Chapter Text
Cami Eldridge can recall eight events in her life that completely changed its trajectory.
Ⅰ.
The first was when she was 10 and she had to research a job for a school project. She had picked a doctor because it was cool and easy to research. But that week spent researching doctors had convinced Cami that she wanted to be an ER doctor, a doctor who constantly did the impossible and saved other’s lives, never wavering in the heat of the moment. And she worked hard for that goal, it took many sleepless nights in highschool to get her gen ed courses out of the way and still graduate as valedictorian.
Ⅱ.
The second was when she was accepted into Gotham University in their accelerated medical program. This was the most sought after program in the country because of their partnership with Arkham Asylum and Gotham General Hospital for their residency programs. It was well worth the sleepless nights and tears shed over her notes for the joy of being accepted into the best program in the country. Her goal of working in Arkham Asylum was going to become reality.
Ⅲ.
The third was when she was in her final year of her internship at Gotham General Emergency Room. She was almost done with her time there before she was transferred to Arkham for her residency. She was so excited to submit the papers in the morning, the first day of applications being accepted.
Her daydreams were cut short when the ER got the alert that there had been an attack by the Joker at the Pier’s amusement park and the victims were enroute Joker had set off a non lethal Joker Toxin bomb which had blanketted the whole park. When he was asked later about why it was non lethal he had claimed he was “just trying to have them cut loose, and not actually harm them.” Cami had had to encounter countless emergency rooms filled with the victims of the lastest Arkham escapee and it was becoming a tireless routine.
One of the first patients she had rushed in was a 3 year old girl, Gabrielle Rodriguez, who was overdosing on non lethal Joker Toxin. Her mother, Alexandria Rodriguez, had been affected too and was restrained to a bed in the same room as her daughter.
The horrifying sight of the mother uncontrollably laughing while her daughter was dying in the bed next to her had made Cami hold onto her application for Arkham Asylum. Two days after her daughter died Alexandria hung herself with a sheet in her hospital room’s bathroom, the knowledge that her daughter died listening to her mother laugh was too unbearable.
Cami attended their joint funeral. The day after the funeral she turned in her application to the ER at Gotham General and vowed to never feel pity for the monsters locked up in Arkham ever again.
Ⅳ.
The fourth was when she was home visiting her family and friends on a break from her final year of residency at Gotham General. She had been out drinking with her friend Dani, “Dani and Cami friends for evei” as their middle school selves had said, and her sister was to pick them up before taking them back to Dani’s house to hang out for the rest of the night. Her sister, Bianca, was a senior in high school and even though they were 10 years apart, 17 and 27, they were close. But that night Bianca never showed up.
After many frantic phone calls and several hours, Cami and her parents were in a hospital room watching her sister take her final breaths after her life support was cut off. On the way to pick Cami and Dani, Bianca had been hit head on by a drunk driver. It had caused severe head and body trauma causing a hemorrhage in her brain. Cami blamed herself for making her sister come and pick her up, and even though her parents said they didn't blame her she didn't trust their words and continued to bear all the weight of the tragedy on her own shoulders. The man who had hit her got off with a minor concussion and was charged with vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence, getting him a sentence of 10 years in prison.
Cami didn't go to visit her parent’s for several years after the court sentencing, feeling too guilty to look them in the face.
Ⅴ.
The fifth was when she was just getting off work one night in the emergency room at Gotham General, having finished her residency and been offered a job on the spot. A man had been brought in for a car accident that he caused. He was belligerently drunk and was handcuffed to the bed to keep from attacking anymore nurses or security. The woman he had crashed his car into was pronounced dead on the scene. Cami had stayed after her shift ended and watched the whole thing from the sidelines. The nurses had ordered his blood tests to get his blood alcohol level but before they could receive the results several large men in all black burst into the hospital and started threatening the staff. It turned out that the man was the younger brother of Roman Sionis, 19 year old Marco Sionis.
The tests were ordered to be canceled but the results had already been tested. The henchmen made their way down to the lab to try and destroy the results, but Cami saw them sitting in the nurses station. She quickly slid them behind a filing cabinet and quietly made her way to the locker room already planning her next move.
30 mins later and she was stepping through the automatic doors of the police precinct to report what had happened. She was transferred directly to Commissioner Gordon’s office and where she made her statement. Flash forward several hours and the police are searching the nurses station under their warrant and grabbing the file from the hiding spot Cami had told them about. Marco was arrested and Cami started her life as a wanted woman.
Ⅵ.
The sixth was the day before her testimony at court. Marco Sionis was being charged with vehicular manslaughter, drug possession, underage drinking, driving on a suspended license and a whole slew of other charges and her testimony was one of the keys to put him away for a long time.
Cami had been fired from the hospital, which she had expected, but she was unexpectedly blacklisted from every medical center in the area. She had really underestimated Roman Sionias’ reach and influence. She was slowly walking up the stairs coming back from another shift at the coffee shop near her apartment when she noticed her door was ajar.
Her blood ran cold as she pulled out her phone to call Commissioner Gordan. He feared something like this was going to happen so he had given her his number and had an undercover cop sitting outside her building. She slowly pushed open the door and it creaked open on it's only remaining hinge. Her apartment was trashed, all the furniture was overturned and broken, glass littered the floor and her electronics were missing making it like her apartment had been ransacked and robbed. But the worst was Dani, who had only agreed to move in with her a few months prior. She was lying in a puddle of blood face down with a bullet hole in the back of her head. Cami’s legs went weak and she fell to the ground, sobs shaking her entire body as she grieved for her friend. Looking back, Cami could tell she was in shock, because she didn't realize Gordan had picked up and was calling out to her from her phone. Nor did she realize when the cop who was always outside ran into the room and called for backup. She barely recognized being escorted from the apartment and into a squad car to a safe house. All she could focus on was the memory of the scattered papers surrounding Dani’s body. They were copies of Cami’s job applications she had submitted to all the different hospitals.
Cami wishes she could say an event was the trial, but she can barely remember it. She remembers not getting any sleep the night before, answering the questions she was asked by both lawyers, and the glare Marco gave her when he realized she wasn’t going to back down after his threat the previous night. Everything else was a blur.
Ⅶ.
The seventh moment was when she was approached by a man in a suit after the trail. She was escorted to an empty room in the courthouse where Gordan sat waiting for her. There the man asked if she was willing to work with the government to take down Roman Sionis aka Black Mask. He offered her a simple plan; get a new identity and pose as an underground doctor working in a clinic that helps criminals deal with their injuries. It would get her close to any info about what Roman was doing and help find her friend's killer. Cami eagerly signed those papers, she noticed A.R.G.U.S printed in bold letters at the top.
The day to day was simple, report to Gordan once a week about what she heard in the clinic, even if there wasn't anything worth reporting. In return she was given a new identity and protection. A few weeks later she left a law office in Metropolis with a manilla envelope. Inside was the ticket to her new life and the start of her new goal, finding her best friend's killer.
Ⅷ.
The eighth and final event was also the biggest shift in her life, it was when she met Barbra Gordan for the first time.