Chemical Imbalance

The **vitamin** D supplements sat on her bedside table like a reproach. Three years of fertility treatments, and Elena's body had become a stranger to her—a landscape of hormones and blood tests, each cycle a small death she learned to endure with increasingly practiced grace.

She found Marcus by the **pool** at dawn, already on his phone, the blue light illuminating the resignation in his eyes. The corporate **bull** was endless lately—mergers, layoffs, the perpetual threat of being made redundant. He'd stopped touching her somewhere around the second failed IUI. Not that she blamed him. Desire had become clinical, scheduled, another item on a spreadsheet that never balanced.

"The doctor called," she said, sitting on the adjacent lounge chair. "Wants us to consider donor material."

Marcus didn't look up. "Whatever you need, El."

The words landed like stones. Whatever *she* needed—as if their shared future had somehow become solely her burden to carry.

A stray **dog** wandered onto the terrace, some weathered golden mix with a patchy coat and one ear permanently folded. It moved with the careful gait of something that had learned to survive disappointment. Elena extended her hand. The dog approached slowly, then rested its head in her open **palm**. Its eyes were ancient, knowing—a creature that understood patience.

"What are we doing?" she asked, not really expecting an answer. "Really."

Marcus finally looked at her, really looked at her, and she saw how tired he was. How tired they both were.

"I don't know how to want things anymore," he said quietly. "Every time I do, it gets taken away."

"So we stop wanting?"

"We stop expecting."

The dog settled at her feet, its breathing steady and unconditional. The sun broke over the horizon, turning the pool water to something almost cruelly beautiful. Elena scratched the dog behind its ears, feeling its pulse against her fingers—a simple, undeniable proof of life.

"Maybe," she said, "we start there. Just being here. Without needing it to be something else."

Marcus's phone buzzed. He ignored it.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay."

It wasn't forgiveness, exactly. But it was something like beginning.