Chapter 31
The Choice
Robyn
Mid-July in Seattle smells of ocean salt and on-site roasted coffee. We’re sitting next to one another at the conference venue, elbows brushing, while the light pours in through glass and steel. I’m struck by how natural this feels. Not even natural, just … energizing.
“Hey,” Nate whispers, leaning in. “I’m really sorry about the room mix-up.”
I turn sideways, my nose brushing against a lock of hair that’s hanging off his bun.
“It’s fine.”
His mouth hangs open. “I just … It’s not a ploy. I really did book two rooms.”
“We’ve done way more than share a room. I can keep my hands to myself.” I arch my eyebrows.
His lips curve up on the left corner. “I guess we’re going to find out.”
I tilt my head, and his smile dims, then vanishes. “I’m serious, though. This isn’t a ‘one bed trap’ situation.”
“Relax, I didn’t think it was. I was there at check-in.”
He blinks, then lets out a soft laugh. “Alright, swe—Robyn.”
The pause before my name makes my stomach flip flop.
He takes a sip of his matcha latte and hums. “I was trying to be considerate.”
Sometimes, I look at the man beside me and wonder where my Nate went.
This Nate’s hair is pulled back into a loose bun, and his flannel suits him more than a nondescript blazer ever did.
His cheeks look leaner, his nose more pronounced, the familiar angles rearranged into someone I recognize but don’t quite know.
Did my Nate mean to make himself disappear? The answer rises before the question finishes forming. Beneath kissing Tessa back for nine seconds sat a whole iceberg of resentment built from my work, my hours, my choices. And of course everything I fail to tell him I loved about him.
This Nate doesn’t seem to be carrying that weight.
His posture looks … stable. He passes for someone solid enough to land on.
A month ago, he was a solid landing for me.
The problem is, I’ve learned what happens when you trust the surface, and can’t seem to forget how easy I mistook the endgame facade for a cracked reality that crumbled and left me unable to trust my gut.
I roll my shoulders once as someone taps the microphone.
I’m not drawn to motivational speakers, but this has become Nate’s thing …
his language now. The talk starts with an introduction, and then Dr. Valeria Ross steps onto the stage.
She’s about my age, hair in an impeccable up-do, cat-eye glasses sharp enough to feel intentional, and she’s a hell of a lot wiser.
“Resilience isn’t the absence of fracture or a failure to return to baseline,” she states, pushing her glasses up her nose. “It’s what you embrace once you’ve learned to bear weight after a mistake.”
To my right, Nate is writing fast, the pen chasing the speaker’s words.
He nods as he goes, marking the margins with arrows and looping circles, then flips back through earlier pages.
Nothing in that notebook is random. I catch my name several times threaded between quotes, before he draws another arrow that leads back to today’s quote.
There’s also a question mark—he isn’t closing the loop.
He’s aware he’s still learning, unfinished. Maybe there’s more than surface here.
In my lap sits an A5 spiral notebook he brought for me. I don’t really need to write anything down, but I do, pressing the pen harder than necessary. I embrace the calm that runs through me with the small motion.
When I look up again, Nate is watching me. There’s a small smile on his mouth, unassuming, but his attention doesn’t drift. He keeps listening to the doctor, the way he does now. The way he’s learned to, every Wednesday, wait out the silence to ensure my thought’s complete before he speaks.
When the lecture ends, Nate closes his notebook and turns to me. His mouth tilts upward when he sees I’ve scribbled more in the notebook.
He tips his head toward the back of the room, where the reception lights are already glowing. “Drink before Pike Place?”
I nod, and we let ourselves be carried out with the crowd, the air loosening into clinking glasses and overlapping voices. I take a gin and tonic, and Nate orders his whiskey neat.
“What’d you think?” he asks.
“I think you really got into it.”
He takes a sip and winks.
“I never knew you to be this introspective.”
“You know I wasn’t.” His shoulder brushes mine, not accidentally.
For a beat, we observe each other. His brow is slightly furrowed, and he’s probably hoping I won’t notice. This is more like my Nate—understated, constant worry.
“You think I changed my allocations on a whim or as a trauma response.”
“And you didn’t?” His tone is careful, not accusatory.
“Research matters. Infarct subtyping. Risk stratification. Translational work that bridges imaging, clots, and outcomes.” My tone isn’t defensive or secretive—it’s the plain truth of my work.
I lift my glass then lower it. “Patients matter too. But we don’t save them without the work that comes before. ”
“That’s a hell of a shift from how you talked about medicine.” He steps closer, tilting his head down.
I stand on my toes and whisper, “My life doesn’t look like the one I planned.”
His cognac gaze flicks to mine, but he doesn’t flinch at the harsh comeback. I don’t think he could since it’s true for both of us. A woman bumps lightly into my elbow and apologizes. She’s mid-forties, dark hair pulled back, sharp eyes softened by attention rather than appraisal.
“I overheard you’re a neurologist?” she asks, offering her hand. “I’m Elena Harris. Head of neurology at Northmoor University Medical Center.”
She says it as if it isn’t a well-known program to anyone in the field. They’re a hub in a rural area in New Hampshire, but they own a well-funded hospital with state-of-the-art research while remaining patient-centered.
We discuss the talk and dance around the things no one formally trains you to carry but you must learn to hold.
“I shifted my hours recently,” I say. “More research. Less clinic.”
She nods, no surprise in it. “Were you aiming for fifty–fifty?”
Something in my chest settles—I was.
“That balance helps most people,” she continues. “Few places allow it in neurology. They specialize you until you burn out twice as fast. Integrated, holistic models keep people in the work longer.”
We exchange cards. “In case you ever want to see how we operate,” she says. “Or just need a change of pace.”
She steps away from us the same way she came, abruptly.
When I look up from her card, Nate’s watching me with his chin slightly lifted, mouth softening at the corners in an unguarded quasi smile.
He’s proud of me, as if he’s finally seeing the result and not the process of pouring hours and hours into it.
How’s this the same man who resented it? “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I don’t think you realize how unbelievably amazing you are. So much so that this woman overheard you and interrupted us to connect with you.” He pauses, eyes steady on mine. “I’m really proud of you, Robyn. I always knew you’d thrive.”
I draw my shoulders back and blink twice.
His smile deepens into that same smile he had when I gave him that yogurt.
And it tugs at something true and raw inside me telling me I don’t want to just thrive.
I want to thrive together. I just don’t know how to get over the anger, and much less, the fear.
For dinner, we stop and order from different storefronts at Pike Place.
The market smells of brine, fried oil, and buttery crust. To begin with, we share something battered, something pickled, and something neither of us can pronounce.
We stand more than sit, bodies angled close to hear each other over the noise.
“I mapped out a couple of stops for tomorrow,” I say, wiping my fingers on a napkin. “Before we drive back, there’s something I think you’d want to see.”
He pauses, fork hovering, then sets it down carefully. His smile doesn’t disappear, but it changes, loosening at the edges. “Oh yeah?”
I nod. “Yeah, it’d be a waste not to.” I reach into my jeans and pull out two folded sheets of paper, smoothing them on the table between us. Two tickets to an architectural walking tour of Pioneer Square ending at the Smith Tower.
Nate examines the two pieces of paper, his hands shaking.
When he looks up at me, his eyes shiny and pupils huge, I recognize the memory tightening without permission at the edges of this moment.
There was another set of tickets once, for a trip we never took.
Those tickets are expired now, just like that version of us when I thought we’d never spend another Christmas apart.
These tickets are different, though, newly printed, even if they can’t pretend they’re devoid of history.
“It’s just …” I shrug, too lightly. “We’re already here.”
He nods, swallowing, eyes back on the paper. For a moment, neither of us reaches for our drinks. The market noise swells and recedes around us, forks clinking and the city life coming forward in a way it doesn’t in Bend.
“There were a lot of places we could have gone. We didn’t have to do my thing.” His tone isn’t accusatory, it just calls the truth forward.
“I know. I wanted to.”
The space between us holds the weight of what we didn’t do together and the quiet fact that we’re here now anyway. Not together but also not apart.
“I don’t want to tell you how to take care of yourself,” he says, folding the two pieces of paper with reverence they don’t deserve. “I know you can. I don’t know better than you.”
I wait, letting him finish.