Chapter 9 — Between Two Runways

The old notebook had been in Boi Thu's bag all morning, much heavier than its actual size, when she sat down on the diagonal gray chair in the psychological evaluation room for the second time.

"Last week you said you had a recurring image in your head," Banh Nghien Thao began, without beating around the bush. "I'd like to ask that question again today, if you're ready."

Boi Thu put her bag down next to the chair, her hand still feeling the hard edge of the notebook through the fabric. "I wrote a few lines, last night."

"Did you bring it?"

"Have." She took out the notebook and placed it on her lap, but didn't open it right away. "I'm not sure I can read it out loud."

"There's no need to read it out loud if you're not ready," Thao said. "You can tell it in your own words, the way you find easiest."

Boi Thu looked down at the cover of the notebook, the handwriting in the upper corner had faded over the years, her name was written with a ballpoint pen when she was still a student. "Eight years ago, I was an intern at Bach Lung station. There was an accident during the night shift where I sat and observed. During a training flight, the twenty-two year old flight student did not survive."

"I know that detail from the file provided by investigator Sai Dinh Khoi," Thao said softly. "But I want to hear from you, not from the records."

"The records say that I did not notice any unusual signs," Boi Thu said, his voice stiffening a bit. "That's what I declared eight years ago, in an interview that lasted less than ten minutes, when I was too dazed to understand what I was saying."

"And that's not the full truth."

"No." Boi Thu clasped her hands together. "I re-read the entire record last night, for the first time since receiving it. I found my own statement, and I realized I had let an inaccurate statement remain in the official record for eight years, not because anyone forced me to say it, but because I chose to let it remain that way."

"Thirty seconds before everything happened," Boi Thu continued, his voice even but slower than usual, as if each word had to be weighed before it left his mouth, "I saw the blip of that flight off center line on the radar screen. Not much. Just a few hundred meters. But I saw it."

"So what?"

"I didn't say anything."

The room was silent for a moment, only the sound of the air conditioner running smoothly and the sound of Thao's pen gliding gently on paper.

"Why didn't you say?" Thao asked, her voice had no accusatory tone, just a pure question.

"Because my instructor at the time was busy handling another flight. Because I thought he must have seen it, because he always saw things before me. Because I was only a three-month trainee, and I was afraid that if I said the wrong thing, I would interrupt someone with twenty-two years of experience over something that might just be signal interference."

Boi Thu spoke at once, the words she had repeated in her head countless times over the course of eight years, but this was the first time they were said out loud in front of another person, and that made them sound different—more fragile, less convincing than when they existed only as a silent self-justification in her head.

"Do you think, if you had said it then, the outcome would have been different?" Thao asked.

This is the question Boi Thu has asked herself more than any other in the past eight years, and the most honest answer she has, after all that soul-searching, is still just a nagging uncertainty.

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe he already saw it and was handling it in his own way. Maybe what I said wouldn't have changed anything, because the terrain gusts at that time were impossible to predict with existing equipment. But maybe, if I had spoken, he would have had an extra second to pay attention, a second could have been the difference between warning the pilot in time and not being able to."

“You've been carrying that uncertainty for eight years,” Thao said, not a question, but a recognition.

"Yes."

"And last week, when your student hesitated for a beat before making an unusual report, it reminded you of exactly the feeling you had eight years ago, right? Only this time you were in the position of the listener, not the silent one."

Boi Thu nodded, her throat closing up a bit, a feeling she wasn't used to, because she rarely let anything go as far as touching that part of her body in front of others.

"I think," she said, slowly, "part of the reason I reacted so quickly that day, part of the reason I didn't take a second to confirm before giving the go-around, was because I learned that lesson in the worst way possible eight years ago. I didn't want Bach to have to carry what I brought."

“That was an important realization,” Thao said, writing it down in her notebook, then looking up at her. "But I need to ask one more thing, and I want you to be as honest as possible. The person who guided you that year, is he still working in the industry?"

"No. He left the industry immediately after the official investigation concluded, even though the conclusion did not hold him responsible. He died three years later, of a myocardial infarction."

Thao was silent for a moment, letting that sentence settle in the room before continuing. "Did you ever think that his death was related to the burden he carried from that night?"

"I don't know for sure," Boi Thu said, "but I think so. I think so many times."

“And if that's true,” Thao said, her voice still calm but with something a little sharper, like a blade being placed in just the right place, “then you're carrying within you not only the fear of the consequences of a professional mistake, but also the fear that the psychological burden of a serious incident could, in some way, actually be life-threatening. Not a metaphor. A real possibility.”

Those words made Boi Thu sit motionless for a long time, because that was exactly what she had never dared to name, even on the longest sleepless nights.

"That's why this assessment process exists," Thao continued, her voice softening. "Not to keep you off duty any longer than necessary. But to ensure that when you return, you don't carry the same unhandled burden that your instructor carried, alone, until it became too heavy."

"He never told anyone that he was considering resigning in the last months," Boi Thu added, his voice fading. "I only knew through the words of a former colleague, long after he passed away. None of us ever sat down and talked frankly with him about what he was carrying. We just looked at him from afar, thinking he was fine because he still seemed calm as always."

"Is that part of the reason you're afraid of letting others see you're not okay?" Thao asked. "Because you've learned that a calm exterior is not always a sign of trustworthiness?"

Boi Thu didn't answer right away, but her eyes, when she looked up at Thao, spoke for the answer she wasn't ready to say out loud.

Boi Thu looked down at the notebook still lying on her lap, unopened throughout the meeting, and realized she no longer needed to read out loud the words that had been hastily scribbled last night — they had somehow found their way out of her, not through the page, but through her own voice, for the first time in eight years.

"Thank you," she said, not sure what specifically she was thanking her for.

"I need to make one thing clear," Thao added, before Boi Thu could stand up. "What you have just shared here is confidential in accordance with my professional regulations. I will not include specific details in the report to the board, only a general assessment of how well you have handled the trauma involved. But I want to ask you something, not as an evaluator, but as someone who has just heard you tell a heavy story: do you plan to do anything about that erroneous statement in the official record?"

Boi Thu was silent for a long time. It was a question she hadn't allowed herself to think about yet, because thinking about it meant admitting that confessing to a stranger in this closed room, as difficult as it was, was much easier than letting that truth become part of the official record, where it might affect how people viewed Doan Khac Thuyen, who was no longer here to defend himself.

"I don't know yet," she said truthfully. "I need time to think."

"No need to decide today," Thao said. "We have one more session left, but I think you've come a little further today than you thought."