Chapter 47 Caleb #2
Her eyes flick up at that. “That’s a potent one,” she says. “We’ll come back to it.”
Of course we will.
Next column: internal coping.
“What actually helps when you use it?” she asks. “Not what you think ‘should’ help. What has evidence?”
I chew my lip. “Hot showers,” I say. “The stupid breathing. Basketball, when I can get myself to the court. Music. Watching Miguel play video games while I lie on the couch and pretend I don’t care what’s happening on the screen.”
She writes quickly, nodding. “Journaling?” she prompts.
“Yeah,” I say reluctantly. “Sometimes. When my brain shuts up enough to let words out.”
We fill in names under “people I can ask for help.”
Miguel.
Mamá.
Dad (with an asterisk and a note: maybe text first).
Dr. K.
Martin
Campus crisis line.
IOP on call.
Seeing the list all together makes me weirdly dizzy.
“Okay,” she says. “Now the fun part. Reasons for living.”
I make a face. “You know I hate this part.”
“I do,” she says. “And we’re doing it anyway. Because your brain has a running list of reasons for dying. We need a list on the other side or the debate isn’t fair.”
I look down at the blank section.
Last time, I wrote stuff like “Miguel,” “basketball,” and “my family.” It didn’t feel like enough.
Still.
I start there.
– Miguel’s laugh.
– Mom’s tamales.
– Pick-up games.
– The ocean.
– Movies I haven’t seen yet.
– All the books I haven’t read.
– Watching Martin make questionable life choices so I can judge him.
– Helping kids not feel like I did.
– The trip Miguel keeps promising to that ridiculous treehouse in Big Sur.
Dr. K’s eyes flick to the page. “May I?” she asks.
I nod.
She reads the list quietly, then taps the last line. “Oh my god, there he is,” she says softly.
“Who?” I ask.
“The version of you that can imagine being alive long enough to go on a vacation,” she says. “We’re going to keep talking to him.”
I swallow hard. “He’s squishy,” I mutter. “Easy to bully.”
“We’ll bulk him up,” she says. “Therapy gains.”
I huff a wet laugh.
She tears off the page and slides it back to me. “This is copy one,” she says. “We’ll make extras. One for your room. One for the fridge. One for your backpack. One for Miguel, if you’re okay with that.”
I picture Miguel finding the crumpled copy by the coffee maker, reading it carefully, thumb pausing on the Big Sur line.
“Yeah,” I say. “He can have one.”
Leaning back, she taps her pen on the armrest. “Last thing for today,” she says. “You’re doing a lot of ‘not dying’ work right now. Safety plans. Crisis skills. Monitoring. That’s essential. But I also want you to start thinking about something else.”
My shoulders tense. “What now?” I say. “Organs don’t count?”
“Something intentionally nurturing,” she says. “Not just staying out of danger. Leaning into being alive. A ritual. A practice. A future plan. Something that marks this as a pivot, not just a near miss.”
“Like… what?” I ask skeptically. “Start a gratitude journal? Buy some crystals? You’re not about to ask me to find God, are you? ”
“If that’s meaningful to you, sure,” she says. “But I was thinking more in your language. You mentioned the beach. Basketball. The Big Sur treehouse.”
I grimace. “That feels… big,” I say. “Treehouse trip as an ‘I survived’ party? A little… on the nose.”
“I’m not suggesting you book it for next week,” she says. “I’m suggesting you let it exist as a marker in your future. Something you and Miguel can point to as, ‘When we’re through this level of the game, we’re going there.’”
“Gamifying my recovery,” I mutter. “Love that.”
Her eyes twinkle. “I know my audience,” she says. “More immediately, maybe there’s a smaller ritual. The first day you’re cleared to play again. First class you go back to. Something that says, ‘I chose to stay for this.’”
My chest tightens.
“I’ll… think about it,” I say.
“That’s all I’m asking,” she says. “Think. Notice what your brain dismisses as ‘too much’ or ‘too indulgent.’ Those are probably the things we need more of.”
IOP days blur together.
Group. Skills. Lunch that tastes vaguely like microwaved penance.
Individual sessions where I try not to make too many jokes so they know I’m taking this seriously.
Miguel is there more than I expect and less than a part of me craves.
He splits his time between work, the outpatient center, and our parents’ house.
He doesn’t hover, but he also doesn’t disappear.
The first time he shows up after the group, he’s holding a plastic bag that smells like actual food.
“Contraband,” he says, waggling it. “Mamá says if she sees another picture of you eating a tray of hospital meatloaf, she’s going to start flipping tables.
Her words, not mine.” We sit on one of the benches outside the outpatient building.
The air smells like eucalyptus and exhaust. There’s a little strip of lawn where someone’s kid is rolling around while their parent smokes and scrolls.
He hands me the container. Rice. Tinga roja. Tortillas wrapped in a napkin.
I almost cry.
“You look better,” he says, studying my face. “Less… ghostly.”
“High bar,” I say, but I kind of know what he means. The color is back in my skin. I’ve showered today. I’m not vibrating out of my own body.
We eat in weird, easy silence for a few minutes.
“How’s group?” he asks eventually.
I shrug. “We did the raisin thing,” I say. “I hated it. I also kind of… got it.”
“Raisin thing?” He repeats, raising his eyebrow.
“Mindfulness exercise,” I explain. “You have to eat a raisin really slowly, like it’s the first raisin you’ve ever seen. I kept thinking about how it tasted like something that fell out of God’s pocket under the couch.”
He snorts. “Gross.”
“Very,” I say. “But my brain shut up for like twenty seconds while I was doing it. That’s… something.”
Miguel nudges my knee with his. “That’s a lot,” he says. “Twenty seconds is… a commercial break. We take those.”
I pick at the corner of my napkin. “Dr. K made me redo my safety plan,” I say. “New version. For me.”
“Can I see?” he asks, careful.
I dig the folded paper out of my hoodie pocket. It’s already a little crumpled. I hand it over. He reads it slowly. His eyes track the warning signs, the coping list, and the names. His jaw tightens at “Call Mom / Dad / Miguel / Dr. K within fifteen minutes if volume hits 8+.”
Then he gets to the bottom.
His gaze catches on the last bullet point in “Reasons for Living.” I see his throat move as he reads it.
“‘The trip Miguel keeps promising to that ridiculous treehouse in Big Sur,’” he reads out loud, voice gone soft and weird.
I want to crawl into my hoodie and vanish. “It was either that or ‘be petty and make it to the NBA so I can tell Andersen to kiss my ass on live television,’” I mutter. “But I’m supposed to be making better life choices.”
Miguel looks up at me. His eyes are shining, but he doesn’t cry. “You put this on your list,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say, suddenly very interested in a crack in the sidewalk. “Don’t make it weird.”
He folds the paper carefully, like it’s made of glass. Hands it back. “You remember that listing?” he asks.
“You showed it to me,” I say. “Then I brought it up again… I think you forget my brain is a hoarder.”
“Big Sur treehouse,” he says, like he’s testing the words. “Half glass, half wood. In the redwoods. Overpriced as hell. No reliable Wi-Fi.”
“You said that was part of the appeal,” I remind him. “’No one can email us trauma homework there.’”
He snorts. “That does sound like me.” He’s quiet for a beat. “Can I… ask you something about it?”
“About Big Sur?” I ask. “I mean, sure. My main thought is ‘highway clifffff.’”
“About why you put it on there,” he says softly.
I breathe out. “Because it’s… something I don’t believe I get,” I say bluntly. “Like, nice vacations are for people who aren’t constantly in crisis. But part of me still… wants it. Wanted it enough that it showed up when I was—” I gesture vaguely. “Doing the worst possible thing.”
His eyes go sharp and tender at the same time. “Then that’s the part we’re feeding,” he says. “The part that wants.”
Snorting. “Dr. K said the same thing. You two share a brain now?”
“Timeshare,” he says. “We get weekends.”
We sit there, the idea of that treehouse hovering between us like a third presence.
“Younger me wanted a treehouse,” I blurt, to my own surprise. “So the Big Sur one appeals for more than the mental escape. It’s like it would ‘heal’ some inner child things.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. I start to panic that I’ve said too much, made it too real.
Then he says, “Good.”
“Good?” I echo.
“I still have it saved,” he says. “You know how much joy it gives me to imagine you freaking out over every turn on Highway One on the bike? You just officially gave me permission to make that our thing. Thought you might’ve written it off as one of my ‘someday’ lines when everything went sideways. ”
We are so not taking his bike on Highway One.
“Forgotten?” I scoff. “You think my inner child lets go of promises that easily?”
Miguel laughs, bright and a little broken. “Okay,” he says. “Then we’ll make it a thing. Not this month. Not while you’re still on enough meds to tranquilize a bull. Not until the doctors sign off and you’re cleared for road trips without a chaperone. But someday.”
“Maybe we can still plan it for the summer,” I offer.
He nudges his shoulder into mine. “Someday, we’re going to be in that treehouse,” he says. “Halfway up a redwood, you’re complaining about the stairs, and I’m pretending I’m not scared of heights.”
“You’re scared of heights?” I ask, distracted.
“I do not like being up high without a harness,” he says. “Except, apparently, when it’s for you.”
My chest tightens. “Put that on your list,” I say. “Reasons to live: mock me when I freak out at a scenic overlook.”
Miguel bumps my knee again. “Deal.”
We don’t talk about the night in the bedroom. We don’t talk about the blood on his hands, the pill bottle, or the operator on speaker. Not today. Today we talk about raisins and group and a hypothetical vacation we are both too scared and too hopeful to really look at straight on.
It feels like… pacing ourselves.
That night, before curfew rolls around, Miguel lies beside me on top of the covers, fully dressed, one arm crooked under his head. We’re not touching. We don’t always touch each other now. Sometimes it’s enough just to know he’s there.
Right now, recovery is small and unglamorous and so fucking boring.
It’s showing up to group. Answering honestly when someone asks for my volume.
Eating my mom’s leftovers instead of “forgetting” dinner.
Handing Miguel a copy of my new weekly plan.
Letting my dad sit quietly in the rec room while I watch a game, both of us pretending this is normal, and maybe someday, it will be.
It’s also bigger, in a way I’m just starting to understand.
Dr. K said, “We’re not meeting you in the morgue. We’re meeting you here.”
Miguel said, “Leaving you is not on the table.”
Mom said, “No pidas perdón por estar vivo.”
The beeping monitors are gone, but their rhythm is still in my chest.
In.
Out.
I stare into the dark, feel Miguel’s weight on the mattress, and breathe.
I don’t know what tomorrow’s wave will look like.
But tonight, I let myself imagine redwoods and glass walls and a bed forty feet up in the air.
Miguel’s curls in morning light. Coffee in real mugs. No alarms except the waves.
“Hey, Miggy?” I whisper.
“Yeah?” he murmurs, half-asleep.
“If we ever go,” I say, “I’m calling dibs on the side of the bed with the best view.”
He laughs softly, sleepy and fond. “You can have the whole damn view, pretty boy,” he says. “Just… be there to see it.”
“I’m working on it,” I say.
I smirk and think to myself that for the first time in a long time, the sentence doesn’t feel like a lie.