During the first week of August, the company Baxter worked for announced its sale to an international competitor. That same week her supervisor called her into his office where she saw on his whiteboard her own handwriting, her own work mapping out a marketing strategy. Baxter’s supervisor, who had terminated her for failing at her job, then asked her to create a marketing strategy for the merger of the two companies. He wanted the marketing department, under his direction, to leave a good impression on the new owners. Again, Baxter felt very calm and rational, very much the well-spoken professional—and as though she were observing this conversation from “up in the air and looking over her shoulder.” She felt herself thinking very rapidly and saying to herself, “Don’t respond; just ask for clarification.” She calmly asked him to repeat his request, thanked him, and returned to her adjacent office. Locking the door, she typed up her notes, wrote her understanding in an e-mail to him, and left.

I argue that while being fired was traumatic for Merriam, being asked to make the man who unjustly fired her look good before his new bosses as they decided which managers to retain pushed her over the edge. On the car ride home there was no singing; Baxter cried hysterically, all while she had the sense of one voice noting how dangerous her crying while driving on the interstate was and another voice repeating, “I’ve got to get home.” Her lawyer and psychologist advised her not to return to work. Both urged her to see her family doctor, suggesting that she was experiencing posttraumatic stress, and recommended that she request being put on short-term disability until her termination date. Her doctor concurred, wrote a prescription for Prozac (a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressant), and signed her disability forms.