Dead Dogs Don't Fetch

The vitamin D supplements sat on her kitchen counter, a daily reminder of the life she wasn't living. Dr. Patel said her levels were catastrophically low, which explained the fatigue, the bone-deep exhaustion that made the fluorescent lights of the office feel like physical assault. Elena swallowed two capsules with lukewarm coffee, the same way she did everything these days: mechanically, without hope.

Her golden retriever, Buster, watched from his bed by the window. He was fifteen now, hips giving out, cloudy eyes tracking movements that Elena couldn't see. The vet had given them maybe three more months, a timeline that felt both too long and impossibly short. Buster had been there when David left. He'd been there through the promotions and the burnout and the slowly dawning realization that she'd built a life she didn't particularly want.

"Come on, old man," she said, grabbing his leash and the faded baseball cap David had left behind—the one with the coffee stain on the brim that she'd never washed. Some habits were harder to break than others.

They walked past the abandoned baseball field where she'd played Little League, back when winning still meant something. Now the outfield was overgrown, the backstop rusted through. A group of twenty-somethings played zombie tag near the dugout, a game she didn't understand but somehow envied. They moved with loose limbs and genuine laughter, bodies unmarked by the thousand tiny compromises of adulthood.

"You know what Mom used to say?" Elena said to Buster, sitting on a bench that still remembered a thousand spectators. "Baseball is life. You get three strikes, you're out. But they forgot to mention you can stand at the plate forever, waiting for a pitch that never comes."

Buster rested his head on her knee, his breathing labored but steady. The vitamin bottle in her pocket pressed against her hip, a small promise to keep trying. For three more months, for however long they had left. She wasn't sure if that was courage or just another form of being a zombie—moving through the motions without being fully alive.

She scratched behind his ears, exactly how he liked it, and watched the sunset turn the field gold. The terrible ache in her chest felt, for the first time in months, like something fragile and necessary.

"We're still here," she said. "For now."