The weekend passed by in a blur of nurses, blood draws, and half stale meals. Every event seemed to repeat the next day on a loop with only the slightest variances on the pattern.
There were no televisions in the infirmary, only cracked and peeling minty green paint staring back at her as she tried to make sense of the entire day she had lost.
By Monday morning, she was no closer to believing what had happened to her life than she had been the moment Doctor Crane let her in on the big cosmic joke; she still couldn't remember anything even close to what she had been told she did.
Her bandages had come off around five that morning, the burns superficial and healed over to a shiny pink finish. They were still somewhat awkward feeling, but obviously not too worrisome.
After the early morning check over, she allowed herself to drift back to sleep.
She had barely opened her eyes when a heavyset woman in a guard's uniform made her way into the room.
"Rise and shine, princess," she ordered dryly, tossing an orange jumpsuit on the bed. "Your time in medical is over. Change into this and let's get you up to the C wing."
She looked down at the outfit that had been presented to her — 14532. That was apparently her new name, as boasted by the stencil on the left breast of the jumpsuit.
She eyed the guard warily, uncomfortable changing in front of a stranger. The unsympathetic look she recieved in return said she had no choice.
She turned her back and slipped the bottom up under her paper medical gown, quickly doing up the top portion of the outfit.
"What's C wing?" she asked over her shoulder, fumbling with the snaps.
"Category C is for patients still under observation, pending trial," the guard explained, her chewing gum smacking loudly as she spoke.
There was that dose of harsh reality again; Astrid was having a difficult time thinking of herself as a person in a mental hospital, awaiting trial for a felony.
A felony she couldn't even remember committing, at that.
"Breakfast has five minutes left and you're set to see the doc in ten," the guard warned. "You might wanna hurry up."
Astrid nodded. The prospect of food, even the sub par hospital food they Asylum served, was enough to get her moving.
By the time they made it up from the infirmary and to the cafeteria, trays were being emptied into the trash. She was too late.
"Can I at least grab something?" she pleaded with the guard.
"No food or eating utensils out of bounds, honey. It's by the rules," the woman replied, shaking her head ruefully.
"Please, just an apple or something. I'm practically starving," she begged.
She watched as the woman's face relented a bit. Maybe it was how young she was. Maybe it was the dark circles that marred her pale skin, standing out like bruises beneath her eyes, but something changed her mind.
"Get an apple. One time thing, you hear me?" she warned, eyeing the room as though one of her superiors was going to be looming over her shoulder.
"Thanks... Charlene," Astrid noted from her name tag, quickly making her way over to snag a piece of fruit before the kitchen staff swifted them away.
She made a mental note of Charlene's kindness; if her charm had worked once, perhaps it could again sometime down the line. If it were not already Elisabeth, Manipulative could have been Astrid's middle name.
Apple in hand, she made her way down a series of long hallways lined with doors, Charlene guiding her by the elbow. Near the end of the hall, they stopped short of a door.
Charlene kept a firm grasp on her elbow as the woman knocked sharply and leaned inside the door.
"Doctor Crane, I've got your patient up from the infirmary. Are you ready for her?" she asked. Her voice was that of someone who was tired with their job.
"Yes. Please, bring her in," the voice Astrid remembered from Friday evening floated out of the room. Charlene gently hauled her to the center of the office, walls barren aside from two large bookshelves and a nondescript painting of a lake.
"Good morning, Ms. Monaghan," Doctor Crane greeted her passively, filing away some papers in the drawer of his large oak desk.
She sat down in the available chair, flinching hard with a look of panic as Charlene moved to strap her arms in place.
"I didn't do anything," she shouted, eyes moon sized as she looked up in shock, "I just sat down."
"Protocol. Unless a doctor orders otherwise, I'm supposed to —"
"It's quite alright," the doctor held up a hand as he interrupted Charlene. "I have no reason to suspect she will cause any issue."
Charlene gave him a dubious look that was answered with a firm but polite smile. Shrugging as if to say "it's your call", she backed away from Astrid.
"I'll be back for pickup in an hour," she said, making her way to the door. She turned and gave Astrid a stern look. "Be good."
The brunette nodded her head, her eyes flickering between the guard and Dr. Crane as the former of the two exited the room.
"The apple is contraband," he said without even glancing at the fruit in question, as soon as the door closed. He slid the wastebasket towards her with the toe of his shoe.
"You've got to be kidding me. She said I could have it," she protested.
"Irrelevant. You are in my office, and I am the one in charge of determining your psychological standing," he silenced any further argument. "It is my rules you should be concerned with following."
She resisted the urge to curse out loud and tossed the apple into the trash, ignoring the rumbling of her stomach. This was obviously some sort of power play that she had no choice but to comply with.
"Good. Now, straight into business," he muttered as he opened the thick manila folder that contained her file. "Have you remembered anything regarding Thursday evening?"
She shook her head wordlessly, toying with the fraying edge of her orange sleeve.
"Verbal responses, Ms. Monaghan," he prompted her curtly, never looking up from his reading material. What sort of control freak was this guy?
"I don't remember anything after probably, I don't know, five or so? Aunt Karen was leaving for bingo, so maybe five-thirty," she answered.
"You're missing approximately three hours of memory. A very important three hours, at that," he mused, finally looking up at her. "Did something take place that day, something of note?"
"Nothing unusual."
She continued with the truth; just as she told Dr. Crane, it had been like any other day — she woke up, smoked a joint, cleaned as per Karen's directions, then holed up in the attic in hopes of avoiding any face time with her aunt's latest beau, a drinker with a hell of a temper and a case of wandering hands.
She told him how little she found herself able to sleep at home, admitted to get occasional recreational drug use, discussed her anxiety and panic.
He listened with his fingers bridged beneath his chin, eyes narrowing as he mentally dissected her answer. She tried to keep her eyes anywhere but on his, but his gaze held a certain magnetic quality, dragging hers back when she managed to wrench it away.
"You're nineteen years old, Ms. Monaghan," he stated factually, "a legal adult. You could, at any time, simply leave."
"Can you call me Astrid?" she asked uncomfortably, shifting in her seat. 'Miss Monaghan' just sounded so formal and artificial.
"I would rather not. Don't avoid the question," he breezed over her attempt at dodging the subject with ease, "why do you continue living in a place that obviously puts you under such mental duress?"
Astrid gripped at the arms of the chair and tried to imagine she was somewhere else. Her imagination was uncooperative, however. It was too hot in the room, too stuffy to pretend she was not trapped in an interrogation without any hope of worming her way out.
"I can't just leave," she argued lamely.
"You can't, or you don't wish to?" he challenged.
"Where else am I going to go, huh?" she snapped at him, tired of going over the same conversation she had so frequently with herself.
"I barely graduated high school, never had a job, no other family. I'd be completely screwed, probably living on the streets," she continued bitterly.
The bit that she left off was that she knew she wouldn't survive on the streets of Gotham. She had no delusions about her street smarts nor any regarding her survival skills; life out there would swallow her up and eat her whole.
Not unlike life in prison, she assumed.
Doctor Crane considered her words over a long beat of silence. She could hear her heartbeat thrumming steadily in her ears in the soundless room, increasing her nervousness tenfold.
"Ms. Monaghan," he drawled out her name. She was certain the show he made of it was expressly due to her asking him to call her by a different title.
"This form requests an evaluation of your psychiatric health, whether or not you're suitable for standing trial and responsible for the charges brought against you by the state," he explained, holding up a form for her inspection.
"Okay. What's your point?" she asked. Her brows knit together as she tried to work out why he was explaining things so carefully to her, why he was smirking ever so slightly.
"If I sign off on your competency, you will be tried with arson with intent, perhaps even attempted manslaughter, reckless endangerment... Whatever it is the D.A. can dream up in that vivid imagination of his," he spoke slowly as he stood up and made his way over to admire the certificates and degrees on his wall, straightening one of the many frames
"How can I be charged with something I didn't do?" she interrupted. The talk of being put on trial for a crime she couldn't even fathom herself committing was enough to send her blood boiling.
"Ah, but wait. If I refuse to sign it, things will proceed quite differently," he glossed over her interruption. "If I deny your capacity to stand trial, you stay here until you're fully rehabilitated."
She couldn't make sense of why he was detailing the process to her so intricately, nervously chewing at her lower lip as he conducted his one man floor show.
"In order to properly treat you, however, I feel I may have to use some methodology that may be considered unconventional," he offered, rifling through hanging folders in his filing cabinet until he found what he was looking for.
"I don't understand..." she confessed, taking the paper in her hand as he offered it to her. Phrases like 'assumes no responsibility for safety or well-being' leapt out at her from the page.
"Sign this," he promised with a face full of earnesty, "and we can begin treatment. Refuse to sign it and you have approximately a ninety percent chance of doing considerable time at Blackgate."
She started at him with an openly curious gaze; was he genuinely offering her a chance to escape the fate of being imprisoned, if she simply signed up for experimental therapy?
The only thing Astrid could imagine being much worse than having her every move scruntized by a head shrink was the prospect of spending her life rotting in a prison cell for a crime she didn't commit.
One she didn't remember committing, at least.
She should have asked what the treatment entailed or treated the offer with a healthy dose of suspicion, but as her Aunt Karen had always been quick to remind her, beggars could not be choosers.
She was well aware that she most assuredly fell into the 'beggar' category at the time.
Without hesitation, without much more than skimming, she held out her hand for a writing implement and scrawled her name across the bottom line.
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