Chapter Twenty-Seven
After we leave the Olympic Peninsula, Karo and I make our way north to Victoria Island, talking and joking our way back into a relationship that feels balanced.
With a few exceptions, I manage to keep Lewis out of my mind.
But occasionally he pushes back to the forefront of my thoughts: in a bookstore when I spot a copy of the hefty book he brought to the cabin, when we go on a hike he recommended and, worst of all, when we arrive in Vancouver, where I picture a younger version of him at every street corner.
On the last morning of our two-week-long trip, before Karo and I board separate planes taking us back home, we meet Brady for brunch, but, to my relief, she avoids any mention of him, and bonds over books with Karo instead.
The Netherlands welcome me back with a gray and wet August, one with countless days of fizzy rain and a dull sky.
On my first day back at the office, I type out an email to Rosanna, thanking her for our conversations and stating that I won’t be interviewing for the postdoc position.
I’ve had weeks to think it over, and although working with her was—is—my dream, I have decided that it’s not worth putting myself in a position where I’d doubt my worth every second.
Giving up on this dream feels less groundbreaking than I thought it would.
It’s just another email. A few strokes of the keyboard, a snap of the enter key.
The clock on my project, and my job, is ticking, but over the next few weeks, I try to put my head down, get through the time I have left at work, not think about Lewis, and figure out what’s next for me.
I fall into a rhythm of work, exercise, job hunting, a few hours of unwinding before a fitful night of sleep and then the cycle starts all over again.
Although I haven’t experienced any more panic attacks, the constant buzz of my thoughts prompts me to finally make a doctor’s appointment a few days after I get back, and once there, I ask for a referral to a therapist. Theoretical knowledge about fear responses and the pathways of emotion are one thing, but I need professional help to get out of my habit of pushing down unwanted feelings and distracting myself with work instead.
I can’t rationalize my way through life when sometimes it just is the way it is—messy, and full of surprises, good and bad.
Karo and I talk often—not daily, like we used to.
I don’t give her a rundown of my job search, the faraway labs I’m considering, but instead coach her through her own insecurities and practice interview questions with her.
In the evenings, I listen to the historical romance audiobook I downloaded back on our trip, so I understand which brooding looks and stolen touches she gushes about on our calls, and the day after my first therapy appointment, I finally tell her about the panic attacks.
With the start of fall semester approaching, email traffic picks back up and clogs my inbox at a speed I can’t keep up with. I mark all department-wide emails as read without even looking at them, but in the two weeks after I’m back, three emails stand out.
One, an invitation to virtually present my research at a lab at Monash University, to which Tegan, the postdoc I met at the Sawyer’s, has added a note: It’s not quite your research, but they’re looking for a postdoc, so if you do well, they might consider you.
Two, Brady sending the first chapter of a new story she started—not fan fic, but her own, about a biomedical scientist who is forced to collaborate with a werewolf to find a cure for a rare disease.
I zoom through it on my lunch break, and when I email her back, demanding more, I notice that she sent the chapter to Lewis at the same time as me. And my longing for him flares back up.
Three, an email from Rosanna Alderkamp that comes in right as I’m changing out of my bathing suit at the local pool.
I hadn’t expected to hear from her anymore when she already sent a kind response right after I turned down the position.
Once I’m fully dressed, I find a bench in front of the pool complex and open the email.
Hi Frances,
New developments on the postdoctoral position that will open in the lab.
While still involved in the project, Lewis has stepped down from the hiring process, citing a conflict of interest. He mentioned this caused your reservations in interviewing for the position.
Interviews will be handled by a colleague from the imaging department and me, and we’ll do a lab culture / compatibility check with two other postdocs from the group.
Shall I disregard your previous communication?
Talk soon, R
Rosanna sends a copy of Lewis’s grant proposal along, “at my discretion,” so I can see what the research would entail.
My first read through has me crying.
From hope or heartache, I don’t know. The research entails something wildly promising, as if Lewis had pulled the next steps I wanted to address out of my brain.
Like me, he must have written this proposal last winter.
It shows that he hadn’t only read my work closely, but also understood me, saw me, before we even met.
The grant is a glimpse into his brilliant mind, and I race home, where I reread it obsessively, masochistically, until my eyes want to bleed.
Karo was right: It is different this time.
Rather than brush over my name, like Jacob did, Lewis’s appreciation for my work is all over his grant.
But not only that. Back in New York he said he only ever wanted to see me succeed, and Rosanna’s email is yet another sign of that: He listened to my concerns and is willing to sacrifice his control over the project to clear the way for me.
Two days later, I give my virtual presentation to the lab in Melbourne. Tegan introduces me, and I get some interesting questions from the rest of the group, and before I finish the call, I get invited to an official job interview. As I exit the meeting, I already know I’ll cancel it.
I don’t want to move to Australia. Despite what I told Karo, I don’t want this to be the only way.
It’s midnight when the call ends, and I begin pacing around in my office, limbs tense and brain swirling with indecision. A postdoc in Rosanna’s lab with Lewis’s money or moving all the way to Melbourne on my own terms.
None of the options feel right. In the past, whenever I reached the end of a contract, I usually had the next opportunity lined up; a new open position at a lab or a successful grant project.
The thought of moving halfway across the world wouldn’t have even made me blink, whereas now it overwhelms me with a fresh burst of anxiety.
I know I need to make a decision soon.
Unsure how else to tackle my problem, I stop in front of my whiteboard, which is scribbled dark with crossed-out revision points from my last paper. I wipe it clean.
For about half of my life, I’ve been trained to look objectively at my experiments. Consider all questions and biases, shift my perspective, and let the data drive me. So, it’s no surprise that after taking stock of my current life, I realize that something needs to change.
I thought I’d done the right thing after breaking up with Jacob five years ago. When my heart felt like one giant bruise, I pushed back all the way. I decided I’d work tirelessly and pour everything into reaching my goal.
Get tenure and make a difference with my research. No matter what.
But I’ve run out of breath in my blind sprint toward that goal, and it’s gotten pretty lonely here, too.
I’ve lost track of myself, again, except this time I only have myself to blame.
I’ve pushed people away and put everything else—happiness, stability, whatever else I wanted—on the back burner, convinced it would pay off when I finally reached the finish line.
My self-worth is so dependent on work that any major setback—a grant rejection, learning how much better Jacob did for himself—felt like a demonstration of what an absolute failure I was, and pushed me to lose control.
After scribbling all of this onto my board, I’m still not closer to finding a solution for what to do next. But there’s someone, I remember, who might provide me with a sense of direction. Someone who’s arrived at a point in her career she seems happy with, someone who offered that we could talk.
Despite the late hour here, it’s early evening on the East Coast, so I hunt for the Sawyer’s program on my messy desk and find Vivienne’s number on the last page.
“Frances,” she greets me happily when I tell her who’s on the line. “So nice of you to call.”
I only manage a little bit of small talk before the reason I’m actually calling tumbles out of me. “What did you mean when you said you didn’t change your mind? Back on that last day of the Sawyer’s? We were talking about ambition, and…”
“… how hard it can be to balance that. Yes, I remember.”
“Which is something I’ve been failing at, big-time. So, it resonated, and it stuck. And confused me, because, um, I mean…” I search for a way to say it politely. “Jacob is your fiancé and your boss, isn’t he?”