The Good Doctor (Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow)

III.

From the moment she signed on the dotted line of Doctor Crane's contract, things changed slowly for Astrid.

Every morning and evening, she was given two small, white pills to swallow for reasons never made clear to her. She pocketed them in her cheek or promptly brought them back up in the privacy of the bathroom, each time.

Most of the women on her unit were quiet and doped up to assure they stayed that way. She ate lunch in relative silence, aside from the occansional conversation with her regular tablemate, a middle-aged redhead by the name of Max.

Every other day, she was hauled in for a session with Doctor Crane. This went on like clockwork, every day bleeding into the next, for around week.

"I recieved your lab results this morning," Doctor Crane announced, folding his hands on top of his large desk.

"And?" Astrid questioned. She was tired of playing cryptic games that went nowhere with the man, every visit to his office simply another chance for him to showcase his control issues.

"And your blood tested negative for the medications you were ordered take," he explained. "Care to regale me with an excuse, Ms. Monaghan?"

She felt a cold sweat break out on her skin. She hadn't considered that they'd be testing her levels for whatever it was they had tried to shove down her throat, having felt a little bold and defiant for refusing them.

"I took them once and they made me foggy. I didn't like it," she forwent any attempt at a lie. "I don't even know what they are."

"Fluvoxamine and Lithium, an antidepressant and a mood stabilizer," he offered flippantly. "Sedative side effects are quite common."

"I don't need... Whatever you said. I'm not crazy," she insisted, knowing full well that those were the hallmark words of the totally insane.

"You're making my job very complicated, you know," he hummed irritably, keying something in on his laptop without meeting her eyes.

"Is shoving pills down someone's throat your idea of unconventional therapy?" she countered. Going on the defensive was the only coping mechanism she could grasp at in the face of being caught.

"First of all, antidepressants and mood stabilizers are not for 'the crazies'," he used air quotes as he disassembled her argument, "That is an entirely erroneous stigma. Medication treatment proves immensely beneficial for many otherwise mentally healthy individuals."

She sunk lower into her seat as she prepared for the long winded lecture. It was like being spoken down to by a teacher of some sort, but one with the power to quite literally destroy her, if she displeased him.

"Secondly, it is my job to convince the court system that you are, as you put it, crazy. Too crazy to have remembered setting a fire that nearly killed your aunt and her significant other," he said in a cold tone.

"And finally, your treatment must remain very precisely conventional until after your trial, which I feel I must remind you is in two days. It will be difficult to convince a judge that the proper place for you is under my care if you refuse to cooperate with a basic treatment plan."

She swallowed thickly. She had obviously spent far too little time considering of the consequences of her plan to avoid being doped up. It had been more important to keep her wits about her, to avoid shuffling through the halls like the rest of the zombies who were barely aware they existed.

In doing so, however, she had unknowingly compromised her case for keeping out of prison. It was a case she had never been completely keyed into, Doctor Crane simply warning her to keep her mouth shut and do as she was told, although not in so many words.

She was warned not to speak of the contract or the arrangement to anyone. In and of itself, the warning drew her suspicion. What exactly did the good doctor have to hide, if the agreement was all above the table?

Nevertheless, she knew far better than to question out loud the only thing that stood between her and life in a prison cell. She had little reason to care if it was perfectly legal or not when it was keeping her alive.

"I'll start taking them, then. We can redo the blood test, or something," she promised. Any last ditch effort to save her own skin.

"It would take much longer than two days to rebuild the levels to a therapeutic dosage," he dismissed the idea with a scoff. "I'll take care of it."

She blinked at him several times. She had been attempting to build the courage to ask an obvious question since the moment he had offered her help, over time beginning to consider that his intentions may have been slightly less than altruistic.

"I don't understand why you're doing this," she said quietly, hoping to convey with tone that she meant no offense. "Helping me, I mean."

He smiled a smile which was pure artifice, nothing remotely warm or human in the gesture.

"Helping people is what I do, Ms. Monaghan. I am a doctor, after all."

-

"Six months?" she hissed at Doctor Crane, tears in her eyes. "Six months in this hellhole!"

He silently readjusted his glasses with no concern for her heated outburst.

The trial had proceeded according to the flimsy plan, so far as she could tell. Proven mentally unfit to stand trial for her crime, she was remanded into the care of one of the top psychiatric facilities in the northeast, under the care of Doctor Jonathan Crane.

The judge had looked at her face - so young but so tired - with an expression of pity which she loathed. She supposed it had worked expressly in her favor, but that made it no easier to stomach.

"Six months is child's play compared to the time you would have done otherwise," he scoffed at her. "The DA was pushing for arson with intent along with reckless endangerment."

Just like he had said before. It was another case of 'doctor knows best', a game she was slowly realizing went much deeper than she had at first realized.

"And so, what? We just continue these little sessions for six months?" she barked, crossing her arms over her chest. She couldn't imagine staring at the office or his smug face for half a year more when a few weeks had seemed to last forever.

"Yes and no," he answered vaguely.

"Can you please, for once, just say what you mean?" she asked, frustration evident in her voice. "I'm sick of the games, sick of not knowing what's happening or what you're getting out of this."

"Some would say your suspicion of my motives speaks to paranoia," he glossed over the answer to her accusations once more.

"We've been having these little chats for weeks now. You know all about my never knowing my mother or father, all about my aunt Karen and her handsy boyfriends, all about everything," she exploded, only able to keep herself in the chair for fear of being strapped to it otherwise.

"So tell me, Doctor Crane," she spat his name like a curse, "what is the point of all of this?"

He allowed the tense pause to linger in the room for a long moment, the quiet stretching on until it felt nearly suffocating for Astrid.

"You're no longer one foot in and one foot outside of the asylum. You're a patient here as of the judgement this morning. My patient, at that," he explained cooly.

"Now, Astrid, your treatment can truly begin."

✖ ✖ ✖

Hey guys! Thank you for all the feedback and support on this story. I'm having a wonderful time writing it and I hope you're enjoying reading.

Now, we're getting to the good part. Without GPD breathing down his neck, some of those 'unconventional methods' Doctor Crane is so fond of can finally come into play.

Let me know what you're thinking!