Chapter Three: In the Event of Cardiac Collapse
As Bane continued to force himself to eat the overly processed bread and wash it down with the bitter coffee, back in Gotham City, Bruce directed his driver to head back to his sprawling estate before closing the partition, creating privacy for himself and Selina.
"Show me what I've missed," Bruce demanded raggedly before fucking Selina behind the heavily tinted glass and lapping at her soaking wet pussy like a starving man looking for his oasis in the desert.
The sun passed through the sky as Maureen spent the rest of her day in a meeting with the new pharmacist team that had transferred from the specialty psychiatric disorder center, Shady Juniper.
The married pharmacists, Jakub and Sara Carlton, both had Ph.D.'s in Pharmacology and had just celebrated their fifteenth anniversary.
Maureen and the newly employed couple reviewed each inmate's pharmaceutical regiment, allergies, and recent lab work.
The rest of the day flew by for Maureen as Bane spent the afternoon, flat on his back on the stiff cot, his hands folded under his head. He stared up at the ceiling, the front of his mind overlaid an image of a maximum penitentiary cell and juxtaposed his reality.
Bane closed his eyes as a chill descended and his hackles rose, knowing he would be in a constant fight to rule in prison whereas Arkham would allow him to descend to the top of the food chain and dominate.
The day ended and the night was alive in Gotham City as a small faction of men that had survived the roundup after his failed attempt to liberate the city. These dangerous men were waiting for their Messiah to rise up and emerge from the other side of Arkham Asylum, to walk on water and make it rain frogs.
On the opposite end of the Asylum, the Joker paced his large cell, given the extra space since he would stop living within the concrete, barbed wire topped walls.
"Hey," the Joker said to the empty air as he paced the cement floor. "What do you call nuts on the wall?"
He giggled as he reached under the elastic band of his cotton pants and grabbed his hardening length. "Walnuts," he cackled as he began to stroke his cock, coaxing his shaft to stiffening heights.
"What do you call nuts on your chest?" he screeched and skipped to his untouched lunch tray, the bread from the same loaf that had produced Bane's sandwich.
"Chestnuts," the Joker hooted as he pushed his pants down and let the dark, pink head of his cock out for some air as he stroked his rigidity faster and peeled away the stale bread, revealing the square of orange processed cheese.
"And what do you call nuts on your chin?" he crowed as his balls pulled up tight to the base of his body before his cock spasmed and shot out three spurts of sticky cum to splash on the orange square with an expiration date thirty years in the future, give or take a decade.
"My dick in your mouth," the Joker giggled as he shook his cock until the last drops of translucent cum dripped from the smooth head before replacing the piece of bread, the stale slice sucking up his spent seed.
The Joker shrugged out of the rest of his clothes and paced his cell, naked, save for his non-slip socks with the frigidly cold floor. He paced the room until dawn, jerking himself off in the tepid coffee and then over the gelatin until it was shiny from his spilled, glossy sperm before he was nearly out of cum.
In the minutes before dawn, the Joker cleaned himself off, washed his face and put on clean clothes.
Later that morning, the medication tech peeked through the metal grate as she passed him his medication and watched him swallow his medication with the cold coffee. She smiled at the sandwich crusts remaining on his plate, it instantly reminded her of her grandson and his finicky eating habits.
After the early morning hours crawled by, Bane was disturbed from staring out his cell window by the clanking of the heavy lock on his numbered door.
As Boris politely greeted Bane and prepared him for the trip up the elevator and to the opposite wing for his session with Dr. Hightower, across the facility, in the corner office that was Bane's destination, Maureen and Tommy McShane traded football barbs and made a bet on the upcoming evening home game.
Tommy pressed the start button on a fresh pot of coffee before leaving Maureen to her few minutes of peace before Bane arrived.
"Your quarterback throws like a girl," Tommy giggled in a high-pitch tone and shut the door before Maureen could retort.
"I'll remember that," Maureen called to the closed door as she settled in her plush chair and opened Bane's file before turning her notepad to a fresh page, dating the top, right corner.
As Maureen filled her coffee cup, Bane was led down the hall to her office.
Maureen heard the metallic clinking of his ankle chains dragging as he was escorted closer. She opened the door shortly after Boris knocked.
"Good afternoon," she said in greeting to both of them and stood aside so Boris could secure Bane to the office chair.
"Thank you Boris," Maureen said with a warm smile that quickly faded away to an expression of empty neutrality as she settled back behind her desk and picked up her cup.
"How are you feeling?" she asked before taking a sip off the still scalding Columbian brew.
"No different than yesterday," Bane said in a clipped tone. He had developed some severe chest pain as he had been walked from his cell to her office. He'd been experiencing bouts of pressure that randomly came and went but grew in painful magnitude each time they reappeared.
Maureen noted his change in pitch from the previous day before she let her eyes freely scrutinize his face for any sign of strain. She trailed her gaze down his neck, searching for imbalance in the vascular structures. "Are you currently experiencing any pain or discomfort?"
"No," Bane managed in a stronger voice, imbuing strength from a reserve well.
Maureen nodded and took another sip before setting her cup aside. "How did you sleep?"
"Are you going to ask me these questions every time?" Bane asked, trying to force his anger to override the pain that threatened to leech into his spoken syllables.
"Yes," Maureen answered succinctly and held his gaze.
Bane felt the tip of the sword pierce his armor when he blinked first and dropped his eyes to the front of her desk. He could see the very tips of her heels from under the desk, he looked up from the peek of her faux snakeskin shoes, finding her eyes still on him, unblinking.
"How do my sleeping habits help you decide on my mental state?"
"Your sleep, eating and digestive habits are all tied to your mental health and decision-making processes. I need to establish your baseline, root out abnormalities and ascertain if there were physiological variables that influenced your alleged behavior."
"Alleged? Have you not seen been witness to my behavior on any form of recorded material?"
Maureen nodded, "I've seen an abundance of footage, but a verdict has not been rendered and you are innocent until proven guilty."
"Do you believe I am innocent?"
"That's not relevant," she said flatly and reached for the grass-green candies that speckled the top of her freshly refilled candy dish.
"Do you believe I am innocent?" he pressed.
"Are you in pain?" she rebutted.
"It's tolerable, do you believe I am innocent?"
"No, not of the crimes," Maureen said before adding. "But, I do have doubts to your state of mind."
Bane held her gaze before nodding. "Thank you."
"Where's your pain located?" Maureen plowed on.
"Chest," Bane relented.
"Which side?"
"Left."
Maureen nodded, recalling his thoracotomy had been performed on his left lung. "Any nausea, vomiting, headache?" she asked and continued through a list of symptoms, picking up the phone and dialing the pharmacy when he nodded to several warning signs.
"Dr. Carlton, hello, it's Maureen Hightower," she opened with when Sara Carlton picked up the ringing phone.
On the other end, Sara nodded and made notes of the medications to rush to Maureen's office based on the signs and symptoms she was hearing.
Maureen ended the call and dialed the hospital wing and ordered a gurney and heart monitor to her office immediately before abruptly ending the call.
Maureen yanked open her door and was flooded with relief when she found Ferguson and Boris bullshitting about their weekends.
"I need some help in here," she called before returning to Bane's restrained form as the signs she'd been reading as an impending cardiac event, blossomed inside him, causing him to lose consciousness as his heart began to flutter in its opaque pericardial sac. His heart's electrical rhythm was thrown into chaos and fell into near stillness as Maureen and Ferguson began CPR as soon as they could settle Bane's slack form to the floor.
Ferguson squeezed the inflatable mask and forced oxygen into Bane's still healing and compromised lungs, taking turns with Maureen providing chest compressions, the heel of her palm pressing in a staccato rhythm against Bane's sternum.
Maureen and Ferguson were relieved of circulating Bane's blood and filling him with oxygen when the hospital techs arrived and cut off Bane's cotton hospital top, eventually shocking his heart into rhythm and coaxing him back to life.
Maureen, Boris, and Ferguson all watched Bane be loaded onto the hospital gurney and wheeled to the elevator.
"Are you coming with doctor?" the skinny hospital tech asked as they pushed the gurney with Bane onto the elevator.
"Yes," Maureen said automatically and accompanied an unconscious but alive Bane to the trauma suite of Arkham Asylum's hospital wing.
As Maureen orbited the team working on Bane, a spectator at the feast as an IV was placed in the crook of his muscular forearm and he was stabilized, across the city, Mayor James Gordon sat behind his magnificent desk, a replica of The Resolute.
He dropped the phone back into its receiver, watching it fall from his limp fingers as the caller, a friend at the morgue, told him that detective sergeant John Blake was dead.
Gordon shook his head, thinking that he'd just seen Blake a couple days before the parade and inauguration. He picked up the phone and pressed the button that connected him to his secretary Melba Pierce-Owens.
"Yes Mr. Mayor?" Melba asked as she picked up his call.
"Melba, I'd like to take my wife out for a nice dinner tonight. Can you make me reservations at Feu Rouge?"
"Of course Mr. Mayor, 8 pm?"
"Yes, thank you, oh and Melba, could you send her some flowers? Tulips?"
Gordon could hear the smile in Melba's voice before she ended the call and went about getting him a table at one of the most exclusive restaurants in the state, boasting a celebrity chef and multiple Michelin Stars.
As Gordon's day passed with press conferences about the progress of the terrorist Bane getting to the courtroom floor and meeting his wealthy donors, back at Arkham Asylum, Maureen eventually returned to her office when Bane's heart rhythm remained stable, and his vitals came back into the range of normal measurement.
She washed her hands and settled behind her desk, pulling the Joker's chart from the locked drawer before she put Bane's file away after noting his cardiac event, current treatment and expected outcomes. Maureen made a mental note to swing by the hospital wing before she left the Asylum for the day.
Maureen wiped residual chunks of sea salt from her fingertips after digging in the cannister of cashews when Arnold Miles arrived even earlier than usual with the Joker for his session.
Maureen had consulted with another psychologist and decided to increase the frequency of the Joker's sessions per week.
She opened the door to a frowning, still fat, Arnold, and wide, toothy smiling Joker.
Maureen waited until Arnold secured the Joker to the chair and closed the door after him to speak.
"How are you feeling?" she asked, taking note of the Joker's clean fingernails, and scrubbed clean face.
"Refreshed, reborn," the Joker proclaimed gleefully.
"Really? That's wonderful? What do you attribute this feeling to?"
"I attended an early morning Eucharist."
"You did?" Maureen asked as she picked up her pencil. "In the chapel?"
The Joker shook his head, "in my room, just me and mother."
"Your mother?"
"No, no, no," the Joker tisked. "The holy mother."
Maureen nodded as the Joker slowly licked his lips and stared at her from under the fringe of his lashes. "I swallowed the host."
"Well I'm glad you found some restoration, it's nice to see you looking so lively," Maureen murmured as she plucked several candies from the dish, not bothering to hunt and search for a specific color.
The Joker's eyes danced around her office, always on the lookout for a new book, different picture or blossoming lily nestled among the garden that was her windowsill.
"When did you get that?" he asked and nodded his sharp chin in the direction of a delicate vase, a tall column of whisper thin glass in a turquoise blue.
"Oh, that was a gift from my mother-in-law for Christmas years ago, I'll be able to see it more here than home," Maureen added.
"How's the new medication making you feel?" she sharply pivoted.
"Do you get along with your mother-in-law?"
Maureen set down her pencil and steepled her fingertips under her jaw, knowing the Joker wasn't going to drop his line of questioning.
"Stella, well, Stella and I only have Josef in common," she said with a dry chuckle.
The Joker nodded, satisfied at her answer for the moment. "I've been sick a lot after the pink pill," he admitted, despising the vulnerable feeling of his intestines turning inside out and trying to crawl up his windpipe, acidic bile burning his throat and forcing hot tears to his eyes as he emptied his stomach contents into the stainless-steel toilet.
Maureen rifled through his file to the page of current medications and squinted at the values and known contraindications. She picked up the phone and called the pharmacy, Sara Carlton again answered the phone.
"Hello Dr. Carlton, it's Maureen Hightower again. I need you to adjust the Joker's reflux medication, it's interacting poorly with the vasodilator."
The two women exchanged some brief pleasantries before Maureen ended the call.
"I'm going to have the reflux medication stopped until we can try a new one."
The Joker nodded, "thank you," he said, feeling benevolent.
"How's your sleeping been? Have your nightmares been continuing?"
The Joker shrugged as much as the restraints allowed. "My dreams have been better," he murmured, slumping in the chair, and spreading his thighs as far apart as the ankle cuffs would allow.
Maureen smiled as she stood and abruptly walked to the door, having a no bullshit policy for sexual maleficence.
"Wait, wait, I'm sorry," the Joker babbled, adding when Maureen paused her hand on the brushed silver doorknob. "I'm sorry doc, I got a little excited."
Maureen regarded the Joker's innocent expression and held up her finger. "Once more and I call Ferguson in here, do you understand?"
"Yes doctor, I promise I'll be a good boy," he crooned.
Maureen smiled tightly and sat back down behind her desk and picked up her pencil, making a few shorthand notes to later transcribe to Dorothy, no relation, Parker.
"Would you like to tell me about the night that landed you here permanently?" Maureen asked, using the Joker's jovial state of mind to get him to open up about the bloodbath that earned him a lifetime stay at Arkham Asylum.
"Now doc," the Joker drawled. "Why'd ya have to go and ruin the mood?"
"I thought maybe after this morning, you'd be seeking to be absolved, to confess," Maureen poked.
The Joker sniffed hard and sat up as straight as he could.
Maureen always felt a cold trickle of fear when the Joker's eyes bled to a void of blackness.
"I was just trying to bring some life to the party," he growled. "It's not my fault they couldn't keep up," he added with a wink.
"Couldn't keep up?" she pounced on. "How would you characterize your actions that night on the rooftop?"
"Necessary," the Joker purred.
"How was any of that necessary?"
"I told you, the party was boring, those kids promised a good time."
"Half of those kids were only sixteen," Maureen asked. "They couldn't consent to anything you promised in return."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what the fucking judge said too and those sniveling parents. I just wanted to see if some of them could fly," he giggled. "They couldn't," he howled and began bucking in the chair, yanking at the wrist cuffs hard enough to bring blood to the surface.
"Do you regret any of your actions from that night?"
"Yes," the Joker said, surprising Maureen.
"What do you regret?"
"That I didn't fuck that little bitch before I threw her off the roof. I'm going to fuck you before I throw you out that goddamn window," the Joker screeched as he lunged forward in the chair as far as the cuffs, chains, and shackles would allow.
Maureen wordlessly stood and walked calmly to her office door as the Joker waggled his tongue at her. "Lock the door, come ride me doctor, you're tall enough."
Maureen ignored him and yanked open her door. "Ferguson, could you please collect the Joker and take him back to his cell. I'll have one of the pharmacy staff meet you downstairs to give him a tranquilizer."
"Right away Dr. Hightower," Ferguson said, calling for a gurney and restraint kit.
Maureen leaned against the wall and danced her eyes over her botanical garden as the Joker was packed up, strapped down and eventually doped up until he was a mewling, sightless newborn.
Maureen let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding when the lingering psych tech closed the door behind him, and she was finally left in silence. "What's with this day?" she asked a blooming dahlia, the lush petals a liquid burgundy with bright yellow striations.
She looked up at the clock and decided the workday was over. After dictating her notes and putting away all of her files and turning off the coffeemaker, Maureen pulled on her peacoat and made her way across the facility to the hospital wing.
Bane had since been moved to a treatment room and had an EKG performed as well as a chest x-ray and ultrasound. Maureen consulted with the doctor who said that Bane had thrown a clot that had built up most likely during his lung procedure. He'd make a full recovery after no further arterial blockages were detected.
Maureen approached the end of Bane's narrow hospital bed. His limbs were restrained, and he had strong painkillers on a steady IV drip rate.
Bane stirred when he heard the click of Maureen's red-soled heels on the tiled floor.
Bane felt Maureen's eyes on his face. "Aren't you going to ask me how I'm feeling?" he croaked.
Maureen gave a small smile, "how are you feeling?"
"I'm in pain," he managed on a hoarse voice.
"Next time you have that kind of pain, could you tell someone? It doesn't have to be me," she added.
Bane grunted and shifted uncomfortably; his chest felt like it was being compressed with a steel anvil. "Do you visit all your patients or is it because of my celebrity status?" he asked, simultaneously coughing and wincing.
"I visit everyone," Maureen said as she watched the green line of his P waves on the heart monitor before she continued. "Someone from the pharmacy will be in later to perform a few rapid blood tests."
Bane nodded, not trusting the strength of his voice and would rather remain mute than risk sounding weak.
Maureen left him to a tech that came in to record his vitals from the monitor and adjust the flow rate of his IV.
In the following few hours, Maureen made her way home after stopping for greasy, takeout, comfort food to go with her chilled bottle of chardonnay in the fridge of her vaulted ceiling kitchen. While Maureen sat on her sofa and ate the burger on a sesame seed bun with a few flaccid lettuce leaves, back in the hospital wing of Arkham, Sara Carlton ran some rapid blood tests on Bane at his bedside.
Bane was drowsy from the medication that was being fed into his body and waterboarding his bloodstream with the liquid opiate as Sara ran her tests and recorded the result in his chart.
Bane cracked open his eyelids, unable to keep from noticing the similarity Sara had to Maureen's frame. The primary difference was Sara's golden hair versus the stark contrast of Maureen's dark hair against the white lab coat.
Bane lapsed back into a drugged sleep and didn't notice Sara leave the room.
The moon rose high and shined brightly in the night sky, observing all of the city's sleeping citizens and criminals.
The Joker and Bane both spent the night chemically and physically restrained while Maureen passed out on her sofa with a bellyful of booze and fast-food fries dunked in ketchup.
