Chapter Twenty-eight: Caleb
I call Amy as I walk home. “Katie’s back in the hospital,” I say when she picks up.
“Are we really surprised?” she says.
In the background, I hear my nephews wreaking havoc, and I hesitate for a moment, but only for a moment. “No,” I say, “we’re not surprised. Her treatment planning meeting is at noon, Amy, and I need you to be there.”
“What? I-I can’t—”
“Amy, I need you to be there,” I say firmly. “Bring the kids if you have to, but this is important.”
“I can take them to Derrick’s mom’s, but I don’t see why I need to—”
“Because you’re our big sister,” I say. “And because I can’t do this alone anymore.”
“I help, Caleb. I took Katie after she ran off with that drug dealer.”
“You let her stay with you for twelve hours, Amy. And I really appreciated it, but it’s not enough. Not anymore, and especially not right now.”
“Why? What’s happening now?”
I clench the phone a little tighter. “Now Katie’s not the only person I need to worry about. Can you come today?”
“I’m so busy, Caleb. I have a family of my own.”
“We are your family, Amy!” I shout. “And if you don’t help me now, I’m going to lose someone really important to me.” I bow my head. “Please,” I rasp. “I can’t do this by myself anymore. Whatever you think I’ve done, whatever you think I deserve, if you love me at all, if you’ve ever loved me, please help me take care of Katie.”
She’s so quiet that for a moment I wonder if she’s hung up on me. But then: “Okay, Caleb,” she murmurs. “I’ll be there.”
“Thank you.”
I get home and take a quick shower. As I get dressed, I glance at my sketch of Romy, which I’ve stared at so many nights while I’m on the phone with her. I walk over to it and brush her cheek, fragile hope mixing with determination inside me. When she said she was leaving, it gutted me. But did she do it because she doesn’t want me to meet her parents or because it’s too painful to stay? And if it’s too painful to stay, is that because of what’s happened with Alex—or because I’m not there for her when she needs me? Because she doesn’t think I care? Because she thinks I’m too fucked up to change any of it? She has so many reasons to stay away.
It’s up to me to convince her not to.
I drive to the hospital and get there over half an hour early for the meeting. They ring me in at the unit and let me go to Katie’s room. She’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and looking a little better. She hugs me when I walk in. “I’m really sorry about the razorblades,” she says against my shoulder. “I feel so stupid. I should have called my therapist as soon as I felt it all coming on, but instead I let myself buy them.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” I give her a squeeze. “I need to talk to you, though.”
“Okay.” She sits down on her bed, and I sit in a chair next to the window.
“I love you, Katie,” I say. “You’re my sister, and you’ve always been incredibly important to me, even when we were far apart. I’ll always look out for you. Do you believe that?”
She frowns. “Is everything okay?”
I rub at the ache in my chest. “Could you just tell me if you believe it or not?”
“I do, Cabe. I used to think you’d totally abandoned me, but I’ve realized it wasn’t your fault.” She gazes out the window. “You got the better foster family. You know that.”
“I’m sorry it was so rough,” I say. “I wanted to stay with you. They couldn’t find a place for both of us.”
“I know,” she says. “I wanted to go back to Mom. And she believed Phil. I knew she’d never forgive me if I accused him—I saw how she treated you, what she said about you, and I didn’t want her to do that to me. So I thought if I could convince people nothing had happened, maybe they’d let me go back.”
My chest tightens at the thought of my mom, of how she chose the guy who hurt us instead of sticking by her kids. “But it happened.”
Katie’s eyes meet mine. “It happened, Cabe,” she whispers, her eyes filling with tears. “But … it wasn’t your fault. You understand that, right?”
I look away, staring out the window. “Katie—”
“No, Cabe,” she says softly. “I know I blamed you. But you’re not the only one who could have told someone what was happening.”
I turn back to her, stunned and amazed at her words. She’s giving me this scared-but-brave look as tears streak down her face, and I know she’s been working up to this for a while.
I get up and sit next to her on the bed, putting my arm around her and letting her rest her head on my shoulder as she sobs quietly. An orderly looks in and sees that I’ve got her, and leaves us alone. “It shouldn’t have happened to either of us,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do.” Now my eyes are stinging. “I thought I was choosing between getting us both killed by telling or staying silent and keeping us alive. I was so stupid.”
“We were both kids, Cabe.” She sniffles, and I grab her a tissue. “He said the same things to me, and I believed him, too. I’m sorry I blamed you for so long. I feel like I destroyed our family.”
I hold her tight. “You didn’t,” I say in a hard voice. “He did.” I snag another tissue and brush it over her cheek, softening my tone. “I feel bad that you still have to deal with so much. And that’s why I’m here for you.” We sit quietly for a few minutes, and I’m praying those words stick, that she doesn’t forget them as soon as I say what I came here to say. I take a breath and let it out. “I have to be honest with you about something.”
She stiffens. “What?”
I look down at her. “I have to be there for Romy, too.”
“Oh.” She wipes her nose, hard enough to leave her upper lip a dark shade of pink. “You’re still going out with her?”
“I love her, Katie.” It’s the first time I’ve said it when someone else could hear. And it is so powerfully true that it steals my breath.
She blinks at me. “That sounds serious.”
“I want it to be serious. I want her to be around. I want to be good for her, because she’s definitely good for me.” That’s the understatement of the year. “And she cares about you, too.”
Katie looks away. “She probably hates me.”
“There’s no way she hates you.” I take her hand. “I wouldn’t be with someone who hates you.”
“I hate her. A little, at least.”
My stomach tightens. “Why? She’s never been anything but nice to you.”
Katie’s cheeks turn pink. “Because you like to be with her so much.”
Daniel was right. She is jealous. “It’s a different kind of love, Katie. No matter how much I love her, it won’t take away from my love for you.” In fact, I think I could bear it better if Romy were with me. “But I need to spend some time with her, or I’m going to lose her.”
“And you don’t want to lose her.” She says it almost like a question.
I make sure she’s looking me in the eye. “If I did, it wouldn’t be good.” I stare at her, silently begging her to understand.
She gives me a weak, flickering smile. “Then I guess you should do your best to keep her,” she says, her voice breaking.
We stay in her room until it’s time to go to the meeting, my arm around my sister, her head on my shoulder. We don’t talk; it’s too much right now. But when we get up to go to the meeting, she puts her hand in mine again, like she’s a little girl. I think she got frozen that way, so many years ago, like the ten-year-old Katie got stored on ice until it was safe to start to grow again. I hope she can do that, now that she’s actually dealing with the trauma she pushed down for so long.
We gather in a small conference room off the unit—Dr. Prihadi, the unit psychiatrist, the social worker, her therapist from the partial hospitalization program, Amy, Katie, and me. The docs talk about her meds and the social worker talks about how she did last night. Her therapist explains that this kind of thing is expected, given the time of year and the kinds of things Katie is disclosing.
Amy looks startled. “What … what’s she disclosing?”
The therapist looks startled, too, and turns to Katie. “I’m sorry. You said you’d told your family.”
“I told Cabe,” she says. “But he already knew.”
Amy stares at me, and it looks like she’s going to throw up. “You weren’t lying?” she whispers, quiet and jagged.
“He wasn’t,” Katie mumbles.
I glance at Katie, who’s moved closer to her therapist, seeking safety. “I never lied, Amy.”
Amy’s eyes fill with tears. It happens so fast that they’re spilling down her face before we can get the box of tissues across the table. “Oh, Katie,” she says in a choked voice. “Oh my God.”
The therapist, a lady with graying blond hair, leans forward. “Katie’s been working very hard on all these things in our program. It takes a lot of courage to come to terms with what happened to her.”
Her tone is all warning—don’t make this harder. Amy manages to get the message. She nods as she holds the tissues to her face, hiding her eyes as she tries to compose herself.
This is what I wanted to happen, and I feel grimly triumphant as I watch my older sister struggle with a truth almost too painful to bear. I needed her to hear this from Katie, because maybe she’ll be able to stop blaming me. Maybe it will make her more willing to help.
I sit quietly as the professionals talk about discharge dates, and then I clear my throat. Here we go. “I need the team’s help in making a plan for the few days before Christmas.”
Katie folds her arms across her body and nods. I can tell it isn’t easy for her, and I give her a grateful smile before I say, “I’m going to go out of town with my girlfriend for two days.” Assuming I can change her mind about leaving without me. “Morning of the twenty-third to the afternoon of the twenty-fourth. I’ll be back for the evening and Christmas Day, but Katie will need support while I’m gone.”
“We have our on-call service in place,” says Dr. Prihadi.
The therapist puts her hand on Katie’s shoulder. “And you know you can call the emergency hotline.”
Amy meets my gaze. “Katie can stay with me,” she says. She turns to Katie. “If you want to?” She wipes her nose and smiles. “I think the boys would love that. And you guys can have Christmas Eve at our place.” She sounds scared to death.
I sag a little in my seat as they all start to chatter about the plan for Katie, a plan to keep her out of the hospital if at all possible, a way to keep her safe under any circumstances. I help when it comes to thinking of all the ways this might be hard for Katie so we can plan for how to support her, and how to guide Amy if she doesn’t know what to do. Amy seems nervous, but she’s in it for the first time ever, and I’m so thankful.
It feels like a huge weight is lifting off of me. It’s not Katie—she’s not a burden. She’s my family and always will be. But her needs are intense, and I can’t be the only one trying to meet them anymore. Not if I want to have my own life. Not if I want to be the kind of boyfriend Romy deserves.
I kiss Katie goodbye and walk out to the parking lot with Amy. Wet flakes of snow have started to drift down from the sky. We’re supposed to get a few inches tonight. Amy’s quiet until we reach my truck.
“I’m sorry I never believed you,” she says. “I wondered. So many times. Phil is such a …” She shakes her head. “But Katie kept denying it, and Mom said all these things about you—”
“We don’t have to do this right now, Amy.” I so don’t want to hear what my mom thinks of me. That’s a deep wound best opened on another day. “I’m really grateful you came today. I know it wasn’t easy.”
She touches my arm. “I’m going to do what I can, Caleb. I know Romy is important to you.”
I kick the edge of the truck’s front tire. “She is. I’m not actually sure I’ll be able to convince her to take a chance on me after everything that’s happened.” I pull my keys from my pocket. “But I’m sure as hell going to try.”