Electrolyte

The storm had been brewing for hours, a pressure in Maya's skull that no amount of painkillers could touch. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, her hair plastered to her skull like wet seaweed, staring at the pregnancy test on the counter.

Her iPhone buzzed against the porcelain—David, asking if she'd picked up the dry cleaning. They'd been trying for eighteen months. The fertility clinic had given them a regimen: injections, supplements, optimism measured in cycles and blood tests. She'd swallowed enough prenatal vitamins to stock a pharmacy.

Lightning split the sky outside, illuminating the bathroom through the small window. For a moment, everything was stark and terrible: the test on the counter, her pale face in the mirror, the half-empty water glass from her morning sickness that had turned out to be nothing.

She'd come home early from work, unable to sit through another baby shower where coworkers cooed over onesies and debated diaper brands. The office hummed with gossip about layoffs, but Maya's real terror lived in this bathroom, in these monthly tests that refused to give her the answer she needed.

Another flash of lightning. The thunder followed instantly, close enough that she felt it in her teeth.

She reached for the test, her fingers shaking. Two lines. Or was it one? She couldn't tell anymore. The distinction between hope and its absence had blurred into something unrecognizable.

The phone buzzed again. David's photo filled the screen—smiling, confident, certain that everything would work out. He still believed in the story they'd been telling themselves: that if they followed the protocol, tracked the cycles, took the vitamins, their baby would arrive like clockwork.

Maya dropped the phone in the toilet.

She watched it sink through the water, screen flickering once before going dark. David's face dissolved into pixels, then nothing. She didn't reach for it. She just sat there as the storm broke overhead, lightning cracking the sky open, and for the first time in eighteen months, she couldn't remember what she was supposed to be waiting for.