But not now.
"And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last, I may without fail suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars."
"Beautiful." He murmured, taking the first step into their room as was now customary, and allowing her to follow on behind.
Rebecca sat in her chair, silently. It wasn't the green leather chair from his office, instead a cold plastic school chair, but she had still adopted it, having long since learned that it was the one with the best view of the door.
He felt her watching him prop it open with a doorstop, but before he could turn back she had opened her mouth, "It wasn't high school."
He turned back to her, cocking an eyebrow, "Sorry?"
"Thomas. It wasn't high school. He was my mother's favourite poet. And that's my favourite poem."
"Is that so?"
She leaned back on the chair, watching as the front two feet left the floor, and then clicked back down again, "Arkham Asylum... Do you know where 'The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane' got its name?"
Clunk. Clunk. He looked at her for a second. "Yes, I do."
"Amadeus Arkham named it after his mother, Elizabeth, who had been mentally ill." Rebecca continued, as if she hadn't heard him. Maybe she hadn't. "Who he helped commit suicide. Doctor Arkham moved his family here, years and years ago. His wife and his daughter. Then an old patient of his escaped. Hawkins. He broke into Arkham."
"Miss Wells -"
"He killed his wife and his daughter. He raped them. He decapitated the girl, hid her head in a doll's house." She took a few breaths. Her eyes flickered over the blank wall opposite her. "They caught him. Sent him to Arkham. He spent his time there torturing the doctor, telling him his daughter was a whore, telling him exactly how he killed her. How he raped her. What it felt like." Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. "Amadeus Arkham went mad, and killed Hawkins on the anniversary of his family's murder." The chair clicked down to the floor, and didn't come up again, "Electroshock therapy gone wrong."
There was a long silence. Crane looked at her, measuring his response. "What pleasant bedtime stories you've been reading." He replied, finally, his voice flat and calm. He'd have to talk to the nurses about that...
She nodded, vaguely, still not looking at him, "He got away with it, that time. And the time after that. And maybe even the time after that. But eventually he was caught. Imprisoned in his own hospital. Where he died." Suddenly, her eyes locked onto his, "Do you believe in karma, Doctor Crane?"
The answer was easy. "No."
"Then what would you call the circumstances that this man went through?"
"Irony." Then he gave a small smile, reconsidering, "And carelessness."
"Carelessness." She repeated, nodding again, thoughtfully, "He was careless. He wasn't careful." She paused for a moment. "Nowhere near as careful as you, right?"
He looked at her a second, trying to gauge the emotions behind the question. "Yes."
"So very careful..." she paused for a long time, perhaps conferring with one voice or another. Then she glanced up at him, "But you left me alive, right? You should have killed me. When I get out of here -"
"You won't get out of here."
"If I get out of here..." she corrected, nodding, "I'll tell everyone. You won't be able to stop me."
He nodded, thoughtfully, and leant back in his chair, "I'm sorry to resort to the cliché, Miss Wells... but who would believe you? You're a paranoid schizophrenic who has recently gone into remission, locked away in a hospital for the criminally insane."
He should have expected the response, but it still took him slightly by surprise as she shot to her feet, anger burned into her features: "I'm not a criminal!"
"That's not what whoever will read your file will think, Miss Wells." He leafed through a paper file on a desk beside him. It wasn't hers, but he doubted she'd notice. "Theft. Vandalism."
She raised an eyebrow, "Vandalism?"
He glanced up at her, "You trashed your cell."
She actually laughed, and then shook her head, sceptically, "I told you, that wasn't me, that was the Joker!"
"Yes, and was that before or after you cut him with a scalpel?"
That one threw her. She hesitated, just looking at him for a moment. "He... he brought that in. Not me."
He nodded, ignoring this distinction, and went back to the blank page, "Assault. Intimidation."
"Intimidation? I haven't intimidated anybody!"
"Refusing to eat, refusing to take medication, violent, uncontrollable mood-swings, intense paranoia..." he stopped there, glancing back up at her again, "You've been making wild accusations about my staff and I since the day you got here." He let that settle, and then leant towards her a little, "Rebecca. Who will believe you."
Rebecca paused for a very long time. Then she shook her head, "Elaine. My psychiatrist, Elaine, she'd believe me."
"Doctor Moss is at the moment on sabbatical." He replied, easily, "And I'm afraid I haven't got a forwarding address or number for her. My apologies."
She looked at him. He knew where her mind was going, and knew how difficult this was going to be for her. She managed it: "Werner. Nurse Werner."
Crane cocked an eyebrow, not about to make this any easier, "Nurse Werner? You mean the nurse you drove out of the hospital? The nurse you told you never wanted to see again?"
She winced, looking guilty as hell, "She... she knows I wouldn't... she knows I didn't..."
"You're sure about that?"
She hesitated again. Her hands were beginning to shake a bit, and she clenched them into fists. But she was still looking determined, despite the fear, "She knows. I want to see her."
Crane shook his head, "That's not going to be possible."
The girl actually took a step forwards, persisting, "I want to see her. She's my nurse. I'm allowed."
"You misunderstand me. It's not possible."
She frowned. The shaking stopped, and for once he seemed to have her full attention, "What d'you mean?"
He paused, looking at her. Then he nodded towards her chair, eyes still on hers, "Perhaps you should sit."
She appeared to be frozen to the spot. "Perhaps you should stop quoting clichés."
He smiled a little. Then he looked at her. This could get difficult, but he had always known it wasn't going to be easy. In effect, what he was asking was for Crow to be completely different to what he fundamentally was. Scarecrow was not gentle. But... if his alter ego wanted to finally get himself full control of this little patient... he would do what he said. He knew that he would have to try to suppress his usually feral nature.
Jonathan Crane took a slow, deep breath, subduing his doppelgänger as best as he could. Then he shook his head, "Nurse Werner is dead."
A phone rang in an empty house. The curtains closed, the lights off, the chime rang once, twice, three times...
The answering machine whirred and clicked as it turned on, "Hey, you've got Claire Rodriguez, you know the drill."
It beeped.
"Claire? Claire, you in?" the sound of traffic down a bad speaker rattled around the empty space, "This is Andrea, Claire, I have to speak with you. Dammit, you're not answering your cell." The caller sighed, impatiently, more rattles and clunks going down the line, "Claire, pick up the phone! Christ, come on, how long does a damned shower -" a squeal of brakes, the noise of an angry horn, "Shit! Hell. Christ, that was close. Teach me not to drive while on the cell, hey? Anyway, Claire, listen. I was just down Gotham General visiting Tweedledum, and you have no idea what I just found out."