Dante spent a week thinking about the second scout meeting—the one from Boston that had come through just as he was starting to find his footing in therapy.
Adrian watched him process in real-time, using all the tools Dr. Morgan had been teaching him.
He saw Dante journaling—something Dr. Morgan had suggested early on, sitting at Adrian's desk with a notebook writing out his thoughts in careful, deliberate handwriting.
He heard Dante on the phone with his parents, talking through options with a calmness that hadn't been there before.
He listened to Dante weighing options aloud, thinking through scenarios without immediately spiraling into catastrophizing.
"Walk me through it," Adrian said one night when Dante seemed particularly deep in thought. "The pros and cons. Say it out loud. Sometimes that helps."
Dante grabbed his journal from the desk and flipped to a page where he'd been making lists.
