Daniel abandons his interview to reach Natasha

Daniel Jae Ho Bae abandons his Yale interview with Jeremy Fitzgerald when he learns that Natasha Kingsley is still scheduled to leave the United States that night. Rather than let Fitzgerald deliver the news by phone, Daniel decides to go to Natasha himself, unwilling to leave her alone with what may be the worst news of her life. His departure makes the urgency of her impending removal outweigh an opportunity he has been taught to treat as a defining step toward his future.

The Legal Crisis Behind the News

Natasha's search for help began earlier that day at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services building in downtown Manhattan. Her family were undocumented immigrants facing removal that night, and she had gone there hoping that someone—or, in her desperation, fate—might offer a way to stay. Her visit could not change the case: USCIS was not the agency with jurisdiction over the proceeding, and her family's legal options had already narrowed through a series of hearings.

Natasha explains that after her father, Samuel Kingsley, was arrested for driving under the influence, the family received a Notice to Appear from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. At their Master Calendar Hearing, they were given the choice of accepting Voluntary Removal or seeking Cancellation of Removal. Samuel Kingsley initially refused voluntary departure, and the family pursued cancellation on the theory that his son Peter's United States citizenship might help them qualify. The application required at least ten years' residence, good moral character, and proof that removal would cause extreme hardship to a citizen spouse, parent, or child. The family hired the cheapest lawyer they could find and went to a Merits Hearing, but the judge rejected their case. Their lawyer advised against an appeal, said they were out of options, and recommended voluntary departure as a way to preserve the hope of returning someday.

That history gives the news at Fitzgerald's office its particular weight. Natasha's family is not simply awaiting an ordinary travel decision: a judge has rejected the legal route they hoped might keep them in the country, and the departure they accepted has become imminent. Natasha had kept the most painful part of her family history from Fitzgerald—the fact that Samuel Kingsley had said his wife and children had prevented him from pursuing his dreams. She tells the lawyer instead about the Notice to Appear, presenting the procedural chain that explains the case without revealing the private wound behind it.

Fitzgerald's Disclosure

During Daniel's meeting with Fitzgerald, the lawyer says he has been trying to stop Natasha's deportation but could not persuade the judge to overturn the Voluntary Removal. Daniel struggles to take in the news and initially hopes that the person in question might be a different Natasha Kingsley. Fitzgerald slides a file across the desk; Daniel opens it and sees her full name, Natasha Katherine Kingsley. He had not known her middle name, and the discovery makes the official paperwork suddenly intimate without making its decision any less final.

Fitzgerald says that he plans to call Natasha after finishing with Daniel. Daniel immediately objects to the idea of her hearing the worst news of her life over the phone from someone she barely knows. He offers to tell her himself, but Fitzgerald says he cannot let him do so because notifying her is his job. Daniel's concern is not that he can reverse the ruling: it is that Natasha should not face the news alone or receive it impersonally from a lawyer she scarcely knows. The difference between delivering information and accompanying someone through it becomes the human question at the center of the scene.

Choosing Natasha Over the Interview

Daniel has temporarily lost sight of why he came to Fitzgerald's office at all: the meeting is supposed to concern his admission to Yale. His body registers the other conflict too. His lip throbs, his ribs hurt where Charlie Bae punched him, and he feels the pain of Natasha's impending departure. When he asks what would happen if she simply refused to board the plane, Fitzgerald discourages breaking the law, both as a lawyer and otherwise. Daniel's response is to insist on reaching her before she hears the news, not to claim that he has found a legal solution.

He walks out into the empty reception area. Fitzgerald follows and asks whether Daniel is ending the interview. Daniel says that he does not really care about Yale, though the conversation shows that the choice is not effortless. Fitzgerald argues that Yale matters and could open doors, as it did for him. Daniel recognizes the force of that argument: leaving the interview may be shortsighted, and the future Fitzgerald describes is real. But its promise cannot make the remaining time with Natasha feel less immediate.

Daniel points to Fitzgerald's own apparent dissatisfaction with having done what he was supposed to do. Fitzgerald rubs the bandage above his eye and does not look toward the empty desk; he seems tired in a way sleep cannot fix. Daniel says that if he does not go now, he will always regret it. When Fitzgerald presses him to spend another half-hour finishing the interview, Daniel answers that time counts. The brevity of the remaining interval is precisely the point: half an hour might be negligible in an admissions process, but, with Natasha's departure set for that night, it could matter to the person waiting to hear the news.

Consequence and Significance

Daniel's decision breaks the expected sequence of the meeting. The Yale interview is an opportunity to secure a possible future; Natasha's crisis demands a response in the present. He does not establish that he can stop her departure, and the evidence here ends with his choice to leave, not with his arrival or with Natasha's reaction. Its consequence within the scene is nevertheless decisive: Fitzgerald's professional duty to make the call gives way to Daniel's insistence that he must reach her first, while Daniel accepts the risk of walking away from an important interview.

The episode joins the novel's immigration plot to its concern with time and consequential choices. Natasha's options have been compressed by hearings, eligibility rules, and a judge's refusal to reopen voluntary departure; Daniel's remaining time with her is compressed by the same deadline. His choice does not undo the legal machinery or promise that love can defeat it. It answers a more immediate question: when the future offers its own claims, Daniel decides that being present for Natasha now is the choice he could not live with himself for refusing.