Electric Current

Sarah was forty-seven when the doctor called. The voice on the phone was professional, detached, the way people sound when they're reading from a script about someone else's life.

"More tests," he said. "Just to be sure."

She hung up and swallowed another **vitamin** D pill, the third that morning. The bathroom mirror reflected a woman she didn't quite recognize—same gray eyes, same sharp jawline, but something different in the set of her mouth. She'd been taking supplements for years, this ritual of prevention, this desperate arithmetic: remove gluten, remove stress, remove joy, remove risk. And still, the body had its own plans.

She went **running** anyway, because what else was there to do? The path along the river was empty at 6 AM, fog still clinging to the water like something unfinished. Her sneakers hit the pavement in a rhythm that felt almost like prayer.

A stray **cat** watched her from atop a dumpster, yellow eyes unblinking. Sarah had been feeding it for months, this beautiful, indifferent creature who accepted her offerings but never let her touch it. Some days she felt like she understood the cat better than she understood her husband.

At the office, her boss was delivering another presentation about synergy and paradigm shifts. He talked like a **bull**, aggressive and territorial and completely full of shit, and Sarah found herself thinking: Would any of this matter in six months? Would cancer make his power plays laughable?

That's when it hit her—**lightning**, sudden and crackling through her chest. Not heart trouble. Something else.

She found herself laughing in the bathroom, hysteria rising like bile. The diagnosis wasn't even confirmed, but the possibility had already shattered her.

Outside, Richard was waiting by the car. "You okay?" he asked, and she saw it then—the relief beneath his concern, the way he was already calculating his exit strategy.

"You're not going to die," he said, too quickly.

"I know," she said, and realized she meant something else entirely.

Some lives don't end. They just catch fire.