Chapter 47 Caleb
FORTY-SEVEN
CALEB
IOP feels like summer school for my nervous system. Fluorescent lights. Stackable chairs. A whiteboard that’s seen some shit. There’s a Keurig in the corner and a sad potted plant that looks how I feel.
“Hey there, Caleb,” Sam says. He’s our group therapist—late thirties, white guy, tattoo peeking out of his sleeve.
I nod and sink into my chair, the one on the far side of the circle where I can see the door and the clock.
The plastic creaks under my weight. My wrist twinges when I adjust. The bandage is smaller now, just a strip across old scar tissue, but I still feel it like a neon sign: THIS IDIOT TRIED AGAIN.
We go around and do check-ins. Name, number, and one sentence about why you’re here or how your week is going.
“Jess, volume six, still not sleeping.”
“Ray, four, thinking less about drinking, more about… not drinking.”
“Tom, seven, trying not to punch my brother-in-law.”
When it’s my turn, twelve pairs of eyes land on me. Some are curious. Some are bored. One guy is clearly just here because court said so.
“Caleb,” I say. “Uh… five? IOP for… a recent suicide attempt, flashbacks, and general brain assholery.”
A couple people smirk at that. One girl gives me the “same” face.
Sam nods like I just told him I had toast for breakfast. “Thanks, Caleb,” he says. “Glad you’re here.”
Glad you’re here.
Every time someone says that, my stomach flips.
We start with distress tolerance.
Sam writes it on the board in big letters: DISTRESS TOLERANCE: SURVIVING THE WAVE WITHOUT MAKING IT BIGGER.
“Question,” I say, raising my hand. “What if the wave is just… the whole ocean?”
A couple of people laugh. One guy in the corner snorts and Sam gives me the therapist version of a smirk. “Then we start with a cup,” he says. “Small wave. One situation. One moment.”
He hands out worksheets like it’s ninth grade health class. Radical acceptance. TIPP skills. Grounding techniques that sound like bullshit until you’re lying in a hospital bed trying not to crawl out of your skin.
I write my name at the top of the paper: Caleb Burton.
“Pick a recent moment of high distress,” Sam says. “Not your worst ever. Something from the last week.”
Last week is hospital: beeping monitors, IV lines, Miguel’s weight by my bed, Dad’s broken voice. It’s all one long, smeared-together nightmare.
I land on something smaller. Last night, lying in my own bed again for the first time since the attempt, staring at the ceiling, the dark feeling like it had teeth.
I scribble:
– Lying in bed, scared my brain will pull some shit.
– Volume: 7.
– Thought: “You’re going to do it again. You’re just waiting.”
Under “what I did,” I write:
– Froze. Stared at the ceiling. Tried not to move in case movement broke something.
– Eventually texted Miguel. He came and sat on the floor and read some stupid article out loud until I fell asleep.
Under “what I could try next time,” the list stays blank for a long time. My brain offers the classics: run, hide, numb, and burn it all down.
Sam walks by, glances at my page, and taps the empty space with his pen. “You know what you’re good at?” he says quietly.
“Being a hot mess?” I murmur.
“Also that,” he says, lips twitching. “But I was going to say, naming things. You’re very specific. That’s a skill. Distress tolerance is about giving your nervous system something else to do. Not instead of the feeling, but alongside it.”
I stare at the paper.
Fine.
I write:
– Ice pack on my face or neck.
– Breathe like Miguel taught me. In 4, hold, out 6.
– Text Dr. K or make a draft email I don’t send.
– Ask Miguel to just be in the room, no talking, no fixing.
The pen hesitates. I add, slower:
– Remind myself: I made it through the last wave. I might make it through this one too.
The last sentence feels like a maybe.
Which is more than it would’ve felt like a month ago.
We cycle through skills like stations at a gym.
Emotion regulation. Opposite action. Checking the facts when your brain is an unreliable narrator.
My brain: You are a storm everyone else is sandbagging against.
DBT worksheet: Is there any evidence for that?
Me: Uh, have you met me?
Also me, grudgingly: People keep showing up. That counts as something.
We do a mindfulness exercise where we have to eat a raisin like it’s the first time we’ve seen one. I hate raisins on principle, but I play along. Roll it between my fingers. Taste the sweetness, the weird chew.
I’m alive enough to hate raisins.
There’s something comforting about a room full of people trying, very awkwardly, to stay on the planet. Nobody’s impressed. Nobody’s horrified. When I say “attempt,” half the group nods like, “Yeah, so you mean Tuesday.”
It makes the whole thing less like I’m the only idiot who got swallowed by the dark.
Dr. Kaur has traded her office sweater for a blazer today.
She looks like someone’s nice aunt who also happens to be able to dismantle your entire belief system with one eyebrow.
We’re in one of the smaller therapy rooms off the IOP wing.
Softer lighting. A box of tissues. An abstract ocean print on the wall.
“How’s group, groupie?” she asks, settling into her chair.
I groan. “You’re not funny,” I say. “And fine. Surprisingly, not terrible.”
“High praise,” she says dryly. “Anything standing out?”
I think of Jess talking about wanting to throw her phone into the bay every time her mom texts.
The older guy shared about driving to the bridge and turning around at the last second because the parking meter was broken and he took it as a sign.
The girl who doesn’t talk but whose foot shakes the entire ninety minutes.
“Everyone’s brain is an asshole,” I say. “Not just mine.”
She nods, pleased. “Good data point.”
Dr. Kaur taps her pen against her notebook. “Today I want to look at something specific,” she says. “The part of you that decided to stay.”
I shift in my chair. “Pretty sure that part was mostly my liver reacting to medication,” I mutter.
“Your body fought,” she says. “But you said something in the hospital that stuck with me. That you didn’t want to die as much as you wanted it to stop.”
I stare at the abstract ocean thing.
“Yeah,” I say.
“When you were on the bed,” she continues, voice steady, “pills taken, cut made—before you lost consciousness, did anything flicker? Any image or thought that wasn’t ‘quiet’?”
Miguel’s face comes up so fast behind my eyes that my throat closes.
Him in the kitchen, wooden spoon mic, singing badly. Him in the hospital hallway, jaw clenched, eyes red. Him asleep in the chair by my bed, still holding my hand like his body forgot how to let go.
“Yeah,” I say, voice rough. “Miggy.”
“What about him?” she prompts.
I pick at the band-aid on my wrist, lifting the corner ever so slightly. “His face,” I say. “I thought… I’m going to break him. I’m going to make him watch this again. And I hated that. For him.”
She nods, jotting something down. “Anything else?”
“Future flickers,” I say. “It was weird. Like my brain was running a trailer for a movie I didn’t think I was allowed to be in.”
“What kind of scenes?” she asks, not letting me dodge.
I sigh. “Stupid stuff,” I say. “Beach. Us on the couch cuddled up together. Maybe me coaching middle schoolers. Miguel in a kitchen that isn’t the condo. Kids.”
“And?” she says, because of course she can tell there’s something I’m editing.
I roll my eyes at the ceiling. “The treehouse,” I mutter.
Her pen stills. “A treehouse?” she repeats, looking up.
“Miguel found this Airbnb,” I say. “Treehouse in Big Sur, all glass and wood, tucked into the redwoods with this stupidly perfect view. He showed it to me and said, ‘When you’re ready, that’s our first real vacation.
No school, no practice, no bullshit. Just us in a tree.
’ It was a joke for him. A someday thing.
” I swallow. “I… kind of imprinted on it.”
She’s quiet for a beat. “Do you want that to stay a plan on his computer,” she asks gently, “or do you want it to be part of your ‘I chose to stay’ story someday?”
The thought hits something deep and aching in my chest. Little kid me looking at catalogs of houses and circling the ones with “play structure included.”
“I… want it,” I admit. “But it feels far away. Like… a post-credits scene far away.”
She nods. “That’s okay. Hope can be a long-arc thing. This isn’t about putting pressure on you to get there by a date on the calendar. It’s about acknowledging that part of you that even imagined it.” Her mouth softens. “That part is important.”
I shrug, uncomfortable. “Doesn’t feel very important when the rest of me is a tire fire.”
“Tire fires can coexist with tiny hopeful embers,” she says. “Our job is to protect the embers so they don’t go out when the tires flare.”
“Love being a metaphor barbecue,” I mutter.
She smiles. “Speaking of embers, I want to redo your safety plan.”
“The fridge one?” I ask. “Miguel taped it up again. It’s probably mad at me.”
“This one is for you,” she says. “Not just for Miguel or your parents or the hospital. Not just what they’re supposed to do when you’re loud. What you want to do. For you.”
Sliding a blank form across the table. It’s the same structure: warning signs, internal coping, people I can ask for help, professionals, steps for making the environment safe, and reasons for living.
I stare at the blank lines. They feel accusatory.
“Let’s do it together,” she says, pen ready. “First: warning signs. What tells you you’re heading into the red zone?”
“Nightmares,” I say. “The replay ones. And… skipping meals without really noticing. Cancelling plans. Not answering texts. Everything feels… far away and too close at the same time.”
She writes as I talk. “Any thoughts in particular?”
“The greatest hits,” I say. “‘They’d be better off without you.’ ‘You’re exhausting.’ ‘This is always going to feel like this.’” I smirk weakly. “‘You’re a storm everyone else is sandbagging against.’”