“Thirty-two-year-old female presenting with recurrent episodes of vertigo—” I begin, eyes flicking once,just once, toward the window, where the light catches on a familiar facade. The stone of the Chicago Tribune building cuts through the skyline with ornate and deliberate quality.
I’m yanked to a date with Nate, four, maybe five months into our relationship. We were walking downtown, shoulder to shoulder. When the Chicago Tribune came into view, he drifted a step ahead without realizing it, hands already moving as he talked, because he couldn’t help himself when it comes to things he loves.
He pointed up at the tower, tracing lines in the air, mapping it out like I should be able to see what he saw.
Then he caught himself, glanced back, and slowed, stepping in close again until our arms brushed, and without looking, he found my fingers and threaded them like it was instinct. He lifted our joined hands slightly as he kept going, using them to gesture toward the building.
“It’s not just decorative,” he said, angling our hands upward. “It’s Neo-Gothic—like full commitment. Limestone, vertical piers pulling your eye up, and then that crown—those flying buttresses? Modeled after Rouen Cathedral.”
I tipped my head back, squinting at the details he was pointing out. “And why’s that important?”
“Well…” Nate paused, not annoyed, just thinking, his thumb brushing absently over mine as he worked it out. “People assume it’s just aesthetic, but it anchors everything visually. It’s like—okay, think of it like a spine. You don’t just stack vertebrae, you balance them, give them structure so the whole thing holds under pressure.” He shifted closer as he spoke, shoulder nudging mine. “And all the Gothic elements?” He went on. “That’s a statement too. They’re borrowing from churches on purpose. In this building, journalism’s sacred.”
“So the building’s a church?” I asked, glancing at him.
“Architecturally? Kind of.” He grinned, warming into it,free hand sketching shapes in the air again. “It’s steel frame underneath—all modern, early twentieth-century efficiency—but they wrapped it in this historical romanticism, so it feels permanent. Powerful. Like it’s always been there. It’s basically the Tribune saying they take themselves more seriously than anyone else. You see?”
I didn’t, not really. Not the way he meant it.
His whole face lit up when he talked, and he drew me into it without even trying, like understanding mattered less than sharing it—and it felt like he was building something between us every time he translated his world into terms I could hold onto.
And I felt it then, not for the first time with him, but with certainty. Nate wasitfor me.
“Dr. Hollis.”
The room snaps back, everyone around me is full of hard edges, nothing like the curves Nate described. I’m still smiling from the memory, and nobody appreciates it.
Dr. Steinberg stands across from me, her presence cutting clean through the space, copper hair falling in dry, uneven waves around a face that doesn’t soften for anyone. Her red-manicured nails tap once, sharply, against the edge of the chart in her hand.
“Are you happy that you don’t know the answer?” she asks, voice cool enough to freeze the air between us.
Heat rushes up my neck, my face, the smile dropping too late, too obviously. “No, I?—”
“I asked you a question, Dr. Hollis.” Steinberg, the neurology chief, fists her hand at her hips.
“The differential could include?—”
“Could?” Her brow lifts, precise and unimpressed, one lacquered nail lifting as if to underline the word. “We are not in the business of ‘could’, Dr. Hollis. We are in the business of knowing.”
I swallow, grip tightening slightly on the tablet as I try to pull the information back into place, but it’s like reaching for something that’s already slipped too far out of reach. “Given the recurrent presentation, we should consider?—”
“Should,” she repeats, sharper now, stepping closer, the faint click of her heels echoing in the silence that’s stretched too thin. “You should have considered it before you opened your mouth.”
A few heads tilt, attention sharpening, the weight of the room pressing in.
“Intractable vertigo with no clear etiology after multiple visits,” she continues, eyes locked on mine, unblinking. “Tell me why that is concerning.”
I know this. My mouth opens but nothing comes. I’ve frozen again.
The second stretches, then another, and I can feel it happening—the unraveling, the slow, unmistakable realization that I am standing here in front of all of them with nothing.
Steinberg’s gaze doesn’t waver. “If you don’t know, Dr. Hollis, say so. Do not stand here and waste my time.”
My throat tightens. “I don’t know.”
“Obviously.”
She turns away before I can recover, redirecting the question to someone else.
