Doctor Birch sat at her desk, quietly reviewing her notes of the morning's therapy session while Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata filled the air, played over the speakers of her computer via iTunes. Hazel found that a soothing melody helped clear her head and kept her objective after long days at the office, and today had been a long one. It had been several weeks had past since her initial attempt to bring Pamela's religious convictions into the talks they had during therapy sessions; Isley was making vast improvements, but they had hit a new hurdle.
The chief of medicine doubted the validity of Isley's recovery, and he was taking steps to prevent her admission into the spring review for rehabilitation candidates. Hazel was musing over how to ensure he didn't prevent her patience admittance when a knock came at the door. She stood up and went to the door, she recognized the silhouette through the powdered glass and her shoulders tightened as she opened the door and stepped aside without a word, allowing Dr. Jeremiah Arkham to come into her office.
"I understand you're still pushing for Pamela Isley's admittance into the spring review for rehab." He said as he entered. No beating around the bush, no pleasantries, this wasn't going to be an enjoyable conversation.
"I am, sir." She replied calmly.
Doctor Arkham's eyes narrowed and he cleared his throat in a way that reminded Hazel of a growling bull dog. Slowly she made her way back to her desk and sat down, gesturing to one of the chairs across from her for him to sit.
"Doctor, why are you so against Isley's rehabilitation?"
"The real question, Dr. Birch, is why aren't you?" He replied, sitting down and taking a folder out from under his arm where he's tucked it away as he came in. He held the folder out to her, leaning forward over her desk. "Look at this."
"What is it...?" she asked, taking the file and flipping it open. She lost her grip on the folder within an instant, dropping it on her desk and scattering it's contents.
Inside the file there was a series of photos, each grislier and more stomach churning than the last. The first picture seemed innocent enough, but when combined with the rest of the photos it seemed absolutely nauseating. The photo was of a massive flower, bright pink with splashes of yellow across it's petals. The flower was sealed into a bulb, as if waiting for the right moment to blossom, and it seemed content amidst hundreds of smaller flowers inside what Hazel recognized as the Gotham Botanical Gardens.
The next picture showed the same flower inside a lab room she recognized. It was the lab her boyfriend, Eric, used at the Gotham CSI department's forensic laboratories; Eric was actually in the picture, pushing a large projection lamp into place behind the flower. The third photo in the series showed the flower illuminated by the lamp, and to her alarm, she saw that the bright light was shining through the flower petals. Something could be seen inside the flower, like a projection slide, she could see a human outline inside the flower.
"Starting to get the picture, Doctor Birch?" Arkham inquired with a scowl as she flipped through the photos.
The third photo showed Eric slicing open the flower with a large cutting saw and sending a viscous green liquid oozing out of the cut plant matter while a three other people looked one, one of whom she recognized as Commissioner James Gordon. In the fourth file the entire group was seen scrambling backwards as the petals gave way and fell open and the fluid spilled all across the floor, along with the corpse of human, who's skin had been completely eaten away by the strange fluid and whose muscle tissue was beginning to go the same way. Hazel felt bile rise in her throat as Jeremiah Arkham calmly leaned back in his chair.
"Do you have any guess why she killed him, Doctor?" Arkham asked, lifting an eyebrow quizzically. Hazel looked up at him, her cheeks looking almost green at the disgusting series of photos. Jeremiah Arkham seemed completely unphased, both by the photographs and by the younger doctor's disgust. "He was in Robinson Park... Reading the Gotham Gazette, and he smiled at her. Holding paper in his hands, and smiling at her; she found it offensive, Doctor Birch. According to the analysis, that plant took roughly 48 hours to completely erode his flesh, and he was alive for the first 32 or so of those hours... Slowly being digested inside an over sized houseplant."
Hazel forced herself to calm down, take a few steadying breaths as she stuffed the photographs back into the file and then slapped it closed, her fingers pressing down on the envelope as if it might fly open and attempt to show her the grim scene again.
"Why did you show me this?"
"Because this is the creature you are attempting to set free, Doctor Birch. She's not even human anymore, Doctor; she knows it, I know it, the guards know it, her fell inmates know it, why don't you?"
"She is human... Your refusal to acknowledge that reflects more upon you than upon her, Doctor Arkham. The woman I am treating is not the woman who committed those gruesome acts, that was Poison Ivy, a deranged misanthropic psychopath with extreme misandry. She can no more be held responsible for her crimes than the joker can be for his; but the woman I am treating now is not Poison Ivy. My patient is Pamela Isley, a once respected botanical intern with a brilliant and under appreciated mind, who could be of extreme importance to the future of man kind. She could help solve global crises, she could end our extreme climate imbalance, and she could put an end to world hunger; she deserves our respect and help to ensure that she heals, and she cannot heal in this place!" Hazel declared, throwing her hands out at the room around her. "It's killing her Doctor, I've seen it myself and she knows it too, she just refuses to acknowledge it! She IS more plant than human, yes, but she still has a human mind. She body cannot survive in the dark recesses of maximum security, she withers, she frails... With each passing month her skin has become paler, her eyes duller, her hair thinner, she needs sun light, she needs fresh air and clean water. What we're doing to her is cruel and unusual punishment. Not to mention the affect it has on her humanity!"
"And what, prey tell, do you mean by that?" Jeremiah Arkham asked, leaning back in his seat. Dr. Birch actually seemed to have piqued his interest now, he stared at her with raised eyebrows an intrigued expression.
Realizing her unique position of favor she pressed on ward. "Consider yourself, Doctor. When I joined this institution I expected to meet the same man who I've read about in psychiatric magazines and medical journals, the doctor who was a strong advocate of human rights and who felt so passionately for the rehabilitation of his patients. It was you who wrote the fascinating, and very intuitive, article theorizing that the greatest hurdle the patients at Arkham face in their attempts at rehabilitation... Is Batman. You said one of the biggest challenges for people like Isley, and Patient J, and Crane is that they're constantly being hounded by a man dressed as a bat, a man who refuses to see them as human beings but who instead sees them as nothing but monsters. Since I joined this facility, Doctor, I have met that man... And he believes in rehabilitation far more than you do. What happened to you, Jeremiah? When did you give up on your patients? You're not being a doctor anymore, you're being a warden. You're trying to keep them locked up like prisoners instead of attempting to heal them like patients."
Hazel leaned back in her seat, observing the look of contorted emotion in Jeremiah Arkham's face. She knew she had said just enough to get the ball rolling, if she kept going she'd risk alienating him, but as it was now... He might do the rest of her work for her. After a solid minute, with nothing spoken by either of them, Doctor Arkham stood up. He extended a hand for the file and she handed it back to him, then he made his way to her door. As he opened it and prepared to leave he looked back at her with a disapproving scowl, but the expression didn't seem aimed at her.
"Patient 0422 will require two alternative opinions upon her mental state, one to be conducted by one of your peers, and one to be conducted by an individual outside of this institution. You may select the peer, the outsider will be Dr. Belladonna Hayes, the woman you were hired to replace; she has already agreed to come to Gotham to interview Isley and give her professional opinion upon your patients mental stability. The spring review is in February, if your patient passes both secondary exams and meets the approval of the review board she will be allowed into the spring rehab program... I hope, for the sake of innocent lives, that you are right about your patient, Doctor."
Dr. Arkham left her office, bringing the door closed solidly behind him, muffling the sounds of his footsteps as he walked back down the hall away from her office, leaving Hazel in a state of shock. Belladonna Hayes? Hazel didn't know what to think, she didn't get the impression that anything could make Hayes come back to Gotham, much less get her to enter Arkham again. Was this good or bad? Hayes knew more about the Arkham patients than almost any doctor in the history of the hospital, she conducted ground breaking therapy with Jonathan Crane, Harvey Dent, and Pamela Isley; and she also had tried to convince Hazel to give up on treating Isley. Dr. Birch didn't know whether Hayes imminent arrival was a good thing or a bad one.
She and Hayes seemed to get along well when they met, and Hayes clearly cared about the patients here at Arkham, but would her scorn over power her judgment? Would she be a voice of reason who supported Isley's chance at rehabilitation, or was she coming back to Arkham to once more attempt to stop Hazel's efforts and keep Isley locked away the same as Jeremiah Arkham had been attempting?