Dead Man Walking

Marcus had been operating on autopilot for three months since the layoff. He moved through his day like a zombie—showered, dressed, applied for jobs he didn't want, answered emails from recruiters who ghosted him. The routine was sedative in its reliability.

He ended up at the community pool by accident, really. His building's water was shut off for emergency repairs, and he needed somewhere to wash the stench of failure off his skin. The pool was nearly empty at 2 PM on a Tuesday—just a few retirees and one woman reading near the shallow end.

She was maybe thirty-five, attractive in that deliberate way LA women often were. Her vitamin supplements sat on a folding table beside her chair—D3, B-complex, fish oil, a glittering constellation of wellness. Marcus considered saying something, but what would he even say?

"You should consider magnesium," she said without looking up from her book. "Most people are deficient. Shows up as muscle tension, brain fog."

Marcus blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Your shoulders. You're carrying them like they're made of lead. Magnesium helps." She finally looked at him. "I'm Sarah. I'm a physical therapist. I diagnose people at pools. It's a thing."

He laughed despite himself. "Marcus. I'm unemployed. Does that help?"

"Actually, yes. Less stress on the lumbar from sitting all day." She patted the chair beside her. "Sit. Your cortisol is off the charts."

They talked for two hours. About the cable news loop he couldn't stop watching, about how baseball was the only thing that made sense anymore because at least there were rules, about the terror of starting over at thirty-eight. She told him about her divorce, how she'd felt like a zombie through her entire thirties until she finally left.

"The vitamins," she said, gathering her supplements into a canvas bag. "They're not actually about health. They're about control. When everything else is falling apart, you can still take your pills. You can still do one thing right."

Marcus watched her walk toward the parking lot, the sun catching in her hair. For the first time in months, he didn't feel dead inside.

He drove home and threw out the cable box. He kept the baseball glove his father had given him. And he started taking magnesium—because Sarah was right about his shoulders, and because sometimes the smallest rituals are the ones that pull you back to life.