CHAPTER 2

I watched the sun setting from my apartment. Below, twenty stories of concrete sank into soft green treetops that stretched to the horizon, ending in a blazing red disk, a Eucharist glorified on an altar. The sanctuary ceiling was adorned by clouds—living frescoes twisted in scenes of frantic passion. In the sun’s sinking, I could feel the earth’s slow turning. The sensation melted away the world’s hugeness and it felt strangely small and crowded.

There is a kind of intimacy that comes with leaving a place. This time, the going was quiet; there would be no one to hug or kiss goodbye. Even Jung, my cat, had vanished two days earlier, having sensed my leaving. Jung would not be relegated to someone who did not know his favorite places to be stroked. He will reappear two or three days after I am gone, and the neighbors will take him in.

In the branches below, birds flitted back and forth, searching for nighttime perches. The falling of the day made them restless.

I felt shaky inside, unsure of who I was. Returning to Thailand would be difficult, but I had an advantage, having lived there before: I could detect the stealth predators of sanity that culture shock can bring. My connections through language and the intimacy of words would be lost. But I also knew that the craving for belonging was something we were born desiring. In another culture, one’s ideas and beliefs become like walls, and if we cling to those ideas, the walls become a prison.

I told myself that what had happened when I was there was in the past. But time had done little to heal my scars from the relationship with Mallee. I convinced myself that she was hundreds of miles from Bangkok and the distance would protect me from the pain of our separation. When I left her, I never thought I would be returning.

I tried to imagine what I would even say to her if I saw her. Was there a way to forgive myself for what I had done?

My life felt like an endless series of beginnings without completions. I did not want to think of myself as a failure, yet here I was again doing something, not because it was right, but because something else was wrong. My life was a bridge that stopped in the middle of the chasm. It never really went anywhere. Maybe this time it would.

The sun took one last huge breath and sank into the future. It was another day somewhere else, and I was alone. Darkness moved in, but the western sky had sprung a leak, and light poured out of the heavens through a hole in the horizon. As shadows poured over the trees and mopped up the remaining twilight, a brilliant cobalt blue glazed the sky. The streetlights blinked in the branches; only the crows were vocal, invisible in the blackness.

I turned and looked into my room, overtaken by darkness. I groped for the light switch and was startled by the light. It revealed an empty room; the harsh angles magnified the shadows, and every stain and mark on the bare walls was visible.

I sat on the floor and peered under the radiator, where tufts of dust hid a small gray object. Jung’s felt mouse. I felt my throat tighten up.

I wiped the dust and hair off the mouse and slipped it into my bag. Peering inside, I found a tattered envelope. I extracted it from the jumble of empty peanut bags and tissues. Inside was a note, handwritten in ballpoint pen, and a card. Smelling the paper transported me back to the Hollow Gate Zen Center. It was a gift from the Roshi.

The rice paper card was water stained and faded. I read the Heart Sutra for the first time in five years.

Avalokiteshvara, when practicing deeply the prajna paramita, perceived that all five skandas are empty and was saved from all suffering and pain…

Without mind, there is no attainment, without attainment, the bodhisattva has no hindrance.

Without hindrance, there is no fear. Without fear, there are no illusions and they are free to dwell far apart from perverted views, in the realm of Nirvana.

Therefore, know that the Perfect Understanding is the great mantra, is the highest mantra, is the unequaled mantra that says:

“Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha.”

I propped up the card on the windowsill and read the note:

When you leave here, you must find out many things and you must learn a lot about Dharma. Every day we chant the Heart Sutra. It is the most important sutra in all of Buddhist teaching because everything you need to know is here. The Heart Sutra teaches that obstructions come from three karmic consequences. First is the obstruction of deeds done in the past. Second is the obstruction of retribution. Third is the obstruction of passion. With each obstacle that is overcome, the bodhisattva is free to act. Through action, there are no hindrances, and eventually all obstacles disappear, fear is extinguished. Good journeys, Sensei Saitou.

I laid out a couple of mats and a sleeping bag, inched between the folds, poured a glass of bourbon, and turned off the light. I took a sip and thought about the people I was leaving behind. I would miss my patients the most. Their unusual ways of seeing things taught me much about life. They often found themselves at odds with an unimaginative and rigid conception of reality, faced with a response to their difference that equaled stigma, electric shock, drugs, or homelessness. I was supposed to treat people for conditions that no one understood. On many days, I wondered who was the sane one.

The tranquil voices of the leaves soothed me. I took another sip. I knew I would not sleep tonight. The floor was hard, and I was frightened and uncertain of whether I had made the right choice. Things could go very wrong in Thailand. I could regret having quit my residency after investing two years. Without board certification, I would never practice psychiatry.

My mind screwed down on all the unresolved issues. I downed the rest of the bourbon and let myself cry a bit. I missed Jung. He always comforted me when I cried. Instead of his warm, musty smell and raspy purring, I had only the blood beating in my head.

I turned the memories repeatedly in my mind, ruminating against my better judgment. Something wasn’t right. I know what I saw, but why didn’t the committee see the evidence?

* * *

It was late on a Friday over a month ago. Everyone had left the office. I liked the quiet, and I was excited about having enough data to run some analyses, so I had stayed to work in peace. I was using regression modeling to see if certain traits in adolescent patients correlated with thoughts of suicide, suicidal behavior, or self-harm.

I entered the new data from my last interviews with the patients, then paused. I hoped the results would be even stronger than the last analysis, that adding more data would better power the model to show a correlation. The machine only took seconds to run the model after I hit run. It was worse than last time.

“Shit!”

The results should have improved, but they were now worse. I ran through all my input files to be sure I had entered nothing wrong, then I checked the algorithm had been entered correctly. All good. What the fuck? I thought.

I took a few bites of my gung pao chicken and pondered. The cold lab made me clumsy with the chopsticks and one slid out of my fingers to the floor. Picking it up, I noticed a CD had fallen and was hidden behind the computer cabinet—I fished it out. It was unlabeled, but I could tell from the dark bands it had something on it.

I remembered Dr. Simone had been frantically searching for something, but when I asked what, he’d just muttered something about not having a backup. I threw the dusty disk on the desk, halfheartedly thinking I’d have to give it to him on Monday.

I was rattled. Over the course of a year, I was still hitting dead ends on this research. “They are not dead ends,” Simone used to say, “just speed bumps.”

When I glanced at the numbers, I saw that some data from patient interviews seemed to differ from what I remembered. Had I done something wrong? I saved it under another name, reopened the original data set, and reran it. Same result. The original files seemed incorrect, but what to compare them to? It was 11 p.m. and all I’d eaten was a few bites of takeout.

I remembered everything was backed up on a secure server somewhere. I went to the login, jumped through the security authentications, scanned my fingerprint, and I was in. Opening the data set, I was shocked. It had the same faulty data.

I had a backup of my data on a laptop—if anyone knew, I’d be sacked. I was violating the terms of the human research approval by the university and possibly violating HIPAA, too. My laptop was encrypted, and it was an air gap machine—I had never connected it to the Internet or Bluetooth.

I opened the files. What I saw there was impossible: the data on the department’s server had changed from my original data somehow.

Accidents happen. You’ve always been bad with version control, I thought. But I couldn’t figure out what would alter just selected data points, not the entire file.

Psychiatry predisposed me to be suspicious, knowing things aren’t always what they seem when human behavior is involved. I remembered that IT had given me a password for the server logs to recover a lost file.

I typed in the credentials. I scanned the logs, and there it was: The files had been edited a week ago. Not just this one, but most of them....