Four years after the events that began with her planned cross-country drive, the narrator—now forty-nine—flies to New York for the first stop of her book tour. On the plane, she reflects on how her transformative journey took four years rather than six days, wondering whether she has truly changed. She scrolls through her phone photos, finds Davey's number, and after deliberating, texts him a photo of the tiles behind the toilet she'd once noticed in his work. Davey responds warmly, mentions he saw an ad for her reading, and invites her to his event with Dev the next afternoon. She agrees and puts him on the guest list.

After landing, the narrator endures a long cab ride into Manhattan, feeling increasingly frantic and starving. She arrives at her high-rise hotel room and eats ravenously, but something remains off. When she lies down and closes her eyes, she experiences a violent sensation of falling—vertigo. Each time she shuts her eyes, a nauseating plunge prevents her from sleeping. She considers calling her girlfriend in London but decides it's too early in their relationship for such panic. Harris and Paige are camping with Sam.

Instead, she calls Jordi, who researches her symptoms and diagnoses it as likely vertigo caused by a displaced crystal in her inner ear, possibly triggered by flying or estrogen fluctuations. Jordi finds the Epley maneuver—a sequence of specific head and body turns designed to reposition the crystal—and guides the narrator through it over the phone. The first set doesn't work, and Jordi explains she must repeat the sequence multiple times.

As the narrator continues the repetitive movements—head to the right, collapse, head to left, turn, sit up—the experience becomes transcendent. She senses the presences of her grandmother Esther and aunt Ruthie on either side of her, urging her forward. She pauses to vomit, then resumes. The movements become less about the physical cure and more like a ritual prayer or dance, repeated without a comprehensible end. Eventually the maneuver becomes effortless, like breathing itself. Jordi tells her to check, and the narrator, exhausted, closes her eyes and finally, mercifully, sleeps.