Dr. Jonathan Crane was not where he wanted to be yet at Arkham Asylum. In fact he was a bit disappointed and anxious he did have the power and prestigious he had hoped for, especially after his recent successful session with Mr. Amsters (a.k.a. the Weevil). After two years at the asylum, Crane still was very much a junior psychologist, given "busy work" and the worst patients while the senior psychologist, Dr. Henry Gooding was the public face of Arkham and took most of the credit for the near miraculous cures Crane was able to pull off from many of the patients deemed hopeless by many doctors, especially Gooding.
As he was gazing at the piles of paperwork, flipping through the patients' files at the numerous psychosis and dementias, Crane remembered back to where it began: Dr. Theodore Hacker.
"My job here at this university is not to be your friend," said Dr. Hacker. "My job here is to teach you the secrets of the mind and how to unlock them."
Dr. Theodore Hacker was a highly-esteemed if not one of the most controversial psychology professors at Gotham City University. Unlike Mr. Chambers at Jonathan's high school, he was dressed sharply in a gray suit with a crisp white dress shirt and black tie. His hair, although it was still dark, was beginning to go slightly gray where he slicked it back by his ears. What he lacked in youth he made up for with intensity shining from his dark eyes.
Dr. Hacker also had the privilege of teaching freshman psychology in an overcrowded auditorium, which he clearly loathed.
"If any of you need to satisfy your core requirement, but don't have to take my class, don't waste my time and I won't waste yours," he said in his opening speech to the class. "Get out. No, I'm not joking. Don't laugh. Get out – right now."
A few students actually left the stuffy, packed to the ceiling auditorium. Jonathan was too busy being fascinated with this brash professor. This fascination changed after he turned in his first psychology paper.
"Mr. Crane, may I see you a moment?"
Jonathan quickly packed up his books and his huge stack of notes from class as the students filed down the long, narrow aisles of the auditorium. Jonathan gazed expectantly at his teacher as he approached his nicked and scratched heavy maple desk. Dr. Hacker slid out Jonathan's research paper without looking at it; it was easy to find – it easily was the thickest paper in the pile.
"Mr. Crane, what nonsense is this," asked Dr. Hacker, flapping the paper in front of Jonathan.
"My research paper on phobias," Jonathan answered.
"It is trite, pointless and boring," said Dr. Hacker, throwing it with disgust on his desk. "Mr. Crane, I don't understand. You clearly are one of my brightest students. You ask some of the hardest questions, questions some of my colleagues never would dare ask. Your mind is sharp, even daring, but this … Why are you playing it safe – for a grade? Is a grade more important than unlocking the mind?"
Jonathan was dumbfounded at what to say. He clutched his books to his chest as though they were a life preserver in turbulent seas.
"I – I so much want to explore the mind, but my scholarship depends on my grades."
Dr. Hacker gazed at him with those piercing near-black eyes.
"So a grade is more important to you than asking the hard questions, but without striving, without daring, you will not reach your full potential, Mr. Crane. If that is what you choose you'll be nothing but a mediocre psychologist, like so many now out there, spouting their milquetoast feel-good drivel to clients wealthy enough to afford it, but too neurotic to be helped."
Hacker shoved Jonathan's paper toward him.
"If you want to be mediocre, pick up that pathetic drivel you call a research paper," said Hacker. "But if you want to do something unique, inspiring, perhaps finally put that mind to good use, then you will write me another paper."
"But – but I don't have enough time," said Jonathan.
"That's what the failures say. Are you one of them, Mr. Crane? Do you choose to be a failure?"
Jonathan's eyes turned to his research paper resting on Hacker's desk. Until five minutes ago he had been very proud of it.
"No," Jonathan whispered. "I don't want to be a failure."
"Good. Then I expect another research paper in say – a month. Good luck to you."
It was then that Jonathan Crane began his long relationship with Arkham Asylum, first born out of desperation from a demanding teacher. Where else could he go to but an institution he knew so well growing up, almost in its shadow, just a few miles from the Narrows?
Arkham Asylum was the equivalent of the haunted house down the street, only you couldn't knock out the windows with rocks – bars covered the windows and the spectral faces gazing back at you were very much alive.
Jonathan wondered about the stories behind those faces and what went on in their minds. Now Jonathan entered through those thick metal gates on his teacher's permission and studied inmates with crippling phobias – phobias that made it so impossible to function it landed them in Arkham.
After Jonathan's brief research stint at the asylum, he continued to return throughout his graduate and doctorate work to Arkham. Quite simply, once he entered, he became fascinated, one even would say obsessed, with the inmates and their disorders. Unlike many of the new doctors who lacked self-confidence or were intimidated by some of the more violent patients, the more extreme the patients, the better for Crane.
He would treat not only the patients no one would dare to touch due to their volatile and sometimes frightening behaviors, but would help patients doctors had long given up hope on. Crane most often could be seen in the oldest wing of Arkham Asylum, commonly known as the Lost Causes Ward.
When Crane first transferred to Arkham, fresh from the university, it was a shock he didn't apply to teach at a prestigious university or open his own practice. Arkham normally was where the least promising psychologists went who couldn't get work elsewhere and here was Gotham City University's best and brightest coming to work at a run-down asylum filled with some of the poorest and most violently insane patients in the city.
It seemed like young Dr. Jonathan Crane, who seemed like nothing more than a bookish, meek teenage boy, had a taste for death, but something very bizarre happened once he came to Arkham. Some of the most violent and sadistic patients – whom the senior psychologist Dr. Henry Gooding made sure Crane treated soon after he arrived – became uncharacteristically submissive around the young doctor. One woman, who seemed lost in her own world for five years, after a few treatments, began to respond to outside stimuli – although she always seemed terrified of Crane.
But working at the asylum was not without its benefits. Although it wouldn't seem it, the asylum was of interest to public figures who were especially interested in this young new promising doctor. It was exposure Crane wouldn't have received locked away in the ivory tower of academia or in a brand new private practice. And as much as Dr. Gooding tried to downplay Crane's achievements, word was getting out that his unconventional (some said unethical) methods were getting results.
Another added advantage was it was close to where his mother lived. Although he had grown to be an independent bachelor with his own apartment, his mother had not moved from where he had grown up and he worried about her. As he sat in his office, gazing at the piles of paperwork, his mind wandered out to the dark, steel-grated window dripping with rain.
Knock! Knock! Knock-knock! Knock!
It was Crane's own private knock code so she'd always know it was him.
"Jonathan!"
Quickly she unbolted the door and threw her arms around him.
"Oh! I'm so glad to see you! So glad! And what brought you back here? I know you're so busy these days."
"Do I need an excuse? But if you need one, I guess this is sufficient enough."
He handed her a plain brown paper bag and she gave him a look of "What did you get me now? You don't need to give me anything." She opened the bag and carefully removed a delicious cinnamon apple cake with a melted sugar glaze on top.
"Oh, Jonathan! This looks wonderful! But you are evil! I'm trying to watch my weight you know."
"You have nothing to watch," he said with a slight smile. "You look great mom."
"Always the flatterer," she said. "I'll put the coffee on and we'll have some tonight."
As he heard the soft clatter of saucers and coffee cups in the kitchen, he looked about the apartment. The old sofa was sagging, the stuffing coming out in the corners. The plaster was beginning the crack and peel on the walls and the aging floor tile was yellowed and grimy. It wasn't because she was a bad housekeeper; it's just the apartment was old, the furniture dating back from his childhood and he could afford much better for her now.
As she came back with two saucers of steaming coffee and two plates, he pressed his hands together, wondering how and when to phrase this.
"So mom, how's work at the factory? You're no longer working there I hope?"
"Oh, not anymore. I'm much happier now. You remember Mary Stanley? She has a tailoring store and I now have a job there as a seamstress. The hours are much better and I'm paid a bit more."
"But you still take the train to get back home at night, is that correct?"
"Of course, Jonathan. It's still too far to walk. Why do you ask?"
He took the coffee and began to sip from it and grimaced.
Forgot to add the sugar.
"I – I was just wondering mom. You know the place where my apartment is? It's a much nicer area and the rent fees are low."
"You want me to move, Jonathan? After all these years here? This my home – where your home is."
"It's just I want you to be safe."
"Jonathan Thomas Crane, now who is mothering whom?"
She took a bite of her cake.
"Mmm! Oh, this is good cake!"
"Mom, it's just – at the asylum, sometimes we get criminals, the criminally insane. I treat them."
"Dear Lord no, Jonathan!"
Her fork clattered to plate and she gazed at him in stunned silence.
"Mom, you know it's no secret where I work and who I work with day in and day out, but these criminally insane, many do come from here, not far from here and more seem to come the longer I stay there. But this area is dangerous mom and I want you to move, for your own sake. You can stay with me until you find an apartment you like and –"
"Jonathan, I'll be fine. Who I'm more worried about is you. The criminally insane? You never told me about that! Are you all right? They haven't hurt you, have they?"
"No." He smiled. "On the contrary, they have helped me a great deal."
"I'm so relieved. But Jonathan, I've noticed something else – something has changed – your eyes. They have changed somehow. I don't know what."
He was almost afraid to meet his mother's gaze, almost afraid that she'd see Scarecrow gazing back at her.
"No, I'm being silly I think," she said, shaking her head and smiling. "Now finish your coffee before it gets cold. And I'll be fine, Jonathan. All these years I've taken care of myself quite well. Shadows won't scare me now."
Crane gazed at the rain dripping off the grate of the window. Even in the doctors' offices there were bars on the windows at the asylum in case a patient decided he wanted to escape by diving through the glass.
The phone rang. Without looking Crane swiftly picked it up.
"This is Dr. Jonathan Crane speaking."
"Dr. Jonathan Crane? This is Mercy Hospital."
"Yes. Is there a patient you need me to see for mental evaluation," asked Crane.
"Uh, no, sir. Sarah Anne Crane is your mother? Isn't she, Dr. Crane?"
He froze, his fingers clenching the black plastic receiver of the phone.
"I'm sorry to give you word of this, Dr. Crane but – but she was admitted just a half an hour ago to the hospital."
"What's the matter with her? Is she okay?"
All semblance of composure evaporated from the normally cool and collected Dr. Crane. His teeth gritted and his nails dug into the plastic of the phone. Without saying "goodbye" or "thank you" he slammed the phone down, then thought better of it. He turned around and smashed the phone into the grated window.