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“Until he sent you that voicemail.” Chen turns and signals to the last person at the table. “Can we play that clip, please?”

I want to beg them not to play it, but I hear Robby’s voice flooding the arctic conference room. This time, there’s no sunshine in his voice. He sounds lost. “Nothing works anymore, Doc. The memories are back, worse than before. That peace I found in Mexico feels like someone else’s life now. Sometimes I think you were the only one who really saw me. Not a soldier, not a patient. Just me. But I guess that was my mistake, wasn’t it? Sorry for bothering you. Won’t happen again.”

I clench my hands together until all I can feel under the pads of my fingertips are the bones. “Believe me, I have listened to that message over and over again. Those words are branded in my brain.” I swallow against the dryness in my throat and wipe my eyes. “He is dead.” I pause and for a moment, I can only see Robby the way I met him, the man who laughed a little longer, who was a little more outrageous, had a bit of mischief in his eyes. The man I always held at arm’s length.

“Did you have feelings for Robert Reeve?” Eleanor Whitman asks.

I stare at her. “Robby was a sweet boy who went to war, and it messed him up. I wanted him to do well. I was excited for his future. I did encourage him to go back to the VA when he returned to Phoenix. But there is a line, and I would never cross it. I have never crossed it with my research subjects, my colleagues, or my students.”

“The Reeves believe—” Dr. Chen says.

“I understand why they think I had something to do with it. I was part of something he tried that was on the fringes of everything. Of course they would be suspicious of me. But, I did not harm him. I liked him. There were aspects of him that I thought were amazing.”

“Such as?” Whitman asks.

I pause. “During our interviews, he’d have a notebook and he would sketch manga-style dragons and explosions. Sometimes the dragons would be wearing tiaras and earrings. He insisted that every story, even the worst ones, needed a punch line for the universe. That’s what he called it. After his third ceremony, he told me, ‘Doc, I finally remembered what I liked about being alive.’ I saw him as he was: a vulnerable young man who was trying to find his way out of a dark place.”

Nobody writes anything down.

“Dr. Saint-Jacques,” Dr. Whitman finally says, “no one here believes you intended harm. But intention isn’t always relevant to outcome. Professional ethics exist because boundaries protect both researchers and participants. And the Reeve family has suggested that your behavior toward Robert could be part of a concerning pattern of forming intense connections with young, vulnerable combat veterans and creating dependencies where there should be clinical distance.”

Pattern. If that word goes into a finding, it doesn’t stay in this room. The university reads it. A reporter reads it and gets every part of it wrong. Professor Gives Veterans Illegal Drugs.

Early LSD research was set back decades by Timothy Leary. Stem cell work stalled for years after the fraud scandals, because money doesn’t distinguish between a discredited man and a discredited field. San Miguel becomes a chapter in an ethics textbook. The framework I’ve been building for post-ceremony veterans goes in a drawer. Thousands of men wait longer than they need to. Some of them don’t wait.

And Robby stops being a man who shot himself in a fit of despair. He becomes a victim, which is the one thing he never wanted anyone to see him as.

All I can think about is Robby’s laugh, the way he’d fling an arm around anyone near him, how he’d told me once that the darkness in his mind went quiet during that first ceremony. I remember the first time I saw him, he was standing on a table, singing “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” I bottle my grief and tell it, later.

“And,” I say before they can think of asking the next logical question, “if you’re suggesting that I have a ‘type’ and that the ‘type’ is young military men, I want to remind you that I come from a military family. My father and brother were both servicemen. I can provide you the names and contact information for every single boyfriend I’ve had since high school. All of them are white-collar professionals from middle-class backgrounds. That’s my ‘type’ if you want to call it that.”

“That will not be necessary,” Whitman says. She glances at her colleagues. “I believe we’ll adjourn for now,” she announces. “The committee will deliberate and provide our findings within four to six weeks. Dr. Saint-Jacques, we advise against resuming this line of research until we have come to a conclusion.”

A month. A month and a half. By that time, I’ll be ensconced in my new job at Fairhaven University.

I force myself to smile, but I can’t control the fear. If they find against me, my reputation will be destroyed and my research so radioactive I’ll be a cautionary tale. There’s no way that Fairhaven will keep me, and my visa will be canceled the second they fire me. And then what? Will ICE officers appear at my front door and load me onto a C-130 bound for Toronto Pearson?

Ronald, my lawyer, falls into step beside me before I’m through the door. “That was fine. That was a good outcome, actually. Whitman shut Chen down twice, did you catch that?” He’s trying to get papers into his bag while he walks and not quite managing it. “The pattern thing, the family’s theory, that’s noise. It isn’t in front of them. They can’t put it in front of them. They’ve got one question to solve. Don’t give them a second one.”

A door opens somewhere behind us. He lowers his voice without breaking stride.

“It’ll be faster than six weeks, by the way. They’re giving themselves a cushion. They don’t need it. They’ve got nothing.” He gets the bag closed. “So don’t spiral. You’re not in contact with the family, you’re not in the field, there’s nothing for them to trip over. Keep your nose clean and live your life. And your new place has no reason to hear about any of this.”

“Right,” I say.

Outside, the heat comes up off the steps like something with an opinion.

It’s early August and the air is thick with the smell of hot pavement and exhaust. The white marble of government buildings shimmers in the hot sunlight. There are tourists in shorts and comfortable shoes clutching water bottles as they navigate between monuments.

I take a deep breath and let the heat wash over me. It doesn’t help. Five years of doctoral work, two different visas, countless immigration forms—all of it balanced on whether six strangers believe that my words in an email were professional enough.

The sun beats down on me, and I am abruptly aware of how overdressed I am. I need to move—to walk, to run, to do something other than stand frozen on these steps watching my life unravel. I turn to the left and start walking. I’m not sure where I’m going, but there is a group of people waiting to cross at the intersection, and it suddenly feels vital that I join them and cross as well. I take one turn because a pigeon landed in front of me and I didn’t want to disturb it. I take another because the sun is hot and there is the promise of shelter at the other end. I pass government workers in shirtsleeves, tourists with maps, joggers making the most of their lunch breaks.

A sharp trumpet blast pierces through my thoughts, halting my aimless escape. It only takes me a few notes to recognize the melody: “Mack the Knife.” A song about a murderer, played like an invitation to a party. Robby would have loved that. A punch line for the universe, he’d have called it, and then he’d have said it again until I said it back to him. I stop in my tracks for a few seconds, tracking the sound. It’s good. He’s got some high notes that just soar above traffic sounds. I follow the music to a side street where a man stands playing a dented trumpet. He’s easily fifty if he’s a day, but he seems to be enjoying himself. His eyes are closed, body swaying as he wails through the melody with remarkable expression. Beside him sits a brightly painted upright piano, swirls of blue and yellow decorating its weathered frame. A small sign propped against it reads, “Play Me, I’m Yours!”

I stare at the piano as he finishes the song. Robby would have had me on that bench before the last note died. Those awful piano lessons I took as a kid suddenly don’t seem so distant. I could do that. I want to do that. I want to get out there and make a spectacle of myself. Play something.

But I hesitate instead and duck into a clothing store. A blast of cold air washes over me, sharp with the smell of new fabric and air conditioning, and I am aware that I have been sweating profusely. For once I’m grateful for the coat that I’ve been wearing, because I’ve sweated through the shirt.