by Paul Dini
In spite of everything, she welled up with tears of ineffable joy.
“It felt like a kiss,” Harley murmured, smiling, unaware that Dr. Leland had left.
As lovely as a kiss may be, the memory will eventually fade. That’s just how life is. Good, bad, or indifferent, nothing lasts forever and, in the end, memories are the most ephemeral things of all.
Although some memories do last a very long time. The memory of a seven-story fall, for example, will stay with a person a lot longer than the memory of a kiss.
Or, for that matter, the memory of something that felt like a kiss.
* * *
Healing from trauma is a long, complex process. Three important parts of the process are: a) remembering, b) forgetting, and c) knowing what goes in column a and what goes in column b.
Another important part of healing is understanding the true meanings of things. For instance, take the word “asylum.” Many people associate the word with an institution for the mentally ill or others requiring special care. But asylum-seekers are looking for a safe place, a refuge from privation, persecution, and fear—a haven, a sanctuary, a shelter. An asylum can be all these things, even Arkham Asylum, as Harleen Quinzel discovered during her time as a patient.
* * *
Joan Leland insisted on treating Harley herself. Harley wasn’t sure about that at first; having a former boss ask her every day if she’d learned her lesson wasn’t terribly appealing. But it turned out to be nothing like that at all.
Harley asked Dr. Leland to take her off the heavy-duty pain meds right away but the doctor refused. She would wean Harley off the medication when she felt the time was right. A few days after her arrival at Arkham was not the right time.
She told Dr. Leland about treating the Joker with extra-strength ibuprofen. Dr. Leland had told her that a beating from Batman was a cake-walk next to a seven-story fall and suggested she try to think of it as falling out of love with the Joker. It wasn’t a bad idea but Harley knew nothing was that straightforward.
Sometimes she woke up feeling self-possessed, strong, free of the Joker’s influence and sure she’d stay that way. The feeling might last for days, long enough that she would begin to think, very cautiously, about the future. But then she’d be ambushed by the certainty that her life was empty and she’d spend the rest of it marking time until she died. She couldn’t even turn to her memories for comfort because the happiest ones were of being in the Joker’s sub-sub-sub-sub-basement cell, believing she was changing his life for the better with ground-breaking therapy.
They shouldn’t have been her happiest memories, because they were all just a great big fat lie. The Joker had not merely deceived her; he had manipulated her into deceiving herself. What a dirty trick. Having to admit that, and accept why the Joker had done it, was a knife in her heart. And yet the feelings that came with those memories were the joy she’d felt in her work, of falling in love, not anger at his betrayal, or even shame at being the Joker’s perfect mark.
How did a person recover from that?
It helped to remind herself that although she had broken the Joker out of Arkham, he was nowhere to be found now that she was inside and he was free. The news services were saying he was probably dead but Harley didn’t believe it. It would take a lot more than falling off a train to put an end to the Joker.
But what would she do if a sudden explosion blew a hole in the wall and the Joker came striding in to take her away? Highly unlikely. But there was another scenario not nearly as far-fetched: what if Batman recaptured him and brought him back to Arkham?
They would put him back in isolation, of course. She wouldn’t be allowed to see him, but he’d probably find some way to get a message to her. What would she do? Turn the message over to Dr. Leland, or keep quiet?
She hadn’t turned over to Dr. Leland the message she’d found in her cell, which she supposed meant she hadn’t learned her lesson.
And if he didn’t send a message?
Would she feel him anyway, down in the cell where she had fallen in love with him, like a twisted variation of The Princess and the Pea? Would just knowing he was in Arkham undo her?
Her body continued to heal and her mind became stronger even if her emotions were shaky, and eventually Harley was able to talk to Dr. Leland about him. The Joker’s narcissism had a profound connection to his obsession with Gotham City, Dr. Leland said. If he were still alive, he was there or close by. The Joker was convinced the city was rightfully his; if he could kill Batman in a sufficiently ostentatious and clever way, it would give him absolute power over Gotham and everyone in it.
“Delusional, yes,” Dr. Leland said with a good-natured frankness that made Harley feel better about everything. “Stranger than Killer Croc or a flying, bulletproof alien? Not so much.”
“If the Joker were recaptured and sent back here, would you tell me?” Harley asked suddenly.
“Immediately, if not sooner,” Dr. Leland said with a half-smile. “It would be no good trying to hide it. We could put that man in a cell at the center of the earth or on the dark side of the moon or in orbit around Neptune, and inside of two minutes, the whole world would know it.”
* * *
Months passed, and Harley continued to improve. Dr. Leland began to make noises about life after Arkham. Harley had known she wasn’t serving a life sentence, but she didn’t feel ready to think about getting out. It was still hard not to think of herself in terms of the Joker. Sometimes she wasn’t sure she’d ever find her own separate identity again.
“I can still remember vividly what it was like to be—” Harley hesitated, trying to find the right words. “—to be under his control and believing beyond all doubt it was true love. And you’re already talking about releasing me back into the wild.”
“Your attachment to the Joker was the root of your problem,” Dr. Leland told her. “You’ve broken that attachment and I’ve done what I can to reinforce your sense of yourself as an individual. But for your recovery to be real, you have to be ‘in the wild,’ as you put it.” Pause. “Plus, we need the room for someone with more severe problems.”
Doctor and patient laughed together. It made Harley feel good to hear how normal it sounded, a couple of friends sharing a laugh.
“But we aren’t going to simply push you out the front gate and wish you luck,” Dr. Leland went on. “You’ll go to a halfway house for six months. Then you’ll be evaluated and they’ll decide whether you should stay longer or if you’re ready for life ‘in the wild.’”
“What’s the halfway house like?” Harley wanted to know.
“I think you’ll like it,” Dr. Leland said. “I chose it because all the women there have been in some kind of toxic relationship that turned their lives upside down. Not all of them were love relationships. Some were enmeshed with so-called ‘friends,’ some were victimized by a parent, and a couple escaped from cults.”
But not the cult of Batman, Harley said silently. She had to press her lips together to keep herself from speaking aloud. She hadn’t talked about Batman in therapy; Batman was unfinished business, but Dr. Leland didn’t need to know that. She already knew Dr. Leland’s feelings on the matter: You’re not from around here. And Harley couldn’t do anything about that.
And although Dr. Leland might be prone to a little too much hero worship where Batman was concerned, she hadn’t run off with him and committed a string of crimes. Nor had Batman smacked her around or thrown her out a seventh-floor window.
Some heroes had feet of clay; others were clay all the way up to their necks.
* * *
Dr. Leland was sanguine about Harley’s chances of finding work but said nothing about her getting her medical license back, and Harley knew better than to ask. All the women at the halfway house were employed, she told Harley. Harley wondered how many of them were working fryolators, washing cars, or cleaning places they’d never be allowed into otherwise. What kind of job opportunities were there for an ex-doc
tor with an Arkham diploma?
Of course, if she wanted to make real money, she could become a mob doctor. Someone who could take care of bullet wounds without calling the cops, and whose medical wasn’t in veterinary medicine, was a real prize.
She was just kidding, Harley told herself: a private joke. But she filed the idea away at the back of her mind, in case Big Belly Burger couldn’t get past the stigma of Arkham even just for drive-thru work.
At seven a.m. on the morning of Harley’s discharge from Arkham Asylum, Dr. Leland gave her a shoulder bag, a small suitcase with a change of clothing, a little cash, a bus ticket, and a printout with a map and directions to the halfway house. She waited with Harley at the stop across from the gates; when the bus came, Dr. Leland hugged her, wished her the best, and pushed her up the steps.
Harley had thought returning to Gotham City would stir up a lot of emotions; instead, it was anti-climactic. Gotham wasn’t a magical realm like Oz—it was just a city with people trying to get through every day as best they could.
Harley found her way from the Gotham City central station to the nearest elevated-train stop. The woman who sold her the day-pass told her which train to take and what station to get off at. From there, it was a brief bus-ride or a bit of a walk.
Harley decided to walk. The months she had spent with casts on her arms and legs had left her weak and out of shape. Walking was a good way to get back into exercise, a good way to get the lie of the land, too. It was a nice, residential neighborhood with a local train station and regular bus service—not the sort of place where super-villains hung out.
Harley saw toys in a lot of the front yards. That was nice, she supposed, but she was glad she’d grown up urban. She and her brothers hadn’t needed a yard—all of Brooklyn had been their yard. They’d played hopscotch on the sidewalk and teeter-tottered in the local playground. They hadn’t needed to make play-dates; there were always kids around, and plenty of grown-ups, too, especially in summer when everyone sat outside on their front stoops.
She was still floating in a cloud of nostalgia when she came to the halfway house. It was a large Victorian, a bit shabby but solid, with a wrap-around front porch, a lawn that was more green than brown, and flowering plants lining the front walk. It looked very welcoming, but her stroll down memory lane had made her yearn to be back in the heart of the city, where traffic noise would wake her in the morning and lull her to sleep at night.
Maybe in six months, if she played her cards right.
Harley drew herself up tall and squared her shoulders, the way she used to before a difficult floor routine, and strode up the front walk. She trotted up the three slightly saggy porch steps and planted herself at the front door. (Perfect landing, without a wobble.) But before she could ring the bell, she heard an ear-splittingly loud AAOOO-GAH!, followed by very familiar raucous laughter.
She turned around. The limo at the curb was a deep metallic purple; she knew that shade. Then the passenger door swung open.
His suit matched the limo, and that lime-green hair probably glowed in the dark. He gave her the smile that had always made her knees tremble and her heart pound. Even at that distance, she knew he was gazing into her eyes like he’d spent the last several months dreaming of this moment. Now it was finally here—he had come to pick her up so they could go do something outrageous.
When the Joker beckoned to her, Harley didn’t hesitate. She dropped her suitcase, yelled “Puddin’!” sprinted down the walk, and dived into the front seat. The door closed behind her and the car pulled away from the curb.
What happened next was preserved for posterity on YouTube.
* * *
Sixteen-year-old Betty Lemanski, who lived across the street and three doors down from the halfway house, saw the purple limo pull over and went outside with her cell phone. She was hoping to capture a candid video of an eccentric billionaire or celebrity. She hadn’t been expecting a super-villain until she heard the laughter.
Betty didn’t get a very good shot of the young blonde woman getting into the car but she hoped the driver’s window would be down as it went past. It wasn’t, but the car suddenly screeched to a stop right in front of her. The driver’s side door flew open and the Joker (“The actual Joker!”) tumbled out onto the street (“Ass over teakettle! I almost died!”). Betty watched flabbergasted as he scrambled up onto his knees and said, “But, cupcake, Daddy’s lost without you!”
The woman behind the wheel laughed at him. “I’m not your cupcake!” she shouted, slammed the car door and drove away. The Joker got up and ran after her, still protesting his love. Betty Lemanski’s footage ends as the Joker starts to give up the chase; at that point, Betty decided to go back inside, triple-lock the front door, and call the cops.
By the time they arrived, however, the Joker was nowhere to be found. Police canvassed door to door in a five-block radius, but the Joker had somehow slipped away unnoticed—no mean feat for a tall, skinny man in a purple suit, with green hair and a permanent evil grin.
The purple limo was eventually found at the bottom of the river by police working a different case. It was thought to be unrelated, but, in Gotham, you just couldn’t be sure of anything.
Six months later…
When Dr. Irene Smith, MD, joined the midtown Manhattan branch of New York Health Practitioners, she didn’t have the thickest sheaf of glowing letters of recommendation, but those she did have were impressive, and from some of the most respected professionals in the field of medicine. Dr. Smith herself was quiet, soft-spoken, and demure, but very self-possessed. She didn’t suffer from a lack of confidence but she wasn’t from the if-you’ve-got-it-flaunt-it school of demeanor, which probably accounted for her rather surprising patient list. Some were VIPs, some had a whiff of notoriety about them, and some were actually a little scary. But obviously they all trusted Dr. Smith, who seemed above reproach.
Dr. Smith had come to Manhattan from Gotham City, which surprised her colleagues until she explained she was from Brooklyn and she was actually coming back to her home town, if not her home borough. That made more sense—everyone knew Gotham City was one of those places unto itself. People from out of town seldom felt completely at home there, while people from Gotham were never at home anywhere else. They might travel far and wide but they always went back, no matter how long they’d been away. It was just something about the place—why else would a billionaire like Bruce Wayne live there? He’d been all over the world and he could probably buy his own country, but he called Gotham City home.
Hell, even criminals couldn’t stay away. The Joker could have fled to some country that had no extradition treaty with the US and lived happily ever out-of-reach. But he always went straight back to Gotham City—if he ever actually left. And then there was that institution—Arkham Asylum. It had a pretty lurid history. What did Dr. Smith think about that, Dr. Eileen Thibodeau asked one night over drinks after work during a shameless attempt to pump her for information about Batman.
Dr. Thibodeau told Dr. Smith she saw Batman as the key to “that whole Gotham thing.” She thought he had some kind of animal magnetism, maybe from something in the air or water that reacted with his biochemistry. It wasn’t such a ridiculous idea—there were meta-humans with powers far more unlikely than the ability to fascinate and influence an entire city.
Dr. Smith only smiled and said her time in Gotham had been rather uneventful. She’d been part of a family practice and the most exciting thing she’d ever done was give flu shots to the offspring of the wealthy at Gotham Academy and Prep, and only to fill in for the school doctor who had gone down with the flu herself.
As for Batman’s hypothetical charisma, Dr. Smith had no opinion. In the whole time she’d lived in Gotham City, she had never seen the hometown hero in person, only on the news or patched into funny cat videos on YouTube. Ditto Gotham’s most flamboyant super-villains, who certainly seemed to be as crazy as everyone said—media-crazy. A lot of them had publicists as well as la
wyers; reality TV had changed the world.
Gotham did have its own ambience, Dr. Smith said. How much Batman really had to do with it, however, was debatable. It could have been the other way around. Local historians said the area had always been a different kind of place, sui generis, even before the advent of the leotard.
Dr. Thibodeau would have pursued the subject further but Dr. Smith suddenly had a lot of appointments outside standard office hours and wasn’t available for Happy Hour chitchat about Gotham City.
Then NYHP received a request from a wealthy businessman returning to New York after many years abroad, who wanted a personal physician. No one was surprised when management gave it to Irene Smith; she was already NYHP’s fairest fair-haired girl.
* * *
A car service took Dr. Smith to the Battery Park Esplanade, where there was a motorboat waiting at a slip to take her out to a yacht. “We’ve got a ways to go,” said the woman who helped her on board with her large medical case. “I suggested picking you up at a pier in South Brooklyn but the boss wouldn’t hear of it. I don’t know what he’s got against Brooklyn.”
Dr. Smith smiled as she settled down on a cushioned seat. “You know what they say—the rich are different.”
“Ain’t they just,” the woman said. “I hope you don’t get seasick?”
“Not at all,” Dr. Smith assured her. “I could live at sea.”
“Good thing,” the woman said, stuffing her curly brown hair into a woollen watch cap. “From what I understand, you’ll be doing just that for a while. A couple weeks at least, maybe more. Comfy?”
Dr. Smith nodded. “And I went before I left.”
Laughing, the woman nodded at a man on the slip to cast off. He tossed the rope to her and she coiled it and stuffed it under the seat in the stern before she started the motor and steered the boat out toward open water.
* * *