A/N: There are seriously at least five or six people on death watch (or comfort care, if you want to be politically correct, phbt) at work. The full moon's coming up, and I bet that some of them will die around the full moon simply because Jesus, the full moon makes everyone CRAZY. CRAAAAAZY.

---

'He just seems distracted,' came Joe's voice over the staticy cell phone connection.

'What do you mean by "distracted?"'

'Distracted means that a person is unable to concentrate on—'

'I know the meaning of the word,' Lyna spat back. 'I mean, what is he doing that lets you know he is distracted?'

'He just...' there was a long pause, and Lyna had the feeling he was looking at Jackson. '... isn't right.'

She rolled her eyes, licking her teeth. 'Nothing has ever been right about him.'

'Even less right,' Joe said with resignation.

'Have you ever taken sleeping pills?' she asked, seemingly changing the topic.

'Yes,' he said. 'But I don't know—'

'Have you ever taken a sleeping pill and then the next morning, found that you had done things that you do not remember?'

Joe hesitated. 'Except for him, it's not a half hour, it's four months.'

'You are learning!' she said with a shoulder shrug. 'He has always been a weak link, so I would not be surprised if he is feeling so guilty for leaving.'

There was the sound of Joe opening his mouth to snap something back, but instead, he just cleared his throat uncomfortably. 'My ex-wife wants to start therapy with him.'

'Your choice,' Lyna replied. 'Usually the course of action is to give medication, but if Jackson is willing to talk, you might as well try.'

'You've been very helpful the last few months.'

Lyna's face scrunched into a distasteful look. 'It is a thank you to Lisa for taking Jackson off my hands.'

Joe openly laughed. 'I'll talk to you later.'

Lyna dropped the phone onto her living room table. It clunked against some papers and rolled off onto the carpeted floor, and for a moment she stared at it. Taking a long breath, she rolled her eyes, took off her glasses, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She tipped her head back to look at the ceiling before untying her hair and standing up, running her fingers through its length as she walked to the bathroom to take a shower. After all, she had to go see Jackson Rippner, and he'd never seen her in a state other than perfect.

---

It basically looked like any of the marriage counselling she'd ever done. The husband and wife always sat across from her on the couch, both of them trying to put forward a good face by holding hands, but one of them was always distracted, usually the husband. He'd be holding her hand and looking out the window, and the wife would be looking straight at her. It was like some sort of solo therapy with a grunting dummy sitting next to an attentive woman. This time, however, since it was her daughter and son-in-law, it was a little more than disconcerting. In addition, rather than looking blankly out the window, he was engaging in some PDA with her daughter's neck.

'Jackson,' Carol said quietly as she tapped on her clipboard.

The grunting response was at least normal.

'Jackson, come on,' muttered a red-faced Lisa, squeezing his hand. She had a look on her face like her mother had just caught her topless with her prom date, still playing the teenager even though she'd been married for nearly four years and was very heavily pregnant—a double virgin conception, she apparently wished her mother to believe.

Jackson laid his head on Lisa's shoulder, looking with half-closed eyes at Carol.

Carol bent her head down to look at him questioningly. 'Has he had any medications this morning?'

Lisa twisted with some difficulty and reached over to brush Jackson's hair out of his eyes as she shook her head. 'He hasn't taken any medications since he got home, but he's been having a hard time sleeping, hasn't been eating much, has had bad headaches, and I think this is probably the longest he's stayed in one place for the last few days.'

'Jackson?' asked Carol, trying to get his attention by reaching out and tapping his knee with the end of her pen. 'Jackson, have you ever experienced withdrawal before?'

He just took a deep breath.

'Okay,' said Carol, her shoulders slumping. 'When he sleeps, have you noticed anything different?'

'Well, I think he's been having nightmares,' said Lisa, tipping her head to lie atop his. 'So he doesn't sleep soundly at all. He jerks around, sweats, his heart races... I feel so bad for him.'

Carol nodded, looking up at her ex-husband, who was leaning against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed over his chest. 'Lisa, think that Jackson might be going through withdrawal, and considering his memory problems, I think it might be a Valium dependency. I'd like to go ahead and prescribe him some diazepam to get his levels back up so that we can wean him slowly.'

'Give me the script and I'll go pick it up,' said Joe, walking over and holding his hand out.

Carol scratched down the prescription information: diazepam 5mg, two tablets every six hours for the first twenty-four hours, then moving down to one tablet every twelve hours for the three weeks following or until the withdrawal symptoms begin to alleviate, no refills. Signing it messily, she ripped it off of her prescription pad and handed it to Joe.

'Tell the pharmacist that we need that as soon as possible. He's been home for a few days, and the withdrawal gets worse and worse with each passing day, especially around day five, and I don't want him to get to that point.'

Joe took the script from her and looked down at it for a moment before checking his watch and walking to the elevator to head on to Duane Reade. Everything was quiet until the doors of the lift slid closed after him.

'Now you have to make sure he takes the Valium when he needs to,' said Carol sternly. 'I cannot express to you how important this is. Some of the withdrawals from the medication can lead to horrible seizures, and I think we'd all like to avoid that.'

Pressing her hand over Jackson's ear, she looked at her mother with wide eyes. 'Will giving him the medication make him less clingy?'

'I heard that,' Jackson said slowly.

'At first, he's going to be more interested in sleeping than doing anything, including being around you,' Carol replied with a smile. 'Then he should go back to his normal self.'

'Which is... what?' asked Lisa immediately without even thinking. 'I—I mean...'

'Since Lyna brought me Jackson's files, I've been able to go over all of his medical records and have seen a pattern in his doctors' reports,' said Carol. 'His case report has all indications that he's had the symptoms of dissociative identity disorder for a number of years with two alters, or alternate personalities, and his normal host identity. One alter is very cold, the other alter is overly affectionate, and the host is a sort of middle-of-the-road type.'

Lisa squeezed her eyes shut and put her hand over them, rubbing over her eyebrows. 'I've already heard this. What are we supposed to do about it?'

'The big aim in treatment is to integrate the personalities,' Carol replied, leaning forward. 'But honey, I can't do that. You're going to need to find someone who specialises in this disorder. I've been doing general psych for so long, I'm not equipped to handle a specific disorder, especially not something like this.'

It was at that moment that, fortuitously, the elevator door opened and Augustine walked in, sipping on a to-go cup of chai tea as she shifted the bag on her shoulder. She was about to just walk by them and go upstairs, but when Carol called out her name, she stopped and jumped.

'Yes?' she asked, flustered, as she flicked drops of chai off of her argyle sweater.

'You worked in the psychiatric intensive care unit at Bellevue, right?'

'Yeah,' she said before taking a sip of the tea again.

'Do you have any idea if there's a specialist in DID there?'

'Uh-huh,' she grunted from behind the cup. She swallowed the sip. 'Dr Masterson. He's one of the attendings.'

'I don't want to see a psychiatrist,' Jackson muttered, and Lisa pinched his thigh.

'Too fucking bad,' she growled before reaching up and shoving his head off of her shoulder. 'You're going and seeing someone about this, and we're going to end this stupid shit! Do you know what it would have been like here if Augustine hadn't quit her job to come help me or—or if Daddy hadn't come to live up here with us? If Mom hadn't flown from Dallas to here a dozen times? You were gone for four months. You know what would happen if you decided to up and do that again? I would have to give birth without you here!'

Jackson suddenly seemed more awake, though not much, and just stared at his red-faced wife as angry tears ran down her face. A moment later, he turned to look past Carol and just slowly fell to the side, resting his face on the arm of the couch because his wife certainly wasn't going to offer up her shoulder again.

'Nitsa always let me lean against her,' he said quietly as he continued staring into the distance.

'What?' asked Lisa, her voice constricted.

Jackson had obviously drifted off into his own little world again, because he didn't answer, instead just sitting there with one hand halfway cast on his lap and the other laying beside him on the couch.

'Did he pass out?' asked Augustine, still standing near the elevator with the tea held awkwardly in both hands.

'I don't think so...' murmured Carol, leaning to the side to try to look at his eyes. 'I think he's just... I don't know. Catatonic.'

Lisa's hands were held in tight fists in her lap, and she looked down at them for a second before letting out a little puffing sigh and shoving herself up. She used the other arm of the couch to support herself, pushing her mother away when she tried to help her balance herself.

'I'll be upstairs,' she said with a strained smile, tears still running down her face. 'When he comes to, you can tell him he can just stay there on the couch.'

Putting both hands on her back, she walked to the stairs and started up them, putting both feet on each step as she went. The whole room seemed in stasis, Carol standing in front of the couch with her arms still awkwardly held out and Augustine paused with her tea perched on her lip. A few minutes of pure silence passed, Augustine finally looking over at Carol uncomfortably.

'Should one of us...'

The elevator dinged and slipped open, revealing a breathless Joe Reisert holding out a bright orange bottle. 'The pharmacist immediately—where's Lisa?'

Carol didn't answer, so Augustine turned around to him. 'Jackson upset her, so she went upstairs.'

'And no one...?' started Joe before walking over, dropping the pill bottle in his ex-wife's hand, and starting up the stairs. 'Lisa!'

Clutching the bottle, Carol looked down at it before looking back up at Jackson, who was in the same position on the couch. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

'Augustine, get some water for him.'

'He can have some of my tea,' the younger woman offered, holding up her cup.

'Water, Augustine,' snapped Carol, pressing her other hand to her forehead.

With an immature little huff, Augustine strode over and tapped her cup down on the granite countertop before throwing open a cabinet and retrieving a glass. After going to the refrigerator, she shoved the glass against the water dispenser, watching it fill with down-turned eyebrows. She spun on her heel and walked back over to Carol, slamming the glass down on the table before ripping the bottle from her hands and turning to Jackson, hands on her hips.

'Sit up, you ass!' she growled at him.

He didn't respond, so she bent over and grabbed him by the shoulders, ripping him up so forcefully that his head snapped to the side. Because his head lolled to the side, she thought for a moment that he'd actually passed out, but then his eyes moved to avoid her glare. She pinched her lips, popping her jaw back and forth as she took her hands from his shoulders and opened the bottle of Valium.

'Open your mouth,' she spat.

In response, he tightened his jaw muscles. Only a moment later, Carol dove in and grabbed his face, forcing her thumb, index finger and middle finger onto his cheeks and harshly against his teeth. He managed to hold his mouth shut for a few seconds, but she just squeezed harder until he finally opened his mouth no more than a couple of inches. Augustine shoved the pill into his mouth and he immediately stuck out his tongue, blowing out a puff of air to send the pill onto the floor.

Not surprisingly, both women immediately snapped. Carol let go of his face, clearing the area just before Augustine grabbed the front of his t-shirt and pulled him onto the floor, straddling his chest as she spilled the contents of the pill bottle onto the glass table.

'I don't care if I have to drown you,' she said breathily. 'You're going to have this pill!'

Jackson came to life, his eyes suddenly focusing on her. Scrunching his nose up, he threw his arms from the floor to her thighs, digging his fingers into them.

'You'll have to do a lot more than that,' she hissed, looking incredibly like her mother as she leaned in, shoving back his head.

'Can do,' he struggled to say, his voice rumbling against her hand.

Twisting a bit, he was able to send his knee into her back, but Augustine was obviously impervious to that move. She just grabbed him harder, her fingers digging into his lymph nodes as she tipped her head to the side, a little smile on her face as she looked at him clinically. He growled, trying to turn under her.

'No, you can't,' she replied quite calmly, taking her other hand grabbing a pillow from the couch. In a flash, she pressed it down on his face.

He buckled under her, but she kept a completely emotionless face, squeezing her legs harder against him as he gripped at her scrubs. She tipped her head back, her eyebrows raised, as she dropped most of her weight against the pillow. His movements became slower, and eventually his hands went limp against her, one falling to the floor. After a few more seconds, she lifted the pillow from his face and threw it away from her before dropping to put a hand on each side of his face. He didn't try to attack her again, so she sighed deeply before pushing herself up and falling back on the couch, closing her eyes. Carol just stared at her.

'Is that what they teach you in nursing school now?'

Augustine opened her eyes and turned her head to look at Carol dryly. 'That was taught to me by my mother the night before Child Protective Services took me away. I woke up, she was trying to asphyxiate me with a pillow, I passed out, and I woke up in a new home. I learned that there's a certain amount of time that you can deprive someone of oxygen before actually causing real physical damage.'

She ran her fingers shakily through her hair, swallowing audibly as she closed her eyes again.

'Why don't you go pick up the phone and call the Manhattan Psychiatric Centre before he wakes up?'

Carol's face softened immensely and she walked over to the counter, picking up the phone and then looking over at the back of the younger woman's head. 'Do you know the telephone number?'

'646-672-6767,' Augustine rattled off. 'Ask to have your call transferred to the STAIR Unit.'