just_muse_me December: 9.9.4 Intensive Care Unit
I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
After the explosion, the first thing Harvey was cognizant of was waking up in a hospital bed. His face - the whole left side - was achingly dull. His eyes wandered around the room. When he saw the coin-his coin-on the stand next to the hospital bed, he reached over and grabbed it. He didn’t understand. It had been with Rachel-he’d given it to her-how was it here? Could Rachel be-here? His head was hazy, presumably from the medication coming from the IV drip attached to his arm-and for a half of a second his mind forgot the sounds of the explosion, Rachel’s screams, being unable to save her. And then he looked at the coin. It was blackened, covered in grime. When he flipped it over, he saw that the other side was scratched up, damaged from the blaze. If the fire did this to a sturdy piece of metal-imagine what it did to a person-oh, God. Harvey didn’t have to imagine. Just as quickly as he’d forgotten, everything came rushing back in colorful detail -
He was screaming to Rachel, shouting empty promises, begging her to stay alive, begging her not to leave him…and then there were Rachel’s own screams, horrified. She’d remained calm up until then, positive, her can-do attitude lasting much longer than his had. She actually believed it would be okay, didn’t she? She believed in Harvey Dent, in the Gotham City Police Department, in the Batman, in good prevailing over evil. But that’s not the way it worked, was it? They were finding that out-the dreamers of Gotham City - its few do-gooders - were being showed just how valued they were. Her screams, and then the explosion, were the last things he heard before passing out.
In the bed, clutching the charred coin, Harvey cried out, a silent scream being all he could manage. His vocal cords were not damaged, but speaking was a little rough, considering the trauma the surrounding area - his face, his jaw - had just been through. It hurt even doing that. He did it again and again, pain ravaging through his skull, radiating through his body.
And when you're out there
Without care,
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much
Does that make me crazy?
The attending nurse found him like that-silently crying out, his shoulders shaking, the trembling sensation reverberating throughout his body.
“Mr. Dent?” The woman came over. “Well it looks like you’re ready for another dose of pain medication, aren’t you?” She was well-trained in beside manner, but hardly able to understand that the pain he was experiencing was psychological as much as it was physical.
Harvey shook his head. He didn’t want things to become hazy again. He didn’t want to forget anything he’d seen. He couldn’t pretend Rachel was alive or that things were going to get better or that he could make them better. He was no white knight. He was a man-a broken man who could save no one. He wanted everything to remain just as bleak as it now seemed.
“Sir, the morphine will help with the pain,” the nurse tried to explain. “It’ll be much more comfortable.”
Harvey let out a wheeze as he tried to speak. “I don’t. Want. It.”
Worried, the nurse wrote something on his chart and hurried out of the room to go grab one of the attending doctors.
A few minutes later, the doctor who’d initially attended to Harvey upon his admittance came into the room.
“Mr. Dent,” he said. “I’m Dr. Baum - I’m overseeing your care for the duration of your stay. The nurse mentioned that you no longer want to receive morphine. Is there something else you’d prefer? We can do a lower dosage or even a different type of IV drip to manage your pain.”
“I don’t want to manage my pain,” Harvey’s voice was hoarse. “I want it right where I can feel it.”
The doctor frowned and wondered for a moment if calling one of the attending psychiatrists down from the psych ward would be helpful. The district attorney was obviously in a state of shock. “It’ll be much more comfortable,” he said, echoing what the nurse had already told Harvey. “We’re going to be doing a skin graft surgery tomorrow. Between that and plastic surgery, the left side of your face should be pretty well on the road to recovery.”
“No,” Harvey shook his head.
“No?” The doctor asked.
“No surgery. No grafts.” He gripped the coin tightly. “No meds.”
He didn’t want to recover. He didn’t want them to sew him up, make him good as new, pretend the whole thing never happened and go on with his life. Rachel was dead. He was to blame. He was a monster. He had never been as good as they all thought, and now the whole world would know just how grotesque Harvey Dent really was.
With that, he began tearing off the gauze that covered his face. It hurt - skin literally tearing off, burned flesh, muscles and tendons exposed to the air.
“AUGHHHHH-RAHHH---GRR---ARRRRHHHHHH!” Harvey screamed, his voice finally piercing the air, the loudness on par for what he felt.
“Mr. Dent, please-“ The doctor went over but Harvey waved his fist, catching the man in the jaw.
“GET OUT,” Harvey demanded. “GET. OUT.”
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly.
* * *
Everyone was gone. He’d sent them all away - doctors, nurses, Jim Gordon-though not before they’d restrained him. He wanted nothing to do with any of them. He didn’t know what was going to happen next but he knew that he sure as hell wasn’t going to be their goddamn white knight. He never really had been had he? The Joker-that crazy son of a bitch-had been right. All it took was a change in circumstance and Harvey Dent’s humanity was nonexistent. Harvey closed his eyes and found himself, despite the pain, nodding off a bit. When he woke up, there was another nurse doing-something-what-his vision was still a little blurry from time to time from the trauma to his left eye. When he was able to focus, he saw the black and white paint smeared across the face of the “nurse”.
As soon as the Joker took off the surgical mask, Harvey tried to reach for the psychopath, forgetting he was cuffed to the bed.
“Hi.” The Joker grinned. He always grinned.
And I hope that you are having the time of your life
But think twice, that's my only advice
Harvey watched the man, wondering what the hell he wanted now.
“You and your girlfriend was nothing personal.”
Why was he doing this? WHY?
“You were a schemer, you had plans, and look where that got you. I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go ‘according to plan’. Even if the plan is horrifying! If tomorrow I tell the press that, like, a gang banger, will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!”
Harvey listened to the man babble and the thing of it was, the clown was actually making sense.
Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are,
Ha, ha, ha, bless your soul
You really think you're in control.
After undoing the restraints that had been holding Harvey to the bed, The Joker handed the lawyer a gun and pointed it at himself, giving Harvey the choice. “Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!”
…this was true. In the unfair world that they lived in, nothing could be regulated by the law any more - he’d certainly found that out. But his coin-well that was the beauty of the coin. It was the ultimate decider, the ultimate judge and it was completely unbiased.
* * *
Minutes later, Harvey ran out of the building, his burned suit back on. He ran until he began to wheeze, at a safe distance from the hospital. As he caught his breath, he looked back at it, just as it burst into flames.
He was sure the Joker was long gone now, on to the next stage of his plan, whatever that was. As he stood there, looking at the world fall to pieces, he realized he didn’t care. His own world had burned down in an instant - why shouldn’t everyone else’s? More than that, why shouldn’t the people who’d effectively ended his life pay for it? He looked at the gun that the Joker had placed in his hands.
Back in the hospital room, he looked at the clown as he held the gun toward him, then produced the coin.
“You live,” he said as he showed the good side. He turned it to the scratched side. “You die.”
The Joker looked pleased. “Now we’re talking.”
I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place.
He hadn’t been able to kill the Joker. It wasn’t that the man didn’t deserve it. But fair was fair. The coin was Harvey Dent’s new law. If that meant he was a villain-well, they hadn’t let him die a hero, now had they?
My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb
And all I remember is thinking, I want to be like them
Ever since I was little, ever since I was little it looked like fun
And it's no coincidence I've come
And I can die when I'm done
Maybe I'm crazy
Maybe you're crazy
Maybe we're crazy
Probably.
After the explosion, the first thing Harvey was cognizant of was waking up in a hospital bed. His face - the whole left side - was achingly dull. His eyes wandered around the room. When he saw the coin-his coin-on the stand next to the hospital bed, he reached over and grabbed it. He didn’t understand. It had been with Rachel-he’d given it to her-how was it here? Could Rachel be-here? His head was hazy, presumably from the medication coming from the IV drip attached to his arm-and for a half of a second his mind forgot the sounds of the explosion, Rachel’s screams, being unable to save her. And then he looked at the coin. It was blackened, covered in grime. When he flipped it over, he saw that the other side was scratched up, damaged from the blaze. If the fire did this to a sturdy piece of metal-imagine what it did to a person-oh, God. Harvey didn’t have to imagine. Just as quickly as he’d forgotten, everything came rushing back in colorful detail -
He was screaming to Rachel, shouting empty promises, begging her to stay alive, begging her not to leave him…and then there were Rachel’s own screams, horrified. She’d remained calm up until then, positive, her can-do attitude lasting much longer than his had. She actually believed it would be okay, didn’t she? She believed in Harvey Dent, in the Gotham City Police Department, in the Batman, in good prevailing over evil. But that’s not the way it worked, was it? They were finding that out-the dreamers of Gotham City - its few do-gooders - were being showed just how valued they were. Her screams, and then the explosion, were the last things he heard before passing out.
In the bed, clutching the charred coin, Harvey cried out, a silent scream being all he could manage. His vocal cords were not damaged, but speaking was a little rough, considering the trauma the surrounding area - his face, his jaw - had just been through. It hurt even doing that. He did it again and again, pain ravaging through his skull, radiating through his body.
And when you're out there
Without care,
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much
Does that make me crazy?
The attending nurse found him like that-silently crying out, his shoulders shaking, the trembling sensation reverberating throughout his body.
“Mr. Dent?” The woman came over. “Well it looks like you’re ready for another dose of pain medication, aren’t you?” She was well-trained in beside manner, but hardly able to understand that the pain he was experiencing was psychological as much as it was physical.
Harvey shook his head. He didn’t want things to become hazy again. He didn’t want to forget anything he’d seen. He couldn’t pretend Rachel was alive or that things were going to get better or that he could make them better. He was no white knight. He was a man-a broken man who could save no one. He wanted everything to remain just as bleak as it now seemed.
“Sir, the morphine will help with the pain,” the nurse tried to explain. “It’ll be much more comfortable.”
Harvey let out a wheeze as he tried to speak. “I don’t. Want. It.”
Worried, the nurse wrote something on his chart and hurried out of the room to go grab one of the attending doctors.
A few minutes later, the doctor who’d initially attended to Harvey upon his admittance came into the room.
“Mr. Dent,” he said. “I’m Dr. Baum - I’m overseeing your care for the duration of your stay. The nurse mentioned that you no longer want to receive morphine. Is there something else you’d prefer? We can do a lower dosage or even a different type of IV drip to manage your pain.”
“I don’t want to manage my pain,” Harvey’s voice was hoarse. “I want it right where I can feel it.”
The doctor frowned and wondered for a moment if calling one of the attending psychiatrists down from the psych ward would be helpful. The district attorney was obviously in a state of shock. “It’ll be much more comfortable,” he said, echoing what the nurse had already told Harvey. “We’re going to be doing a skin graft surgery tomorrow. Between that and plastic surgery, the left side of your face should be pretty well on the road to recovery.”
“No,” Harvey shook his head.
“No?” The doctor asked.
“No surgery. No grafts.” He gripped the coin tightly. “No meds.”
He didn’t want to recover. He didn’t want them to sew him up, make him good as new, pretend the whole thing never happened and go on with his life. Rachel was dead. He was to blame. He was a monster. He had never been as good as they all thought, and now the whole world would know just how grotesque Harvey Dent really was.
With that, he began tearing off the gauze that covered his face. It hurt - skin literally tearing off, burned flesh, muscles and tendons exposed to the air.
“AUGHHHHH-RAHHH---GRR---ARRRRHHHHHH!” Harvey screamed, his voice finally piercing the air, the loudness on par for what he felt.
“Mr. Dent, please-“ The doctor went over but Harvey waved his fist, catching the man in the jaw.
“GET OUT,” Harvey demanded. “GET. OUT.”
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly.
* * *
Everyone was gone. He’d sent them all away - doctors, nurses, Jim Gordon-though not before they’d restrained him. He wanted nothing to do with any of them. He didn’t know what was going to happen next but he knew that he sure as hell wasn’t going to be their goddamn white knight. He never really had been had he? The Joker-that crazy son of a bitch-had been right. All it took was a change in circumstance and Harvey Dent’s humanity was nonexistent. Harvey closed his eyes and found himself, despite the pain, nodding off a bit. When he woke up, there was another nurse doing-something-what-his vision was still a little blurry from time to time from the trauma to his left eye. When he was able to focus, he saw the black and white paint smeared across the face of the “nurse”.
As soon as the Joker took off the surgical mask, Harvey tried to reach for the psychopath, forgetting he was cuffed to the bed.
“Hi.” The Joker grinned. He always grinned.
And I hope that you are having the time of your life
But think twice, that's my only advice
Harvey watched the man, wondering what the hell he wanted now.
“You and your girlfriend was nothing personal.”
Why was he doing this? WHY?
“You were a schemer, you had plans, and look where that got you. I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go ‘according to plan’. Even if the plan is horrifying! If tomorrow I tell the press that, like, a gang banger, will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!”
Harvey listened to the man babble and the thing of it was, the clown was actually making sense.
Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are,
Ha, ha, ha, bless your soul
You really think you're in control.
After undoing the restraints that had been holding Harvey to the bed, The Joker handed the lawyer a gun and pointed it at himself, giving Harvey the choice. “Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!”
…this was true. In the unfair world that they lived in, nothing could be regulated by the law any more - he’d certainly found that out. But his coin-well that was the beauty of the coin. It was the ultimate decider, the ultimate judge and it was completely unbiased.
* * *
Minutes later, Harvey ran out of the building, his burned suit back on. He ran until he began to wheeze, at a safe distance from the hospital. As he caught his breath, he looked back at it, just as it burst into flames.
He was sure the Joker was long gone now, on to the next stage of his plan, whatever that was. As he stood there, looking at the world fall to pieces, he realized he didn’t care. His own world had burned down in an instant - why shouldn’t everyone else’s? More than that, why shouldn’t the people who’d effectively ended his life pay for it? He looked at the gun that the Joker had placed in his hands.
Back in the hospital room, he looked at the clown as he held the gun toward him, then produced the coin.
“You live,” he said as he showed the good side. He turned it to the scratched side. “You die.”
The Joker looked pleased. “Now we’re talking.”
I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place.
He hadn’t been able to kill the Joker. It wasn’t that the man didn’t deserve it. But fair was fair. The coin was Harvey Dent’s new law. If that meant he was a villain-well, they hadn’t let him die a hero, now had they?
My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb
And all I remember is thinking, I want to be like them
Ever since I was little, ever since I was little it looked like fun
And it's no coincidence I've come
And I can die when I'm done
Maybe I'm crazy
Maybe you're crazy
Maybe we're crazy
Probably.