Home

- - - -

Gotham Family Services. It's almost a joke. There aren't many things in this city that you could consider a family, and the ones that are left are well past the point when I can be of any service.

Sometimes I swear I can feel the misery pressing in around me, pushing in through my office windows and suffocating me. Sometimes I just want to lay my head down on the only empty space on my desk and let it overtake me.

Then there's the gun I keep in my drawer. You need it in a line of work like this. Some half-crazed alkie pedo dad could come bursting through my door any second, and maybe that gun would save me. Then again, maybe I’ll blow my brains out with it one day. Maybe that’s just another kind of saving.

I make a difference, I know I do. It's small, of course. One kid whose dad doesn't kill him. One kid who actually gets to go to school. One kid who goes from a house where his parents keep him locked in a closet to a house where his foster parents just ignore him.

I have saved lives. But not all of them were worth saving. Last week, I took a kid from his sixteen year old mom after she'd been using him as a drug mule. Turns out, his mom was one of my cases four years ago.

I could scrap this shit, and go work in a Starbucks where I'd make more money and nothing I saw during the day would keep me up at night. It gets harder everyday to walk in the door.

It used to be easier. I used to think that even in this town, there were pockets of goodness. It was my last remaining piece of righteous naiveté. I thought the first few years had burned all that out of me. I was wrong. That's the thing about Gotham; there's always a lower low.

I knew the evil that came from poverty. I knew the evil that persisted in the so-called "comfortable" homes. I knew that under the surface of the best of us, there was the worst, but still.... I didn't know everything.

The last of my optimism, my security and my hope was torn right out of me, with one client. I worked mostly in the hospital then, with the crisis cases. My shift was nearly over, and I was walking down the hall from the office when Doctor Hatcher, the head of pediatric intensive care, grabbed my arm.

“I have a patient you need to see, Elizabeth,” he said.

"Give a break," I said, "I'm exhausted. Let me have the one nice night in my career stay nice."

"I'm sorry," he said, “but this is a rather special case. It’s somewhat...sensitive."

He handed me the patient’s chart, and when I saw the name I knew exactly what he meant.

"What's going on here?" I asked.

"He was brought in from school, with a serious head wound. It's a miracle he didn't die or end up in a coma. It's not why he's here that's the problem. That seems to be on the up and up. It's the rest of him..."

"The rest of him?"

"He has a lot of scarring. We did a bone scan, and it showed that he’s had quite a few broken bones. More then normal. It seems that he had a lot of stitches, too, but our hospital records don't show him ever being here. He could have gone to another hospital, but I doubt it. These don't look professional."

Hatcher looked at me with a rare look of real concern. “I guess I’ll call that hot date I had tonight and cancel.”

“Please, Liz, this kid’s the hottest date in Gotham. The room’s right over here.”

We walked down the hall in silence, until Hatcher stopped at a closed door. He hesitated for a moment.

"Is the father here?" I asked.

"No, he's away on business. The butler has been acting in loco parentis."

"Weird," I said.

Hatcher shrugged. "Rich people."

"Exactly," I said, and grabbed his arm firmly. "Hatcher, if I find anything....I don't want this to just disappear."

"I understand," he said, “but the only promise I can make is that I will do everything I can. Good luck."

I watched Doctor Hatcher walk away, took a deep breath, and knocked.

A voice inside said, "Come in."

Inside I found the boy, propped up in bed, his heavy bandaged head resting against the pillows and TV going at full volume. He was a handsome kid, but rather young looking for his sixteen years, like a brunette Peter Pan.

"Hi, there, I'm Miss Ecker, I'm a social worker here at the hospital. I just wanted to talk a little bit, if you're feeling ok."

"It’s nice to meet you,” he said, smiling. “I'm kind of woozy and everything, but I don’t mind talking."

He hit a button on the remote control, and the room was bathed in silence. I pulled up the visitors chair closer to the bed, and sat down.

"So, Richard-"

"Dick," he said.

"What?"

"Oh, I mean, call me Dick. Everybody does."

I nodded. "Ok, Dick. Why don't you tell me a little about yourself?"

“What would you like to know?” he said.

“Anything you feel like telling me. Why don’t you tell me about school?”

He began to talk, rambling on with ease. Although clearly tired, he was pleasant and showed all the signs of being an ordinary, although terribly privileged, young man.

But the surface is often deceiving. That's the way it is with these upper class cases.

I glanced at his chart. "Hm. It says here that you've never been admitted to this hospital before. Where do you usually go to treat your injuries?" I asked, lifting my head to look him straight in the eye.

"Nowhere," he said without missing a beat, "I don’t really get hurt a lot."

"No broken bones?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I used to be in the circus. When I was little. My parents- my real parents - were trapeze artists and I was in their act. I broke a few bones back then, but that was years ago."

It was a reasonable explanation. But still, looking at him, at his face with its combination of sunny perfection and fatigue, my gut instinct kicked in. I hate that thing. It's what keeps me up at night worrying about the things I know I can never prove.

"While you were unconscious, the doctors took a bone scan. It showed evidence of multiple fractures in the past two years."

His eyebrows shot up. "That's impossible. I haven't had any broken bones since I was a kid. Isn't that in my records?"

"Your records only show what you were treated for at hospitals," I said. "Then there's the scars..."

"Listen. I got hurt a lot when I was younger, ok? It happens when you're in that sort of business. But that was a long time ago."

His poker face was failing him. Irritation as creeping into his voice, but fear was flaring up in his eyes.

After a moment of silence, he sighed deeply. "Why don't you just stop playing around and ask me?"

"Does your father-"

"He's not my father."

"Does your guardian ever hit you?"

He gazed at me intently. "No. Never."

I got the strange feeling that he was both telling the truth and also somehow lying.

"You can tell me what's going on," I said.

"First of all, nothing is going on. Second of all, I don't know you, I don't trust you, so why would I want to tell you anything?" he snapped.

He seemed real for the first time in our conversation. And I knew he was right. The sheer enormity of whatever this boy was carrying hit me at that moment. It would be enough to have endured whatever it was that gave him those cracks in his bones and scars on his flesh. But to have endured it from a man with more power and money then nearly anyone else in the world....that was something else entirely.

"I want to help you," I said, weakly.

"I know," Dick said. "And I really am grateful. But there's nothing you can do for me. I mean, I don’t need any help"

"People can't get away with everything," I said, "no matter how rich...or how powerful they are. Everyone is accountable."

These words came out of my mouth, but I didn’t believe them. I've lived in Gotham all my life. I knew as well as this boy did that in this world, and in this town most of all, you can make anything disappear. Particularly if you are Bruce Wayne.

On an impulse I reached out to grasp his hand, but the moment I touched him, he pulled it away with a sudden jerk.

"Thank you, but I really am ok. I just need some rest, right now."

He stared at me steadily, reassuring me. I sat frozen for a moment and then shut his chart and stood up. From my pocket I took my card, and handed it to him. He nodded and accepted it.

"Anytime." I said. "Day or night."

And then I walked out of the room, and left that boy there. I told Dr. Hatcher that I could find no evidence for abuse, and he at least pretended to believe me. We both know losing battles when we see them.

And here I am in my office. It's late now, close to midnight. I can hear the night janitor pushing his bucket slowly down the hall and the distant whine of the police sirens, the ambulances and the fire trucks rushing around this city. They're all like drops of rain on the surface of the sun. Useless, and bound for destruction.

My phone is silent, as it has been for every night this week, and the week before that and the week before that. The boy will never call, and any day now I expect to turn on the news and hear "Millionaire Bruce Wayne's ward dead in tragic accident..."

My office floods with light as the Batsignal is turned on a few blocks away. People like to talk about all the good the Batman and his sidekick do for this city. I don't give a rat's ass. They can't protect the battered wives, the abused kids and he sure as hell can't protect that poor boy up in Wayne Manor. As far as I’m concerned, they’re useless.