Bearing the Weight

Claudia counted the vitamins again. D, E, zinc, CoQ10—eight pills scattered on the marble counter like promises she couldn't keep. She swallowed them without water, standing in the kitchen of their rented villa. Outside, Tomas was already on the padel court, his shirt bright against the clay, the rhythm of his game like a metronome marking time they didn't have.

They'd come to the resort for one last attempt—this trip, these vitamins, this carefully timed intimacy before her next round of treatments. But watching him through the glass doors, laughing easily with their opponent, Claudia felt the familiar hollow ache. He moved with such careless grace, while she'd spent three years measuring every cycle, every temperature, every failed hope.

She walked to the pool, needing to be held by water. The evening was descending in purples and bruised oranges. She slipped into the cool embrace, floating on her back, staring at the first stars emerging like tiny witnesses to her inadequacy.

"Claudia?" His voice from the edge. "You okay?"

She tread water, refusing to let him see her tears dissolve into the pool. "Fine."

He hesitated, then dove in, surfacing beside her. "I saw the vitamins. You didn't take them with water again."

"I'm tired of swallowing things."

Tomas moved closer, his hand finding hers underwater. "We can stop. The treatments, the vitamins, the padel with fertility-obsessed couples. We can just live."

A bear had been sighted near the north trail that morning—hungry, desperate, far from its usual range. The guide had said they're seeking sustenance when their territory fails them. She thought of that bear, roaming unfamiliar ground, bearing its hunger alone.

"What if I'm not enough?" she whispered. "What if this hunger never goes away?"

"Then we feed it something else," Tomas said, pulling her toward him. "Travel. Work. Each other. Bear it together."

The water held them both as she finally let herself be held—for the first time in three years, not calculating, not measuring, just floating. The vitamins waited on the counter, but some things don't need to be swallowed to be nourished.