“You should stay,” she said. “Not as a fellow. As junior faculty. The department will fight for your line if you’ll fight for the work. You’ve built something here that wants your name on the door.”
My heart did a small, precise revolution. “What about the usual rule that you leave to grow?”
She nodded. “It’s a good rule. It’s not a law. Sometimes you grew and now it’s time to build.”
I walked the campus for an hour, down paths where I had learned the feel of the work under my feet. Then I called Jessica.
“Stay,” she said immediately, as if we were deciding between dresses. “Do the thing that puts the most of you in the world.”
“Even if that means Baltimore instead of being near you?”
“Especially then,” she said. “We did proximity. Now we do purpose. Also, I like Southwest.”
I laughed out loud. “I’ll tell Dr. Fleming yes.”
“And I’ll tell my chiefs that if they don’t approve my vacation request for your first faculty talk, I’ll diagnose them all with adjustment disorder.”
“Psychiatry sounds so benevolent until you weaponize it,” I said.
“Everything sounds benevolent until sisters use it right,” she said, and hung up.