Daily Requirements

The baseball stadium blazed with late afternoon sun, the crowd roar washing over Elena like static. Beside her, Mark waved at a vendor, shouting something about beer, his enthusiasm as bright and brittle as the plastic cup he'd soon hold. Elena reached into her purse and fingered the smooth orange surface of her prenatal vitamin, the bitter medicinal smell somehow cutting through the popcorn-saturated air.

She should have taken it that morning. She should have done a lot of things.

"They're up by two," Mark said, squeezing her knee. "Luck's turning around."

Elena watched the batter adjust his helmet, thought about how her body had become a sphinx she couldn't appeise—demanding riddles in bloodwork and temperatures and carefully timed injections, offering nothing but silence in return. Three rounds of IVF, three different kinds of needles, and she'd stopped knowing which prayers were which anymore.

"The vitamin," Mark said suddenly, not looking at her. "Did you take it?"

She swallowed something that wasn't the pill. "Forgot."

He turned away from the game, from the suddenly crucial play unfolding on the field, and his expression was patient. So terribly patient. "You know the doctor said—"

"I know what the doctor said." Her voice came out sharp, unexpected, like breaking glass. "I'm the one whose veins are地图 of bruises, Mark. I think I remember."

A family behind them laughed—father, mother, two little girls in matching jerseys. The older girl was explaining the rules of baseball to her sister, solemnly important, passing down wisdom like scripture. Elena felt her throat close up, something hot and shameful rising behind her breastbone.

"I'm sorry," Mark said, but she could hear the exhaustion beneath it, the way his apologies were becoming habit instead of healing. "I just want this to work."

The sphinx had eaten them both, she realized. Not just her—the waiting, the hoping, the terrible arithmetic of possibility versus probability. They'd become obsessed with solving something that might not have a solution, twisted themselves around the axis of want until everything else had gone strange and distant. Including each other.

"I want you to have a beer," she said suddenly. "Without checking my basal body temperature first. Without asking about the vitamin."

"Elena—"

"Please. Just. Let's watch baseball. Let's watch this stupid game and not talk about the thing that's eating us alive for five minutes. Please."

The batter swung, connected with a crack like thunder. The crowd erupted. Mark watched the ball arc toward the bleachers, something unreadable passing behind his eyes, and then he squeezed her hand. Just once. Briefly. Like he wasn't sure if he still had permission.

"Okay," he said. "Okay."

Elena pressed the vitamin into her palm, let its surface warm against her skin, and watched the baseball hang in the sky like a question they both stopped asking.