Before the Lightning

She counted them every morning: vitamin D for the depression she wouldn't admit to, omega-3 for the heart that felt too often like it might stop beating, magnesium for the sleep that never came. Eleven pills, eleven promises to herself that she was trying. That she wanted to be here.

Then she'd go to the pool, where the water held her weight in a way nothing else could. Swimming had become her church, her therapy, her excuse to leave the bed they'd stopped sharing. Richard had stopped asking to join her months ago, around the time he stopped asking anything at all.

Today, the sky was the color of a fresh bruise. The lifeguard gave her a look that said you should go home, but she didn't have one anymore, not really. She dove in anyway.

The water was colder than usual, electric against her skin. She swam laps, counting strokes instead of pills, trying to outpace the thoughts that always caught up: the affair she'd suspected but never confirmed, the way Richard looked through her now, the future that had somehow become someone else's.

Then lightning struck somewhere nearby. The pool lights flickered, died. The surface of the water became a mirror of the storm above, illuminated by flashes that revealed her own face back at herself—pale, desperate, exhausted. Something cracked open inside her, something that vitamins couldn't fix.

She pulled herself from the water, gasping, as the sky tore open. Rain sheeted down, mixing with the pool water on her skin, making her feel like she was dissolving. She lay on the concrete, arms spread, staring up at the lightning that kept coming, each flash a moment of terrible clarity.

This was it. The end of everything. And she realized she didn't want to fix it anymore.

She walked home dripping, leaving wet footprints on the sidewalk like evidence. Richard was in the kitchen, nursing a drink, not looking up. She didn't speak. She went to the bathroom, dumped all the vitamin bottles into the trash, and packed a bag. The storm raged outside, but the real lightning had already struck—the moment she realized she could finally leave.