The Good Doctor (Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow)

I.

The first of her senses to be assaulted was that of smell.

The scent of hospital grade disinfectant was strong to the point of stinging, her stomach roiling in response to the odor.

She wedged her eyes open only to be greeted with a fluorescent light twice as unpleasant as the smell of the place, squeezing them shut tightly to give herself a moment to adjust.

She was familiar with that combination of clues to her whereabouts; she had landed herself back in the hospital.

Astrid Monaghan was no stranger to hospitals. If her count was correct, she had then embarked on approximately a dozen journies to one medical facility or another in her nineteen years of life.

The reasons for these trips varied across a wide spectrum; everything from alcohol poisoning to what her aunt had called 'hysteria' was filed away in her chart.

She couldn't hazard a guess as to what she had done at present to wind up in such familiar surroundings, if in fact she had done anything at all. That much was debatable, in her mind.

Aunt Karen was an inventive woman with quite the active imagination. A trait, she supposed, was only so copious to make up for her lack of a sense of humor.

Astrid gingerly sat up, her head swimming in a medicine induced fog. They had obviously given her some of the good stuff, judging by the way the room wobbled in her field of vision.

Her hands were bandaged, palms wrapped tight in thick layers of stiff gauze and fingertips covered in small bandages of their own.

Clearly, she had done something, after all.

Sitting up had taken too much effort to even consider clamoring out of bed to search for her chart in hopes of finding out exactly what had happened.

A doctor or a nurse would be along soon enough to explain it all, anyway.

For the moment, she elected to lean back and close her eyes, enjoy the last few moments before the chaos of a hospital stay settled in. The beeping of her heart rate monitor made it impossible to sit peacefully, though she gave it an earnest effort.

After what felt like hours, the door to her room opened. A blond haired nurse shuffled into the room, a clipboars in one gloved hand and the other pushing a handcart.

Astrid's ears perked up as she hauled herself back into a sitting position to greet the face of the new arrival.

"Ms. Monaghan, it's good to see you awake," the nurse spoke, her voice laced with the false cheer of someone who had been in the profession long enough to have considerable practice.

"Where am I, this time?" Astrid asked dryly, crossing her arms over her chest. Only one of them was being paid to treat the other like a human being.

"You're in the infirmary of Arkham Asylum," the nurse answered.

Apparently, a bad attitude was indeed contagious, judging by the tone that the woman had adopted as she began laying out the equipment required for a blood draw.

"What?" Astrid snapped, her voice a mixture of panic and anger. "Why am I here?"

The Asylum, of all places. She'd been sent there for evaluation only once, even with her history, and had vowed that she would sooner disappear as a fugitive than return back to that godforsaken hole.

"Your arm, miss?" The nurse ignored her question entirely, gloved hand beckoning impatiently.

"Tell me why I'm here," Astrid insisted, cradling her arm closer to her chest. Two could play at any good test of wills.