Page 106 of Hushed

“If you feel that you need to appeal,” Whitman says. “You are welcome to appeal any decision.”

“Rubbish. I can appeal a finding. There is a process for a finding. There is no process anywhere in the world for a note.” I take a breath. “In eight years somebody will open this file. A grant panel. A dean. A journalist. If you find against me, Dr. Chen’s note will be the reason they believe you were right to. If you find for me, it will be the asterisk. There is no third outcome in which it is not there. If you have found against me, then good riddance. But if you find for me, you have dropped ricin into that well, haven’t you? No future reader will think, This man was exonerated. They will think, This man got away with it on a technicality and the committee was decent enough to write down what they really believed. That is a very sophisticated way to convict a man. I want to acknowledge the craftsmanship and the architect of it in writing.”

Chen says something about the record reflecting the full range of committee discussion. I do not look at him.

“And you used a dead man to do it,” I say. “Robert Reeve is in that record too. Not as a patient. Not as a young man failed by every institution that owed him a duty of care. He is in there as evidence. His voicemail was played in this room so that thirty seconds of the worst night of his life could be entered as material. He does not get to appeal either.” I glare at all of them and am enraged for him far more than I have ever been for myself. “Do you know what it costs men like him to ask for help? I do. I wake up every morning beside a man who was sent to war as a barely legal adult. The fact that we are not, as a society, scrambling to find something that works for them is a national disgrace, and I have spent five years on it. I will spend the rest of my life on it. You have written a sentence into a file that will follow that work into every room it ever enters.”

What I am about to say is not the argument Levi built for me last night. He does not know it is coming and he is going to hear it for the first time in the same second they do.

The silence is shocked and palpable. “You are not a homophobe, Dr. Chen. A homophobe is frightened. You are perfectly comfortable. You are a bigot with excellent procedure.” I sit back. My hands are flat on the table and they are steady, which surprises me, because my breath was not just a second ago. “So file this as well. Every word of it. So whatever you write in the next ten minutes, write this underneath it. Every word. If his concerns are a matter of permanent record then by God my answer to them is a matter of permanent record, and I want the two of them on the same page, so that whoever opens this in eight years has to read us both.”

“That is…” Whitman starts, but she turns instead to her committee, as if bewildered about what the next right step should be. Her solicitation of my final remarks was a formality. I was not supposed to do this.

“My husband has made a request,” Levi puts in, breaking the awkward silence. His voice is commanding. “It was made very clearly. See that it is accommodated.”

The translator leans over. “Good for you,” she whispers in French. I nod and sit a little straighter. Ronald starts to say something and I look at him until he stops.

I look at Levi instead and wish he could have met Robby, just once. And then, I think of the ways that he could have become Robby, and I cannot look away.

“Dr. Saint-Jacques.” Whitman folds her hands. “It is the finding of this committee that you behaved with reasonable professional judgment and integrity in your conduct with Robert Reeve. His death, while tragic, was not caused by your research protocols, your clinical conduct, or your recommendations to Mr. Reeve. Based on these findings, we are restoring your eligibility for VA research grants, effective immediately. These findings have been filed with the Office of Research Integrity and are a matter of official record.” She pauses. “Do you have questions?”

I wait for something to happen.

“No,” I say. “Thank you.”

Ronald says something that includes the words grateful and thoroughness. I stop listening. Chen is looking at the middle distance with the expression of a man composing a very nasty speech he hasn’t been permitted to deliver. The translator is packing up.

I think: I need to tell Levi that if they had ruled against me I could survive it because he is here, but if I had let him walk out of my life in August the way everyone said I should, I could not have survived even the version where they cleared me completely and gave me back everything. These people in this room do not matter. He is what matters. That my whole heart is his.

In the corridor Ronald says he always had every confidence in this outcome. He says this while we are walking, which makes it difficult to respond. “I think that this was the best of all possible outcomes,” he concludes cheerfully.

“No, it wasn’t,” Levi says. “The best of all possible outcomes would be that a bigot is removed from doing this again and that his words are expunged from the record completely, if not the entire case. That is the best of all possible worlds, and what we will be pursuing in later legal action.”

He looks surprised. “Then, let me get you my card.”

“Not with you,” I say. “Good morning.”

We leave the VA building into the midmorning air. Levi’s truck is two blocks up in a parking garage. I am thinking about what I expected to feel when the finding was read and what I actually feel, which is angry for Robby, who never intended this, and a little angry at Robby, too, for not being here for me to call up right now.

I finally remembered what I liked about being alive.

I get in the truck. Briefcase on the floor. Levi gets in and doesn’t start the engine and I stare through the windshield at the concrete wall of the parking structure.

“Baby boy?” he asks.

“I’m okay.”

He pauses and puts the key in the ignition, and then sits still, with the console politely dinging at him. “I know it hurts you that you couldn’t save him. But you did save me, if it matters.”

And just like that, I snap out of my reverie. “It matters. So much.” I put my hand on his thigh.

He takes my hand and puts the truck into gear.

Chapter thirty-six

Levi

On Monday morning the person standing at the front of my Psych 1101 class is Dr. Molly Baker.