New Year, New You [OTA]

[abrightboy]

Who: Malcolm Bright and YOU
When: The first half of January.
Where: B1, ADI offices, around town.
Summary: Malcolm is aware that he has problems. Time to get rid of them for good! Because mental health works like that, right?!
Warnings: mental health struggles, vomit


There's a TV playing in the cafeteria at ADI when he goes down to get lunch after the new year. He's going to order soup; he already knows this. He's not even paying attention to the TV. He's lost in his own thoughts. But, as he waits in line, he changes his mind. Maybe he won't have soup after all. He's going to have a hamburger! And fries! Time to do like his mother says: stop all this nonsense. It's all in your head, Bright, he tells himself. That admonition is in a lot of people's voices from throughout his life.

He spends most of the afternoon in the men's room on that floor throwing up.

But Rome wasn't built in a day.

Back at B1 a few days later, he's staring at the tidy line of pill bottles on the kitchen counter. He's considering just throwing them away. He has to force himself to be normal; he can see it now.

At the coffee shop down the street, on another day, he orders his usual mocha and a big slice of chocolate cake. He'll try not to throw it up on the street but no promises. It takes time for a body to get used to new habits, is all. And if he's a little jittery, anxious, more unraveled than usual, well it's probably because he quit his meds cold turkey but he'll adapt. It's not to worry. He'll adapt.

Maybe he should stop relying on the restraints to sleep.

Maybe he should start going out to bars to meet people.

Maybe he should break curfew and crash with friends at Bonnie's.



Somebody stop him.

Comments

[graveyounglady]

"Why are you transitioning away from them? Was there something wrong with them? I'm sure we can still find something to make it easier." He's a nice, if peculiar man, and he shouldn't be suffering for whatever change is going on.

[abrightboy]

"It can't be easy," he tells her. "Change is hard. But I just have to power through it. A new year calls for a new you."

[graveyounglady]

"Who ever told you change has got to be hard? Sometimes it's as easy as rethinking how you're hanging out the wash." She shakes her head. "Come to medical with me. That's- Speaking as one of the staff there, I'm making that an order."

Mercy will grab him and start trying to tug him toward the elevators if he continues to refuse.

[abrightboy]

"You can't... make me go there," he protests, skittering back a few steps. "I'm not sick. Listen to me: this change is hard because I'm reprogramming my whole body. But it'll get easier. I just have to power through it."

[graveyounglady]

Mercy rolls up her sleeves, setting her jaw. She looks him up and down. "Pretty sure I can, Mr. Malcolm. Don't you go making more trouble for yourself than you need to." It feels... very important to fix him, doesn't it. He needs her help. He needs to let her do this.

So, she makes a grab for him, trying to catch his arm and pull him close enough to haul up over one shoulder. Mercy is not a small woman, and she's spent years being a gravedigger. Hauling a live body's just a bit wigglier than a dead one.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm is a small man and, while his upper body strength is usually surprising for his size, he's weak from his regimen of mostly puking all week and from benzo withdrawal.

It's undignified to be thrown over someone's shoulder like a sack of potatoes, but it's also a bit late for him to be worried about dignity.

"I'm going to file a complaint," he informs her. "And if I feel the urge to vomit down your back, I'm not going to try to hold it in," he adds a little more hysterically, kind of hoping for the urge for the first time this week and not finding it there.

[graveyounglady]

"You stop your fussing, Mr. Malcolm. I'm helping you." She gives him a sharp smack on his upper thigh with the hand she doesn't have curled around his waist over her shoulder, then uses it to pin his legs in place as she walks toward the elevators. "You're making a whole scene out of something you need."

[abrightboy]

“I think I know what I need!” he argues. “Put me down! Put me down now!” he insists.

[graveyounglady]

"Naw. See, the way I reckon it, most people know what they want, but they don't always know what they need." She does not, in fact, put him down. "You want to be put down and make yourself sick and suffering. Though, I can't rightly say I understand why, 'less you're punishing yourself for something?"

[abrightboy]

“I’m fixing myself!” he retorts, trying to wriggle out of her grasp. “And it’s not your business or anyone else’s!”

[graveyounglady]

"You made it everyone's business, slinking and shivering around here like a chicken gone and threw himself in a lake," she retorts, giving him another sharp smack, this time across the rear before clamping both her arms in place over his waist and legs. "You need tending to, and if you're too stubborn to see to it, others will."

She reaches the elevator and leans against the call button. Hitting the right floor button might be a little challenging if he keeps fighting this, but they'll cross that bridge when they reach it.

[abrightboy]

Oh, he'll keep fighting it.

"There's nothing you or others can do about it. I'm doing what has to be done. Put me down. You can't help me! NOBODY CAN!"

[graveyounglady]

She waits for the doors to open fully before stepping into the elevator quickly, spinning around to try to keep Malcolm from using his hands to stop the door. She'll just have to... kick the panel. It means they're going to be stopping at a few floors along the way, but that's fine. She's determined.

"Reckon there is something I can do about it. I think you ain't sleeping near enough if you've got it in that fool head of yours that this is all okay and right and can't be helped. We'll put you to sleep and get you fixed up. You'll feel better once you wake up."

[abrightboy]

We'll put you to sleep...

That's when he really, almost manically, starts thrashing against her grip.

"NO!" he screams. "NO! You can't put me to sleep. You can't! I have to be able to wake up!"

[graveyounglady]

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say. Mercy kicks the panel to get the lift moving down, but she's staggered by the sudden intensity of his fighting. "We're gonna wake you up. This ain't Ava's doing, Mr. Malcolm. Calm down. I just meant we'll stick you in a bed!" She'd been pretty sure pain medication and his own exhaustion would have knocked him out.

[abrightboy]

“You can’t give me sedatives,” he asserts. “If I can’t wake up, it’s like I’m trapped in there. You can’t. Just let me go back to my apartment,” he pleads.

cw: religious zealotry

[graveyounglady]

"No. You're just gonna end up hurting yourself even more." Of that, she's sure. "I'm from a healing order, it's my god's will you be helped. And their will be done through me."

[abrightboy]

He's silent a moment.

"...What?" And then, like a spell is broken, he starts struggling mightily again. "Let me go! LET ME GO!"

cw: mention/threats of corporal punishment

[graveyounglady]

He's a lot harder to hold onto, and Mercy weighs the merits of cracking his head against something to get him to calm down a bit. She can fix him once she's got him in a bed. Probably. Except that she has learned something since coming here, and concussions are bad. Why does he have to make this difficult?

She squeezes him tight, and says a grateful prayer to the Spring Tide when the doors finally open on the right floor. Walking with a flailing man is harder than standing with one, though. "Would you... be still?!" Mercy does pause just outside the elevator, moving to pin Malcolm's back half there. "This is happening. You can let it happen nicely, or you can pitch a fit like young 'un who ain't seen three full sets of seasons. You're lucky my Mama ain't here. She'd take a switch to your backside quick as you like for all the bellyaching you're doing."

[abrightboy]

"You have no right to detain me," Malcolm insists, still wriggling. "And neither does your mother. Put me down now!"

[graveyounglady]

"I got the right of the Spring Tide and your well-being on my side. You will be cleansed of the ills in your body with medicines you need, and you'll be grateful for the healing." This is frustrating. Can't he understand that she has to do this? She's been a bad acolyte. She's been failing in her duties to the Spring Tide since she arrived here. This is a way to redeem herself.

She gives him a hard shake on her shoulder, then starts stomping down the hallway, bound and determined to get him to a bed in the med bay.

[abrightboy]

He still, biding his time. He waits until they're inside the med bay, where he hopes anybody reasonable works.

"SOMEBODY HELP ME!" he screams. "MAKE THIS MANIAC RELEASE ME! THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ME! I DON'T WANT TREATMENT!"

cw: forced medical care

[graveyounglady]

"He's off his medication and fighting any help as given to him. He just needs- STOP THAT! He just needs sleep and some fluids put into him. Something for the pain and shivers and shakes, too. Can someone get me his records?"

The rest of the staff seem confused, but Mercy's been here long enough to develop some level of rapport. Someone else approaches, but it's not to hinder her. Rather, it's to help her try to get Malcolm down on to a bed with another person coming over to assist with restraints.

"We're helping you, Mr. Malcolm. There's something wrong with you that needs fixing. You need to calm down."

cw: forced medical care

[abrightboy]

He starts to almost rationally starting to look around for someone reasonable or a way out, but he sees the restraints and that goes out the window. He pulls against them, screaming.

“No! NO! Not that! NOT THAT!”

cw: forced medical care

[graveyounglady]

Others come over to assist as Malcolm grows more hysterical, hands holding him down, people talking over his head, until there's an IV, one that Mercy aims to put into his arm.

"This'll stop you hurting, Mr. Malcolm. Rest. Just rest."