The Last Performance (Hybrid Chronicles Spin-off)

End Of The World - Payton

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Word count: 1708
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Payton

I try to steady my breathing to keep myself calm despite having been sticked. Medication helps, but it's not a cure. It will never be a cure, but I also don't know what will cure me. No amount of therapy has helped either.

I hear them talking and I look over to the side where Holly's colleagues are, writing down notes about me. Holly's gone from the room and she took Gabe with him. I feel my heart start to beat a little again.

"Payton, we know this is stressful for you, but you need to be able to rely on yourself and your own coping skills, okay? Short of us drugging you into deep sedation to keep you from being too anxious, Holly's up our butt regarding it. Do you understand what her treatment plan for you is?" Asks one of the colleagues. "W-what?" I stammer and one borrows Gabe's chair to sit near me while the other stands, holding my file that's attached to her clipboard.

"Payton, the thing is..." Her colleague trails off, placing his hand over me. "Holly is concerned about you. You've been declared a risk to yourself, okay? And you're on a psychiatric hold for a 72 hour period. You came into us, taking more than the recommended dose for your anxiety medication, but it also has little effect at helping you.

Holly wants to look at what she and we can do to help you. Other type of therapy, wether a different medication would be appropriate and what dosage that should be set, where we can place you so you can be monitored and cared for, but also how we can get you off your previous medication.

The dosage needs to leave your system fully and if you're uncontrollable, un-soothable and we give your more medicine, sedatives on-top, it's defeating what were trying to do to help you and it's not giving you a chance to try and rely on the coping skills we know you have.

Holly's trying to source a book at the moment she can go through with you as she regularly works in mental health and drug and alcohol units, but things are topsy turvy as you know with what's going on outside. This situation means were short-staffed, low on resources and time-limited.

The city's leaders and authorities are trying to rectify this situation and get it under control, but till that happens, we can tell you now that your 72 hours are going to be used up where a proper assessment has not be completed by her.

We're not in much position to help anyone."

"If it expires, what happens to me?" I ask.

"Holly has put in a 28 day extension for you as you're not well, but till the legal system gets around to that, your hold will expire and legally we will have to let you go, but you're not well enough to be let go and you can't leave the hospital due to city lock-down, puts us in a difficult position.

We don't know what's going to happen to you, but we're going to do our best to support you in the meantime and why not make things easy on yourself and us too?" She suggests.

"I-I can try..." I murmur. "That's great." The guy smiles and then I hear the door opening. Holly walks in with Gabe following behind who seems a little short of breath and wincing every so often as he moves. "She okay?" Holly asks, taking the clipboard from her colleagues.

"We gave her a low dosage to calm her and just had a quick chat." The guy responds.

"Okay, cool." She responds, tucking the clipboard under her arm and looks directly at me.

"Now, Payton, do you understand what we and you need to do? If you continue the way you do, it's going to get to the point the director will start harping at me and we won't be allowed to give you any more medication as we need to wean you off of everything to evaluate your properly, but we also don't want you to start suffering overdoses of medicine in your system.