Suspended

The bull market had been kind to Marcus. Too kind, perhaps. Three years of uninterrupted gains had swollen his 401(k) and his ego in equal measure. He'd become the kind of man who ordered expensive scotch without looking at the price tag, who leaned back in his Aeron chair and proclaimed that risk was for people who couldn't read the tea leaves of technical analysis.

Then came the bear.

It arrived not with a roar but with a quiet, persistent erosion. February's numbers were "concerning." March's were "troubling." By April, Marcus was waking at 3 AM, stomach churning, reaching for his phone to check international markets before his eyes had even adjusted to the dark.

His girlfriend Elena had stopped asking about his day. She'd learned that his answer would inevitably involve red arrows, margin calls, and the increasingly desperate hope that "tomorrow would be different." She'd taken to reading in the other room, the distant murmur of her audiobook seeping under the door like a quiet reproach.

Tonight, Marcus sat in his home office, bathed in the blue glow of his monitors. He'd disconnected everything—phone, internet—except the cable. CNBC droned on, talking heads dissecting the day's carnage with professional detachment. Another analyst who'd bet against the bear and lost.

He stood and walked to the window. Forty-three floors up, the city spread beneath him like a glittering circuit board. He thought about the suspension cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, visible in the distance, strung tight between anchor points. Some days he felt like those cables—pulled taut, holding everything together, carrying impossible weight.

Other days, he felt like the slack before the tension.

Elena appeared in the doorway. "You coming to bed?"

"In a minute."

She leaned against the frame. "Marcus, it's just money."

He laughed, a short, sharp sound. "That's what everyone says until it's gone. Then it's not just money—it's time, it's choices, it's the life you thought you'd built."

"Or," she said softly, "it's just money."

The bear market would end. Eventually. The question was what would be left when it did—his portfolio, his pride, or the man he used to be before he started confusing net worth with self-worth.

Marcus turned off the TV. The room went dark. "You're right," he said, finally turning away from the window. "It's just money."

But even as he followed Elena down the hall, he wondered: if that were true, why did it feel like everything?