by Paul Dini
“Shiny! Shiny!” piped up the woman in the next chair over. Margaret Pye was definitely going to be Harriet Pratt’s stiffest competition for Most Annoying Patient, Harleen thought. Everyone called her Magpie and she was very much like her namesake. Anything that glinted, sparkled, or shone drew her eye and once she fixated on something, there was no distracting her. She would go through anyone or anything to get her hands on it, and she was a lot tougher (and meaner) than she looked.
Dr. Leland had insisted Margaret Pye be included, and Harleen hadn’t argued for fear of being shut down. But after reading Margaret’s file, Harleen was sorry she hadn’t at least questioned Dr. Leland’s decision. Several doctors had diagnosed Margaret Pye with inadequate personality disorder complicated by OCD. In Harleen’s professional opinion, what Margaret Pye needed was a carefully structured program of therapy with goals and periodic rewards. That, and medication for her obsessive-compulsive disorder, would do her more good than group sessions.
Unfortunately, Arkham’s threadbare budget couldn’t provide this kind of treatment for an indigent patient. If Margaret Pye had been high-profile as well as dangerous, the board would have looked for a researcher with a grant to cover expenses. If she’d had a wealthy, prominent family making demands, the board would have hit them up for a hefty donation.
But Magpie had been dumped at Arkham by another mental hospital after an unfortunate incident that had left three people dead. It had been somewhat shocking at the time but not particularly memorable. The news had given her name as Poe and no one, not even the hospital, had tried to correct it. She had no family of any kind and apparently no friends. A scrap of paper clipped to her file folder noted her birth certificate was missing and a replacement was “on the way.” But the note had obviously been there for a long time; no one knew whom to query as to why it was taking so long.
Harleen felt for the woman. If she had an inadequate personality, it was only because she lived in an inadequate world that had failed her at every turn. Perhaps Dr. Leland had thought being around other women would somehow stimulate her mind and get her interested in things that weren’t just Shiny! Shiny!
Well, it wasn’t impossible. Stranger things had happened, Harleen thought, and the last woman in the group was one of them.
Mary Louise Dahl had enjoyed a successful career in cinema as a famous and much-loved child star. Unlike other child stars, however, her career hadn’t been scuttled when she’d grown up, because she hadn’t, and never would. Something called Turner’s Syndrome, a rare disease exclusive to females, had sentenced Mary Louise to life in a child’s body without possibility of parole.
At first glance, most people might think she was seven or eight, maybe a little young for her age because of the doll she always carried. But she would never grow any taller, never experience puberty, never achieve physical maturity. She’d been lucky not to have the serious health problems that often came with Turner’s like heart and kidney trouble. Her worst misfortune was having a family who colluded with her agents and the studios to hide the whole truth about her condition from her for the sake of her career—i.e., for the sake of all the money she made. By the time she found out, it was too late for the hormone therapy that might have let her be a grown woman.
But while Mary Louise’s childhood was endless, her movie career was not. The adult trapped in the child’s body couldn’t remain hidden forever. What audiences saw was a non-child trying to ape the real thing, and the effect was similar to the uncanny valley phenomenon produced by human-like robots or realistic CGI animation—except, as many moviegoers put it, “a whole lot creepier.”
If there had been an award for Most-Royally-Screwed-Over-Person-Of-The-Century, Harleen thought Mary Louise would have owned it forever, and if there was any justice in the world, her family and agents and every other person complicit in her ruin should have been locked up for as long as Mary Louise was. Harleen wasn’t sure there was any path out of the dark place where Mary Louise lived; despite that, Harleen found herself hoping she might somehow benefit from the group. She communicated only in pseudo-baby-talk, but Harleen was sure it was habit, not an impairment. Being locked up in Arkham hadn’t given Mary Louise much incentive to increase her word power. But maybe after a couple of sessions she’d have more to say than, “I did-unt mean to do it!” or “Nasty-wasty asywum!”
Harleen figured today’s auspicious achievement was just having the women there at all, even if it wasn’t by choice. Harleen watched Mary Louise rock back and forth in her restraints and Mary Louise stared back at her over the top of her doll’s head, her eyes bright.
She’s watching me, Harleen thought uneasily. Not just watching—she’s watching me watch her. Sizing me up.
Something one of the nurses had said came back to her then. Esther Netanyahu had been at Arkham even longer than Dr. Leland. Harleen liked her because she didn’t seem jaded and cynical but she was nobody’s fool either. Keep your guard up, she’d told Harleen. They’ve got a lot more experience being them than you have being you, and they know it.
Mary Louise suddenly began blubbering loudly. “I did-unt mean to do it!” she wailed as tears ran down her face. “It’s not my fault! It is-unt! I wanna go home—why can’t I go home?”
“Here we go with the waterworks already,” Pamela Isley said, sounding world-weary and bored. “I hate being near that brat. Can’t somebody shut her up? Or aren’t there any grown-ups in the room not chained to a chair?”
“Now, now, ducks,” said Harriet Pratt in her exaggerated accent. “She’s just a little girl.”
“Like hell.” Pamela Isley caressed one of the vines in her hair. Harleen blinked; had she actually just seen that vine curl itself around her finger? A real vine couldn’t do that. (Could it?)
“Tsk, language, luv!” Harriet Pratt waggled her finger at the other woman. “There’s children and ladies present, you know.”
Now everyone except Pamela Isley was staring at her expectantly. Isley was absorbed in a close examination of the ends of a lock of her hair.
Harleen put on a bright, professional smile. “Since this is our first meeting,” she said, hoping she sounded assertive rather than unnerved, “I thought we’d keep things light and just get acquainted. Each of us can say who we are and mention one or two things about ourselves or that are important to us—”
Pamela Isley never looked up: “Is there anyone in this room, chained or unchained, who doesn’t know who I am? Didn’t think so. I need no introduction.”
A smart therapist never lets the patient drop the mic. A doctor at the hospital where she’d done her residency had told her that. “You could tell us a couple of interesting things about yourself,” Harleen said, defiantly cheerful. “Or that are important to you.”
Isley let out a long, put-upon sigh. “I prefer plants to people. Also, I don’t like people anywhere nearly as much as plants. If you were expecting something about long walks on the beach or my favorite food or how I make it through every day here without slashing someone’s throat, including my own, tough stuff.”
“Aren’t you a cheeky bit of rough,” Harriet Pratt said, waggling her finger again.
Harleen ignored her. “Well? Don’t keep us in suspense,” she said to Isley. “How do you get through every day without slashing someone’s throat, including your own?”
The woman kept pretending to be focused on her hair but Harleen caught the small movement of her eyes swiveling in her direction under half-closed lids. Pamela Isley had glanced at her. It was a very brief glance and she probably thought Harleen didn’t know. But she did, and it counted.
“It’s just that you brought it up,” Harleen added. “Now I’m curious.”
Pamela Isley continued scrutinizing her hair in silence. Harleen was about to give up and introduce herself when Isley said, “I can’t give it all up today, Doc. What’ll we talk about next time?”
Gotcha, Harleen thought gleefully, hiding her smile behind the file folder.
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“It’s not my fault!” Mary Louise insisted loudly, as if someone had claimed it was. Her tear-stained face was red and angry, and she was glaring at Harleen now. Resenting the loss of attention, Harleen thought. The ex-movie star was still a diva.
“We was all framed, ducky,” Harriet Pratt said in cheerful agreement. “Me, I was just mindin’ my own business, not hurtin’ a soul, goin’ for a ruby down me local. Next thing I know, two John ’Ops are feelin’ my collar. They drag me in front of a judge who tells me I’m Radio Rental and there’s a flowering dell waitin’ for me in Arkham. Blimey!”
“Shiny! Shiny! Shiny!” Magpie yelled over her, staring hard at Harleen’s throat, and Harleen finally realized she’d forgotten to take off her necklace. It was a simple disk with a caduceus on one side and the words Primum Non Nocere engraved on the other; her mother had given it to her when she had graduated from med school.
Hurriedly, she buttoned the very top button of her blouse, hoping if the woman couldn’t see it, she’d lose interest. But Magpie kept staring at her throat as if she had X-ray vision. Harleen supposed a real magpie probably wouldn’t have been fooled, either, and made a note to take the necklace off before the next session.
* * *
“You don’t look like you’ve been sobbing your heart out,” Dr. Leland said when Harleen dropped by her office afterward. “Don’t tell me it went well?”
“It wasn’t great.” Harleen sat down on the leather sofa instead of the chair in front of Dr. Leland’s desk. “It was hard to get a word in edgeways between all the Shiny! Shiny! and the sobbing denials. But it wasn’t an extinction-level event. Pamela Isley spoke to me. On purpose.”
Dr. Leland’s eyebrows strained toward her hairline. “Really?”
“God’s honest truth,” Harleen said, raising her right hand. “She wouldn’t sully her eyeballs by looking at me, but she did address me directly.”
“Never mind Poison Ivy, how’d you escape with your necklace?”
Harleen grinned. “I buttoned the top button to hide it. Thought I was gonna choke to death. Next time, I’ll take it off beforehand. I’ll have a written report for you tomorrow. Spoilers: Mary Louise still protests her innocence. And thanks to Harriet Pratt, I’m so tired of Cockney rhyming slang, I could scream. I was tempted to tell her how we roll in Brooklyn. Down on Toidy-Toid and Toid, ya know?”
Instantly Dr. Leland’s expression turned serious. “Never do that, Dr. Quinzel. I’m not kidding,” she added as Harleen smiled. “Never play with them. It makes you look weak, and in Arkham, if you look weak, you are weak. If you need a rodeo clown, call an orderly. I mean it.”
“Okay, okay, no goofing around,” Harleen said, shifting on the sofa. She’d felt pretty good about the session and all of a sudden Dr. Leland was chewing her out for something she hadn’t even done.
It’s because she’s the boss, Harleen thought, suppressing a sigh. People in authority were always reminding you they were in charge. If they couldn’t get you for screwing up, they’d make you feel like you had. And there was never a rodeo clown around when you really needed one.
“I got Pamela Isley to talk to me without doing anything reckless or stupid,” Harley said, hoping she didn’t sound as defensive as she felt. “I feel like that’s something.”
Dr. Leland’s severe expression softened. “Just don’t get too sure of yourself. This was only the first session. Patients here’ll try anything once. They wanted to see how you handled yourself. And believe me, they learned more about you than vice versa. When’s your next session?”
“I wanted to talk to you about that.” Harleen sat up straighter. “Originally, it was scheduled for next week but I’d like to move it up to the day after tomorrow. If that’s all right with you, of course.”
Dr. Leland grimaced. “You can binge-watch a TV series but there’s no such thing as binge-therapy.”
“It’s not binge-therapy,” Harleen said, not entirely truthfully. “We need to build up momentum. Seven days from now is a long time. It’ll be like starting all over again, because we’ll all be trying to remember where we were last time.”
“Maybe that’s not a bad thing,” Dr. Leland said, but Harleen could see her wavering. “However, I understand what you’re saying. Reschedule for two days after tomorrow. Momentum’s good but so is getting a little distance on the previous meeting.”
“Okay, two days after tomorrow,” Harleen said, trying not to grin from ear to ear.
Dr. Leland hesitated, gazing at Harleen with her head tilted to one side. “Didn’t your mother ever warn you to be careful what you wished for?”
“Well… no.” Harleen’s smile was wry. “At our house, we learned early on we couldn’t get much of anything by wishing.”
Dr. Leland was unmoved. “All the more reason she should have warned you.”
The optimism Harleen had been coasting on after the first group session began to fade slightly when she saw Harriet Pratt’s sour expression before the second even started.
Looks like the gloves are coming off, Harleen thought, although she held out a faint hope that Harriet’s bad mood had nothing to do with her. She pretended to go through her notes while she waited for the orderlies to transfer all the patients from the wheelchairs, sneaking surreptitious glances from under her brows.
If Harriet was bent out of shape over the wheelchair, Harleen didn’t blame her. It was standard practice for transferring high-risk/dangerous patients within Arkham but Harleen didn’t like it. The chairs had restraints for every part of a patient’s body, head included; it was clamped to the high back of the chair. At a staff meeting, she had questioned the necessity of immobilizing patients to the point where they couldn’t even look around; a nurse named Frieda Vance said she’d obviously never been head-butted by a psycho in a bad mood.
Harleen still didn’t like it. Not allowing patients to walk even a short distance on their two feet seemed like a bullying tactic. Surely a show of force wasn’t always necessary. If the staff always acted like they expected trouble, then the patients would simply live up—or down—to their expectations. If, on the other hand, the patients were treated with a modicum of respect, they’d be more inclined to civilized behavior.
Granted, there were some very dangerous inmates who couldn’t be allowed to move about freely—Killer Croc, for example, who probably remembered their first and so far only meeting as vividly as she did. She didn’t know how they moved him around; an ordinary wheelchair wouldn’t have held him for two seconds. But there was only one of him. Harleen had familiarized herself with the files of all Arkham’s current residents and if she had listed them by how dangerous they were in descending order, these four women wouldn’t have made the top ten.
Not that they wouldn’t have been extremely dangerous in the outside world, especially Pamela Isley. But they weren’t outside and they knew they never would be—assuming Magpie even knew where she was. But treating Margaret Pye as if she were one of the most dangerous patients in the place couldn’t possibly be therapeutic and gave her no reason to say anything except Shiny! Shiny!
“Need us for anything else?” an orderly asked Harleen. His name-tag said Kevin; it seemed incongruously boyish for a man who was six-foot-five and had had a career as a linebacker on Gotham’s pro football team.
“No, we’ll be fine,” Harleen replied.
He started to leave, then paused to lean down and whisper, “Watch out for Harriet, she’s loaded for bear today.”
The armed guard at the door let the orderlies out and assumed his usual parade-rest stance. Harleen winced inwardly. If Harriet’s loaded for bear, so are we. And we always shoot first.
She turned back to the group. Pamela Isley was still ignoring her. They’d chained her up differently today, curtailing her range so she could only reach the longest strands of her hair. That was kind of mean, Harleen thought. Maybe she should call the orderlies back in and make them change it.
Harriet was glaring at her
as if her eyes could beam death rays. Magpie was muttering Shiny! Shiny! under her breath and staring at Harley’s bare throat with a mix of hurt and suspicion, as if the absence of Harleen’s necklace was a personal affront. While Mary Louise Dahl did-unt do it but had yet to work herself into a crying jag.
“All right,” Harleen said, hoping her cheerful tone didn’t sound forced. “I thought today we could talk about what we hope to get out of these sessions. I’ll give you a little time to think—”
“I can tell you that right ’ere and now, miss,” Harriet said.
So that’s what high dudgeon looks like, Harleen thought. “It’s Doctor. Not miss, Doctor. Or Doc for short.”
“’Ave it your way, but then you always do, don’t you, Doc.” Pink spots appeared on Harriet’s cheeks. “You all do. And us, we has to take it, we does. ’Cause we’re just scum to you. It’s your world; we just live in it. If you call this living.” She rattled her chains.
Harleen wondered if someone had forgotten to tell her Harriet Pratt was a meta-human with telepathy.
“All right, Doc,” Harriet went on, “’Ere’s what I want outa these sessions, as you call ’em.” She drew herself up as much as she could. “Tea.”
Harleen blinked at her. “Say again?”
Harriet looked heavenward for a moment. “Blimey, Doc, did the Lord strike you Mutt and Jeff? ’Cause you can’t be that Tom Thumb. Tea! I want tea! Kiki Dee! Bruce Lee! You and me!”
Harleen was looking through the folder for information on Harriet’s medications, thinking someone had forgotten to give them to her when Pamela Isley said, “She means the drink. Like, cup o’ tea. Earl Grey, English Breakfast. Lipton, Tetley.” She sounded even more bored and jaded than she had in the last session, but Harleen was sure she detected the barest hint of amusement. Which also counted.