Short Story: Coverage
Or, The Treatment.
Coverage is one of the darker stories I’ve published here in The Faraday Room. It deals with themes including self-harm, coercive psychiatric treatment, and the exploitation of people living with mental illness. If any of these are difficult territory for you, please take care.
For everyone else: I hope it unsettles you in just the right ways.
Coverage
Tyler’s favorite therapy was group. Negligible medical benefit and tedious company, but the angles were excellent, and he always did his best work with a live audience.
His smile was the star of the show. Since he was a boy it had opened doors—a cure-all for missed homework, forgotten birthdays, traffic tickets. By now he’d mastered countless variations: broad and warm, wry and knowing, small and brave. It never failed him.
Right now, he was projecting vulnerability. Trust me. I’m wounded but I’m fighting back. I just need a little help.
The eight of them sat in a circle in wingback chairs. Dr Kimberly Martin, head of the psychiatric team and breakout star, was running the session. With her clipboard, headset and friendly smile—suspiciously improved between seasons one and two—she balanced clinical expertise with just the right amount of humanity.
She had just asked them to reflect on their reasons for applying for the program.
Laura, with the abusive stepdad. Mom wouldn’t listen. Had to stop therapy when she ran out of money. Lots of crying.
Robert, the schizophrenic. A zombie on his meds, dangerous off them. He needed this, didn’t want to think about what his life would be like if he had to go back on the streets. His hands shook as he spoke.
Mia, former prostitute and recovering drug addict. Needed to get clean so she could reunite with her daughter. Rocked back and forth gently whenever she was speaking. Like Jermaine Oxley in season two, but not as good.
Around the circle, it all came out. Traumas, psychoses, regrets, sob stories. The usual stuff.
Tyler had planned to hold back his big moment until a later round, but by the time it came around to him he knew it was time.
“I promised my mom I’d come. I swore I would. After…”
He paused. Laura shuffled uncomfortably.
“I must have been on the slide for weeks, but I didn’t know it at the time. Songs on the radio were giving me messages, I thought. Black Eyed Peas, telling me ‘do it, do it, do it’ over and over.’’
Dr Martin’s expression was concerned, encouraging.
His voice became quieter, uneven. “She was the one who found me in the car. Passed out on booze and pills. Engine running. I’d routed the exhaust through the back window with pool hose and muffler tape.”
He had their attention now.
“Supposed to be a peaceful way to go, but takes a while. Turns out, her shift at work got canceled so she thought she’d drop in to see me. If she hadn’t…”
He paused, touched his temple. “She says God smiled on her that night. On me too. But sometimes I’m not so sure.”
Silence. The cameras moved in.
His eyes were fixed, and his jaw tightened, as if to suggest that the pain was washing over him once again. And then, gradually, just an inkling of the smile, brave and defiant.
“Sometimes I don’t know why I’m here. Or whether I should be. But I made a promise and I plan to keep it. My meds help a lot,” Tyler said.
Then, direct to camera: “But I can’t do it alone.”
Eventually, Dr Martin broke the silence. “Thank you, Tyler. I know it was difficult, but I feel like you might have made a breakthrough.”
Tyler nodded his acknowledgment while the cameras held on him. Let’s see you try to cut that.
When they finished, a producer called the wrap. “Patients, that’s all we need from you today. Kimberly, very good, we’ll need you back at 4pm.”
Then a hand on his shoulder, guiding him offstage.
“Beautiful work, Tyler. If that doesn’t get them bawling, they don’t deserve eyes.”
Back in his bunk that night, Tyler stared at the ceiling. The intake nurse had told him that ideation scores of six to seven played best, and he’d gone straight to a ten. No problem. He could pull it off.
As he drifted to sleep, he tried to remember if there’d been a moment when he’d actually considered it.
Maybe.
He couldn’t remember.
Leading with that story was risky, but it had worked. From there, he could play the recovery arc. Gradual reintegration. Learning to trust. If anyone checked, his mom would back up his story.
The other patients, never too friendly to begin with, really kept their distance after that. Worried he might break, maybe. Everyone but Mia.
He’d noticed Mia early, but they only really connected after that. She asked if he wanted to play cards, and they settled on Euchre. Her grandfather had taught her how to play, and she was good. Beat Tyler three games straight, and euchred him twice, smirking each time she laid down the winning card. First time he’d seen her look happy.
She told him he took too many risks. Tyler grinned, as if he wasn’t bothered at all. “You’ve got to back yourself. Everyone gets euchred occasionally, no shame in it.”
“I like your smile,” she told him.
That smile had helped him get onto the show, but it wasn’t the only thing. His audition tape was pitch-perfect, and he’d aced the casting sessions. It was destiny. He always knew he’d be a star of something, even if it was an aging, mid-rating reality show.
Not that the producers or the network would stoop to calling it that, of course. They were performing a public service for their patients. Helping people living with mental health issues to access the highest standards of therapeutic care.
Not slapping a bandaid on the festering wound of the failing health system. Not exploiting people who needed help but couldn’t get health coverage. Not demanding that they perform their anguish to the public in exchange for a chance at treatment. Of course not.
He wasn’t worried about privacy, even though he would be filmed nearly every moment of every day for weeks. They had some cover story about why it was medically necessary but Tyler knew it was just voyeurism. They’d film us in the bathroom if it was legal.
The only real drag had been the paperwork.
The main contract alone had been four hundred pages. Longer than for standard TV shows, they’d said, because this wasn’t a standard show. It was a treatment protocol, and the producers performed their roles as stewards of his recovery with the utmost solemnity.
Stewards of his recovery. To him they just looked like the kinds of guys in suits he’d learned how to handle years ago.
Mia had good days and bad ones, but the more they talked the more she fascinated him. She liked old B-horror movies, or some of them. A Bucket of Blood was a particular favorite and she quoted from it incessantly. Every now and then, just because she liked the way it sounded, she’d say something strange like “To be uncreative, you might as well be in your grave.”
“Why did you apply for the show?” Mia asked once. “What do you want from it?”
He’d almost told her the truth. That he’d studied the format, and found its weakness, decided to exploit it. That life was one big con, and the only decision you had to make was which side of it you were going to be on.
Instead he’d said: “I don’t know. I thought I could help people, maybe. Be an inspiration.”
She’d smiled like she believed him.
“What about you?”
“Easy,” she’d said simply. “Get well enough to be a proper mother to my daughter.”
He came to admire Mia: fighting through pain and regret, determined to rebuild her life for that one reason. Her daughter—or the thought of her. She hadn’t had any contact with her for years, not since she lost custody of her as a baby, and he could tell that it gnawed at her. But despite her suffering—because of it maybe—she knew how to have fun.
The first time that he’d caught himself thinking about her when she wasn’t there, it surprised him. He knew that people felt this way sometimes, but it was new to him. Soon she was the first thing he thought of when he woke up each day, and just the thought of her made him smile. They made a pact to meet on the outside, see where things went. “Two obscure hobos, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art,” Mia had said.
Each week Tyler braced himself for the possibility that either he or Mia would be leaving the show, but it never happened. One by one it was the others who left. Laura cried when it was her turn. Robert was so out of it they nearly had to carry him.
And so it was that Mia and Tyler became the Final Two.
Greenroom. Creams and off-whites. Gentle lighting. Two chairs.
Motivational posters on the walls: HEALING STARTS HERE. BECOME YOUR BEST SELF.
Tyler began to imagine one of his own. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO SURVIVE HERE, BUT IT HELPS.
A screen on the wall cycled through promotional material. Behind-the-scenes footage of previous winners during phase two, receiving the course of treatment that constituted the show’s grand prize. Season four’s winner in what looked like an isolation tank, eyes wide. Season three sobbing through a medication trial, hands shaking. Jackson Lee strapped to a chair, electrodes on his temples.
Tyler watched for a moment, then made a quiet sound. Nice work Jackson, but those restraints look a bit too much like Velcro.
He looked at Mia. Her eyes were closed, and she was muttering under her breath. He was used to it. She said it really helped when the dark thoughts came.
Ever since his big revelation, she’d kept checking in with him to make sure he wasn’t relapsing, and the more she did, the guiltier he felt. If anything, he should be the one checking on her. He’d originally planned to let her know the truth after they were both out. But she had seemed so worried, and in a moment of weakness he’d slipped her a note to read in the bathroom.
Afterwards, she put her hand on his and held it there. Three seconds maybe, but enough to tell him that he’d done the right thing. She didn’t seem to be as worried about him after that.
It was risky though. She wouldn’t rat him out, would she?
He felt a pang of uncharacteristic guilt. Unlike him, she actually needed that treatment, the prize. Maybe he should just come out and confess that his story was bullshit, do the right thing for once.
Maybe.
Inconvenient time to grow a conscience.
The deciding challenge was known as the Reconciliation round.
Tyler and Mia sat in chairs facing a large screen. The producers had explained it that morning: they’d be shown something personal, something difficult. Their responses would be evaluated. Authenticity. Emotional readiness. Capacity for growth.
Tyler was ready. He’d been doing this long enough now that he could handle whatever they threw at him. His mom, maybe? Or old girlfriends? Silently, he rehearsed his four Ds: depression, delusion, dissociation, descent.
Just to give him a foundation to work from. He’d improvise around the material they gave him.
Mia’s screen lit up first.
A montage, showing teenage girls at school. Playing hockey, laughing together, walking home.
Mia was rapt.
Then it cut to one of the girls sitting in what looked like a kitchen: an interview.
“Madison, do you ever think about your mother?”
“Oh for sure. I love my mother. She’s right here. She chose me, she raised me, she loves me. Only mother I got.”
“But I mean your birth mother? Do you think about her?”
“The junkie? Not any more.”
Mia’s face crumpled.
“Well, what would you say if she was here right now?”
“That she doesn’t get to just show up now and act like we’re friends. It’s never gonna happen.”
The interviewer’s face showed concern. “Is there anything that would change your mind?”
“After all this time? Are you kidding?” She paused and the camera zoomed in for the close up. “I’ll get a restraining order if I have to.”
The screen went dark.
Tyler looked at Mia. She wasn’t muttering or rocking. She stared straight ahead. Absent. Like someone had reached inside and switched her off. The room was so quiet he could hear himself breathe.
“Mia?” Kimberly’s voice, gentle. “Can you tell us what you’re feeling?”
Nothing.
“Mia, it’s important that you process this. What’s coming up for you right now?”
Her hands were in her lap, perfectly still. Her breathing was steady.
But her eyes had gone somewhere else.
Kimberly glanced at someone off-camera. A gesture Tyler couldn’t read.
“Okay. Let’s take a break. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Handlers came. One took Mia’s elbow, guided her up. She moved like she was underwater. Slow. Unresisting.
Tyler watched her being led away. He’d seen her down. But nothing like this.
He felt the anger welling up. These bastards, he thought. The daughter said the words, that’s on her. But they were the ones who decided to air it, knowing the damage it would cause.
God, I hope she’s ok.
He sat alone under the lights for another ten minutes while producers conferred in clusters, headsets active, clipboards out.
No one seemed to remember he was still there.
Tyler couldn’t sleep.
He lay in his bunk, listening to the ambient hum of cameras and the air conditioning. Somewhere in the building, Mia was alone in her room. They hadn’t let him see her.
Or maybe she was under observation. The producers would want to be confident that she’d be good to go by her call time tomorrow.
He’d tried to get to her, but the handlers were guarding his door.
He thought about tomorrow. Mia needed that treatment. She deserved it.
Sure she’d made some mistakes but she’d paid and paid and paid. Years on waitlists, medications she couldn’t afford, therapy she’d had to stop when her insurance lapsed. She’d made it this far on pure guts.
But she wasn’t ready for what they threw at her. No one would be ready for that.
He turned onto his side. The room was dark except for the cameras’ tiny red lights.
His thoughts churned. He kept seeing Mia’s face after the video, thinking about what she must be going through. Jesus, a restraining order.
He didn’t cause it. He couldn’t fix it. But he could do one small thing. The right thing.
The thought was circling in his mind when sleep finally came.
Rapid footsteps in the hallway. Loud voices, clipped and urgent.
Tyler sat up. It was 3:17 a.m. Through the door, he could see moving lights in the corridor. Flashlights, maybe.
He pulled on shoes and opened the door.
The handlers were in the hallway, their radios crackling. Someone on a phone: “…stable, we’re moving her now…”
Tyler started toward them. “What’s…”
A handler stepped in front of him. “Sir, you need to go back to your room.”
“What happened?”
“Please go back to your room.”
Through the cluster of people, Tyler saw a stretcher, sheets, bandages.
White on white.
“Mia…”
“Sir.” The handler’s hand on his chest, firm. “Back to your room. Now.”
Tyler tried to push past. Two more handlers materialized. They weren’t rough, but they weren’t gentle either. They gave him a glass of water and a sedative, and watched while he swallowed it.
Then they walked him backwards into his room and closed the door.
He heard it lock from the outside.
Through the door, muffled: voices, movement, the sound of equipment being wheeled past.
Then, eventually, silence.
Tyler sat on the edge of his bunk and stared at nothing until the sedative finally did its work.
He woke when the door unlocked. A producer he didn’t recognize stood in the doorway.
“Debrief in twenty minutes. Shower. Get ready.”
In the debrief, they told him Mia had overdosed, enough to be fatal if they’d got to her five minutes later. She’d smashed the mirrors. Blood everywhere.
Tyler thought about the time he’d asked Mia if she ever felt like using again. “Every day. But then I think of Madison.”
They said they didn’t know how she got the heroin; they’d started an investigation. She was stable now, recovering.
He’d won by default. They had him give a reaction in the confessional booth that morning, then it would be the winner’s walk and onboarding for phase two. They understood that it was a shock. He’d receive counseling, they said. On camera, of course.
In the booth he talked about Mia. About how she’d been kind. About how much she loved her daughter. How Mia’s situation made him think about the fragility of ordinary life, about how close any of them were to breaking.
His voice caught at the right moment.
But in his head, he kept seeing the stretcher. White on white.
He could have done something. Maybe.
But he hadn’t, and now it was too late, and he still didn’t know whether he would have had the guts to tell the truth and let her have the prize she deserved.
But what disturbed him most was that part of him did know, and he hated himself for it.
The onboarding meeting for phase two was three days later.
Tyler had spent them in a hotel, free but still quarantined.
Nice place, half of which was taken up with flowers and other gifts. A fruit basket with a card: Congratulations on your journey. A pastel throw pillow on the bed—seafoam green with embroidered text: BREATHE. Mia would have screamed.
The finale had aired. His winner’s walk, edited to perfection. Tears. Gratitude. The small brave smile the cameras loved. Mia’s crisis was dealt with tastefully: “Mia has elected to withdraw from the competition.”
Elected.
Finally, they’d given his phone back, although he had received reminders of his confidentiality obligations.
Thousands of messages from strangers: congratulations, marriage proposals, death threats. DMs from people he barely remembered.
His mom was proud of him. “A TV star, just like you always said.” The producers had called her, she said, and she’d been worried afterwards, hoped she’d given the right answers.
“It’s all good Ma. I won didn’t I?”
She didn’t sound so sure. “I hope this is what you really want, Tyler.”
They told him not to contact Mia, but of course he tried. The hospital said she was still under observation, couldn’t give him any more information. He had to be there when she got out—just a few more days to wait. Just the right amount of time.
As for the producers, he had his moves all planned out. He knew what they’d done to Mia, and the show couldn’t afford another scandal.
He had leverage. He’d lay out his demands calmly, flash his smile, and watch them fold.
He passed the rest of the time eating room service and reading the newspaper and magazine articles that he featured in.
The office was in a building he’d never been to. Two producers sat across from him. One of them he recognized—his name was Mike— and the other one with the gold cufflinks he’d seen a few times but had never spoken to. Kimberly was there too, silently filling out forms on a tablet. Tyler sat with his jaw clenched, staring straight ahead.
A jug of water and several glasses lay on the table.
“Congratulations,” said Mike. “You were fantastic. Truly. A thoroughly deserving winner.” He took a glass and filled it. “Please, have some. You must be exhausted from the finale.”
Tyler hesitated. Kimberly looked up, in mock seriousness. “Come on Tyler. Doctor’s orders.” He picked up the glass and drank. She watched him, and smiled when he finished.
“So,” Mike continued, “let’s talk about phase two.”
“I don’t need it,” Tyler said. “I’m not sick. I faked it. I fooled you. Mia should have won.”
The room went quiet. Tyler leant back. Yeah, you heard me.
Mike spoke first. “Tyler, you seem upset. Slow down. Relax, you’re a winner.”
Tyler blinked. Had they heard him?
Mike registered Tyler’s bewilderment. “Tyler, we know you haven’t been completely honest with us. It’s okay.”
Tyler froze. His mouth went dry. “You knew?”
Mike looked incredulous. “Tyler, your mom’s real nice and all, but she’s a very bad liar.”
Cufflinks and Mike exchanged a glance. Cufflinks nodded gently.
Mike leaned back in his chair. “Look Tyler, honesty isn’t really what works in this business. You’re our perfect winner: charming, resourceful, flexible. And let’s face it, the camera loves you.”
“But the others…” Tyler sputtered.
“Genuine cases, God bless ‘em,” said Cufflinks, glancing at his phone. “Pain in the ass, to tell you the truth. Unreliable.”
“But…Mia?” Tyler said quietly.
“Perfect example. Nothing phony about her, and she had potential. But she blew it. Most exciting thing that’s happened on the show for years, and she does it where she knows we don’t have coverage. Would have been the perfect culmination of her arc.”
He unclenched his fist. “She’s very lucky we’ve decided not to sue.”
Mike interrupted, “But we’re here to talk about you, Tyler. We’re so excited about your phase two journey.”
Tyler’s mouth was parched. His fingers were tingling.
Mike continued. “I’m sure you’ll agree that the recovery journeys over the last few seasons have been lacking drama. Too much talk. You’re going to change that.”
“I just told you, I don’t need treatment,” Tyler said. His tongue felt thick. “I want off the show right now. Mia should have won it.”
“Tyler, I know you and Mia were close, but you need to accept that she’s on her own path now.” He glanced at Cufflinks. “And I almost hate to bring it up, but you are under contract.”
Without waiting for a response, he tapped on the keyboard on the table.
“We’re thinking we start with something like Jackson Lee in season two, but we take it up a few notches.” The screen on the wall played the footage: a man hooked up to monitors, eyes unfocused. The same footage from the greenroom sizzle reel.
Tyler stared at the screen. Those restraints weren’t Velcro.
He tried to stand. His legs didn’t comply.
“You’ll be the star of the most intensive recovery program yet. People loved Jackson’s arc, but yours is going to blow them away.”
The horror of his situation was dawning on him. “That would be torture. Illegal,” he managed. The words sounded far away.
Kimberly finally looked up from her tablet. “ECT is a safe and effective treatment that most patients respond very positively to, Tyler.”
“Twice a week for the first three months feels about right,” Cufflinks added.
“I don’t—” Tyler tried again to stand. The floor seemed to tilt, then right itself, then tilt again. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
Cufflinks shook his head condescendingly. “How about we leave the medicine to the professionals?”
“I’ll tell the press…” His words were slurred, barely intelligible.
“No Tyler, you won’t. It’s not part of your treatment program. Which has already started, by the way.”
Tyler looked at the glass of water. He’d drunk it without thinking. He turned to Kimberly, panic in his eyes.
“Just something to help with the transition,” she said. “Standard procedure in cases where suicidal ideation is present. You’ll find the process much easier if you don’t fight it.”
He tried to stand again, and made it halfway before his knees folded.
The orderlies were already in the room. When did they get here?
His phone was in his pocket, and he fumbled for it. The screen swam.
His grip loosened.
One of the orderlies caught the phone before it hit the floor.
“It’s okay,” someone said. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to get the help you need.”
The room seemed to contract around him; the ceiling closed in. He wanted to laugh. Or scream. But he no longer had control.
They were lifting him now onto a stretcher. Gently, professionally. The same as they’d done for Mia.
Cold metal under his back. Antiseptic.
The ambulance was pristine white, no siren. The Aftercare Division logo on the side: a stylized figure emerging from shadow into light.
Tyler was on a gurney. Soft restraints, but firm. The paramedics wore scrubs in a soothing blue. Both wore lanyards: WELLNESS TEAM.
Through the window, the production facility receded. His old life, whatever it had been, getting smaller.
Inside, a screen mounted on the wall: THE TREATMENT – PHASE TWO. Alongside, another motivational poster: BECOME YOUR BEST SELF.
Tyler’s eyes wouldn’t focus properly. The drugs were pulling him under in waves. He could only make out shapes. The interior of the ambulance. The paramedic checking his vitals. The camera’s glowing red light.
A thought started to form, then slipped away. Euchred.
His mouth began to move, the shape of a smile forming. The small, brave one.
A voice came through the speakers: “Perfect, Tyler. Hold that pose.”
Phase two had begun.
Hammond Johns is a fiction writer and cultural critic. Find out more at
Tell me you are a sociopath in a reality show without telling me. Great beginning. I also loved what you did with Mia, I know Tyler is the one supposed to have the big twist and dramatic/karmic arc, but all in all she still wins.
You’ve captured horror at its core with this one. Horror is a reflection of things - and you hold the mirror up and say “look, this could actually be happening.” Well done.