Page 1 of Hushed

Chapter one

Bastien

“Ibeg your pardon?” I manage.

The interrogator across from me looks over her reading glasses. “Did you have sexual relations with Robert Reeve?” she repeats coolly.

They’ve lowered the temperature in the conference room to Polar Expedition. The air tastes of stale coffee and recycled chill. I’m glad I wore a vest. I have been sitting in this chair for nearly four hours. But right now, even that discomfort has been obliterated by shock. There is a pause as the committee leans forward, waiting for me to respond. I blink in astonishment and, for once, English doesn’t come first. “Est-ce que vous venez de suggérer—” I begin.

At my left, the appointed translator, whom I never requested, boots to life for the first time since our introduction. She shakes herself and leans forward, eager to demonstrate that finally, finally, the foreigner is in dire need of her services. “Avez-vous eu des relations—”

“I know what she said,” I snap in English. I’m barely able to contain my rage that they assumed I didn’t speak English to begin with. The translator sinks back in her chair, but keeps her pen poised, waiting for my next linguistic failure. “I’m just appalled that I’m being asked this. Madame,” I snap out the word in French, relishing how cold and formal it sounds. It takes everything I have in me to keep my accent from slipping away from the neutral Anglo accent I have been using for work since I came to this country. I hold myself rigid and tamp down on my outrage. “I have never had a sexual relationship with Mr. Reeve. How dare you?”

My lawyer puts his hand on my coat sleeve. He’s doing this pro bono and looks like he’s in over his head. “I believe that Dr. Saint-Jacques would like to know the origin of this outlandish, and deeply offensive, accusation.”

“I bloody well would!” I snap, and only then remind myself that Americans don’t use bloody. But I don’t care. I have been humiliated and intimidated since the moment the members of the review board sat down across from me, but this crosses the line.

Dr. Eleanor Whitman sifts through a stack of printed documents with the precision of someone handling evidence at a murder trial. Her silver bob catches the light. A halo. Perfect. Her nails have been painted a subtle nude color. She has copies of my PhD, my research notes, and, most importantly, Robby’s correspondence. “Can you take us back through how you got to know Mr. Reeve?”

“Yes. Mr. Reeve had already decided to travel to Mexico to undergo an ayahuasca ritual over the summer. He reached out to me because there had been an article about my dissertation on the Purdue website. My research focused specifically on ayahuasca’s efficacy in treating PTSD symptoms among combat veterans.”

Dr. August Chen leans forward, the light glinting off his glasses. He’s a solid, unsmiling man in his sixties with steel gray hair. “And did you at any point advocate that it would be a good idea for a vulnerable, depressed veteran suffering from PTSD to consume a dangerous Schedule I drug?”

“Absolutely not. Mr. Reeve had already made the decision. Every response I gave him was copied verbatim from a script vetted by Purdue’s legal counsel. Word of mouth among veterans is very strong. My only job was to record what subjects like Mr. Reeve self-reported about their emotional state before, during, and after the event.” Oh, my God, how many fucking times am I going to have to repeat this?

Dr. Chen looks unimpressed. He begins rearranging his notes, clearly looking for some kind of gotcha he thinks he has. The fluorescent lighting buzzes overhead, casting a sickly pallor over the room.

Dr. Whitman clears her throat and removes a printed document from the stack in front of her. The sound is so unnaturally loud that it stops Dr. Chen in his tracks. “Let’s review the email from June 14,” she says. She picks up the paper. I glance over the rest of the committee, all men and women wearing somber, professional colors. They are all dressed like they are going to a funeral—which, in a sense, they are. “‘Heya Doc,’” she reads, but I hear Robby’s voice, the way that he always seemed to have a smile hidden in his tone. “‘I think I’m getting to a new level with my journaling. These hands are good for a lot. Been drawing a lot. It’s good to have that back.’”

I remember that email. He’d attached a photo of a sketch—a rough rendering of the courtyard at the retreat. It was basic, but I remember being touched that he had thought of me.

She pauses. “Your response: ‘I’m so glad that you’re having this breakthrough! And, please. I’m not a doctor yet. Bastien is fine. I’ll remember to lord it over you when I get the title, though, lol. I look forward to discussing your breakthroughs in the next interview. When are you free?’” She puts down the paper and looks over at me.

I know where this is going. “This is an appropriate exchange supporting a vulnerable veteran who’d had a breakthrough.”

“Response, that evening: ‘I think I’d like to see you lord it over me. Bet you’re a tiger under those silk vests of yours. How about at that cantina near the Jardín Allende?’”

I stare, stone-faced, across the table at her. I remember exactly when that email arrived. I was with Brice at a mezcal bar in San Miguel. He read it over my shoulder and laughed. “Another soldier boy with a crush,” he’d said. “I’m starting to wonder what you’re doing in those sessions of yours.” I think he had intended it as a joke, but by then the jokes had an edge.

“While this is problematic,” she says, removing her reading glasses and pointing them at me, “what is particularly baffling is your response. You were in a position of responsibility.”

“And how did I respond, then?” I challenge her. “Did I ask him to come and see for himself? Did I tell him it was welcome? No.”

“No,” she confirms. She puts the glasses on and reads. “‘Hi, Robby! My boyfriend has come down to Mexico, so I’m spending the evenings squiring him around the countryside. I am looking forward to hearing about how the ceremonies have impacted you, though. The short-term data is really exciting about how ayahuasca has affected PTSD in veterans like you. I know that the office is problematic for you because it’s too small, but there is a lovely park we can go to. Perhaps you would feel more comfortable with trees and sky? If so, let’s meet at the Jardín Allende and then we can go from there.’” She stops reading and looks at me meaningfully.

“Mr. Reeve is—was—claustrophobic. Because of that, we could not use the office provided to me at the Institute. He preferred to conduct his interviews in open spaces. And frankly, given what he had just said, I judged it was even more crucial to meet at a neutral and highly public place.”

“And yet, you did not address the fact that he had crossed a line,” she says.

“I chose to do it in person. Robby overstepped. But shaming a vulnerable young man who was learning to trust me would have completely destroyed the trust we were building. I established my own boundary in a way that, I hoped, did not make him feel invalidated. I did, however, send him an email when he persisted in this.”

“Yes, I have noted that,” Whitman says, throwing a meaningful look over her glasses at Chen. “It was professional and well-crafted. It managed a difficult task well.”

Dr. Chen leans forward. “Your sample was overwhelmingly young male combat veterans. The Reeve family claims that you seduced their son, and convinced him that ayahuasca treatments would fix his deteriorating mental health.”

My lawyer answers before I can. “Dr. Saint-Jacques has been more than accommodating. Over the past three months, we have combed through several years’ worth of emails with research subjects, text messages, and a dissertation. He has never made any such claim to any subject, least of all, Robert Reeve. Dr. Chen, I believe that you’re allowing your own bias against the research protocol, and perhaps my client himself, to influence your judgment.”

“Look,” I say. “I had all the time in the world to sit with my research subjects and talk to them like they mattered. Robby was doing well, the last time I saw or heard from him. We were scheduled for a video follow-up in June. I asked him a standardized set of questions and his answers gave no indication of psychological breakdown.”