She slammed a final key on her laptop and turned to him. “How many different charitable missions has it been in those eight years? Fifteen? Lightbulbs in Guatemala, digging wells in Zimbabwe, teaching English in Cambodia, saving gorillas in Tanzania, raising turtles in God knows where.”

“It was chimpanzees, not gorillas, and I’m flattered that you have my résumé memorized. But all of that sounds very much like it’s worthy of respect. Is that why you won’t tell me what’s going on in Nepal? Because you think I’m going to move on too fast?” He knew the issue was with one of her sites. A local gang lord demanding bribes. But she refused to get into it more than that. “Maybe I can help, Naina.”

“This isn’t just another project that you can move on from, that you have no skin in!”

“Let me get this straight, I can only help if I work on the same project for the rest of my life?”

“Maybe not the rest of your life, but long enough for it to matter.”

This was about his leaving? “So timeframe is the measure of commitment? What happened to not turning acts of service into an extension of your ego? What happened to traveling light and touching as many lives as you can? Timeframe has nothing to do with level of involvement. Can’t you see that you and I are not that different? The work we’ve done isn’t that different. I can help with this. I know someone in Kathmandu.”

Naturally that made her make an infuriated sound. She got up and started pacing. “I’ve worked my whole life for this. You and I are nothing like each other.”

She kept saying that. But maybe she didn’t sound so convinced anymore.

“You sure about that?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I believe I’ve worked my whole life to change things that bother me, but you believe there’s some ulterior motive of noblesse oblige and ennui and guilty privilege, or whatever Hollywood-archetype psychoanalysis you’ve performed on me. If that’s true, it must mean there’s something else going on with your obsession with wanting to change things too. I mean, isn’t what’s sauce for the goose sauce for the gander?”

“At least my sauce doesn’t change with the changing seasons. I’m focused on something. Therefore the thing I’m focused on cannot easily be replaced with something else. This is about the lives of hundreds of thousands of women who can have a shot at basic healthcare and sustainable income. Your work is not lesser. It is just one thing today and another tomorrow.” Her computer pinged and she seemed to fold inward as she turned to her screen. “Shit.” Her fingers were shaking.