"Where's Dr. Reuben?" I asked the orderly leading me to my daily therapy session with the head psychiatrist and former colleague.
"He's out for the day - it's a family emergency - but Dr. Hartz is available. She just transferred here from the Metropolis Institution for the Insane, and we're very lucky to have her.
The shiny new nameplate on her office door read as such : Dr. Queenie Scarlett Hartz, M.D.
"Thanks, Dawn. Come back in half an hour, ok?"
"That's shorter than usual."
"An extra half-hour isn't going to make a difference with you. Your obsession is classic textbook, along with your clinginess to an abusive mate. If they could have cured you, they already would have."
I stared in hatred at the voluptous woman in the chair, taunting me with her raised, bushy eyebrows, the beauty mark on the right side of her face, by her bottom lip, wiggling as she talked. She looked down at me through her cat-eye glasses as if I were inferior.
"You'd think the Joker would have picked a smarter sidekick - though he doesn't really need one. So why does he keep you around? He doesn't love you; psychopaths are incapable of love. You know that, right? You were a shrink once...though a weak one. You couldn't even psychoanalize my five-year-old nephew properly, let alone a real crazy."
At first I had thought she was baiting me to make me mad, but now I wasn't sure. Her therapeutic techniques were odd, I'd say that. What were they teaching their psych grads in Metropolis?
"Puddin' loves me." I stuck my chin out, thinking, strumpet.
"He uses you. You're a tool, a goon - though a stereotypically attractive, stereotypically bubblebrained one at that."
" You've got body issues, and you resent anyone even remotely attractive because no one appreciates you for your brain. If anyone's stereotyped, it's you, Miss Overweight Nerdy Angry Lesbian Feminist!"
"You don't have a clue about my sexual orentation, you painted slut!" she screeched.
"I'd be ten times the sidekick you are if I'd been there first!"
And then I knew she had no idea what she was getting into, just that his charm had worked on her, too, that she'd fallen straight into being a pawn in his favorite game of playing psychiatrists.
I should have warned her.
But I was still mad...and jealous as hell.
Shrink Fight! I think Harley's jealous...poor dearie! I can't wait to update, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I did when I wrote it.
-SBR