The question hits me sideways. “Here,” I say before I can overthink it. “Like… anchored. He was the one who talked me down last night when I got home. I told him everything. I almosthad a full panic attack on his couch and he walked me through the breathing and the stupid five-senses check. He kept saying my worth doesn’t belong to my dad. That I don’t need approval to love him.”
“How did that feel?” she asks.
“Like he’d been spying on our sessions,” I say. “In a good way, I guess.”
She smiles. “Maybe he’s been listening to you more than you think.”
I stare at my hands. “He told me he called here,” I add. “For himself. He’s getting his own… support. So he can, quote, ‘keep loving me without breaking.’”
Her eyebrows lift. “He did?”
“Yeah.” My throat tightens. “I didn’t know whether to cry or… run.”
“What did you end up doing?” she asks.
“Both?” I say. “Internal scream, external gratitude. Mostly I felt guilty.”
“Because?” she prompts gently.
“Because now someone else needs therapy because of me,” I snap, then wince. “Sorry. That came out?—”
“Fast,” she says. “And honest. Don’t apologize.”
I deflate. “Of course he needs a counselor because I’m his personal disaster zone. He would be fine living some normal life if he’d never met me.”
Dr. Kaur’s expression shifts to that sharp-soft look she gets when I’m being particularly cruel about myself.
“So the story your brain is telling you,” she says carefully, “is that you corrupted him.”
“Didn’t I?” I shoot back. “He was your classic golden eldest son—good grades, good kid, no major anxiety issues, no… stepbrother issues.” I gesture at myself. “Then boom. Herecomes the trauma gremlin. Now he’s making emergency calls to campus counseling and panicking every time my phone dies.”
She waits a beat. “Is there any part of you,” she asks, “that can see another interpretation?”
I glare at the bookshelf. “Like what?”
“Like,” she says, “he watched someone he loves nearly drown. More than once. And now, when the water even looks choppy, his alarm system goes off. Not because you’re inherently damaging, but because you matter to him.”
The back of my eyes burn.
“And the choice to get support,” she continues, “could be read as ‘I care about this relationship enough to take care of myself so I can stay in it.’ Not ‘Caleb is so awful he broke me.’”
My throat closes.
“I’m not saying your guilt is irrational,” she says. “It makes sense, given how responsible you feel for everyone’s emotional state. But I am challenging the idea that Miguel going to therapy is proof you are toxic.”
I stare at my hands, and they’re visibly shaking.
“What if he realizes, in therapy, that I am too much?” I whisper. “What if he goes in there and starts talking and some professional looks at him and goes, ‘Wow, this is co-dependent and unhealthy, please exit the situation.’”
“Ah,” she says softly. “There it is.”
“There, what is?” I snap, more defensively than I mean to.
“The fear that if someone neutral examines your relationship, they’ll tell him to leave,” she says. “That is a huge fear, Caleb. And it makes sense. This relationship is your primary source of safety. Losing it feels like annihilation.”
Annihilation.Yeah. That’s a good word.
“I’m not gonna sit here and tell you there’s zero risk,” she says. “Therapy is about honesty. Sometimes, people realize they need different boundaries. But good therapists do notrip support systems away from clients without serious, careful consideration. Especially when that support is literally keeping someone alive.”
