LOGLINE

Nancy is a Black woman who lives in LA with her husband Mark, her mom  Bernice, and Alison, her teenage daughter with schizophrenia, autism, and learning disabilities. Nancy's son George is like many 21 year olds: he splits his time between Mom's home with its free laundry and his girlfriend's apartment.

Alison's meds stop working and her behavior veers out of control. Emergency stays in the psychiatric ward are followed by Nancy's desperate attempts to find an out-patient therapist who's taking new adolescent patients - a seemingly impossible task. 

Meanwhile, Mark battles to keep the family from being evicted due to missed rent payments during the Covid 19 pandemic. A state program promises help but insists they paid the money while the management company claims they didn't get it. Eviction is just days away when a consumer affairs reporter from a local TV station does what seemed impossible: he resolves the problem and the payment is credited. There's joy and relief in the family until -

An LAPD SWAT team storms into the house, guns drawn, claiming that someone called 911 and said they killed their grandmother. 

Bernice pipes up from the corner that she's still here but the cops want to know who else is in the house and are there any weapons? Alison cheerfully admits to placing the call, landing her in the hospital on a 5150 psychiatric hold.

The psychiatrists all agree that she needs continuing out-patient treatment but that's impossible to find. Alison's back home for her 18th birthday and even George makes an appearance - although he pisses her off by taking her iPad charger to replace the one he lost. Alison repeatedly insists that her grandmother is inside her head while Nancy makes peace the best she can. Mark worries that Alison might someday hurt someone but Nancy dismisses his fear.

Saturday night. 7 PM. Alison tries to hit her grandmother and Nancy takes her back to the hospital. But this time the doctor won't talk with Nancy because Alison is over 18. And the hospital won't hold her because she's "too calm."

Tragedy strikes the next morning when Alison follows her grandmother into the kitchen and hits her over the head with a cast iron frying pan, killing her. When asked later why she did it, the teen explains that her brother was taking her things. He was too big for her to hit him, so she hit her grandmother instead.

Exactly the type of issue that an outpatient therapist COULD have helped her deal with, before a family was destroyed.