The Good Doctor (Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow)

IV.

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

He hadn't told her what that meant. He had sent her back to the solitude of her cell without so much as a half hearted attempt at clarifying his words.

The threat loomed ominously in her head as she paced the small cell even a full day later, her hospital issue slippera making a repetitive scuffling sound on the cement floor.

There had to be something in it for him in order to merit the risk he had taken, but what that something was, she had still yet to decipher.

The cryptic smile that played on his lips haunted her, conjuring up a thousand twisted ideas far removed from the reality of the situation regarding just what unconventional treatment meant to the doctor.

Beyond the horrors her imagination concocted, she allowed herself to wonder if she would eventually learn the truth at the heart of what had happened the night that she was accused of setting the fire.

She didn't dwell on the subject for long; it was a long shot in her best estimation and the most important thing had been keeping herself out of prison.

Lying down on the paper thin mattress that served as her bed, she tried to see calling Arkham home for the next half a year as an improvement on the alternative.

-

"So, I hear you're in for good," Max whispered conspiratorially from across the lunch table as the dining hall filled up for breakfast.

The slightly older patient was the only thing that even resembled a friend Astrid had laid claim to, thus far.

"Not for good," she clarified, setting her tray down and taking a seat opposite the woman. "For the next six months."

Max drew a cross over her chest and mumbled a prayer in a language, possibly Spanish, that Astrid could not understand. She stared dubiously at the scene.

"What's that about?" she asked, shoveling a bite of the cold, lumpy oatmeal that made up breakfast into her mouth.

"You've got the doctor with the glasses, skinny fellow with the blue eyes?" Max asked.

"Sounds about like Doctor Crane," Astrid confirmed with a nod. "So what?"

Her friend whistled lowly, eyes diverting back to the sparse tray of food before her. Whatever it was that had her saying prayers for Astrid, the older woman was none too keen on sharing.

"C'mon," Astrid insisted impatiently, "you can't just do that and not tell me."

Max looked around, her dark eyes seemingly scanning for imagined eavesdroppers, before giving a relenting sigh.

"His patients don't come back."

Astrid regarded her with a less than certain look; maybe her newfound ally was as crazy as a sentence in Arkham would suggest.

"What do you mean, they don't come back?" she asked skeptically, chugging milk from the carton on her tray.

"The people he keeps out of prison, we all know they're not crazy, but criminals," she said with a wince, realizing what implications that made about Astrid but artfully moving on.

"They see him for a little while, get very odd. After their trials, they just stop coming back," Max continued, her eyes minature brown moons as she rattled off her horror story.

"Dozens of patients, all the same pattern, like clockwork. Some say it's the medicine he gives. Others... Brujería."

"I don't speak Spanish, Max," Astrid softly reminded the woman.