Goldfish at the Vitamin Party

The pool water shimmered with that artificial blue sheen that only exists in Los Angeles backyard pools. Emma swam laps, her strokes mechanical, counting off the distances as if each lap could take her further from the conversation she'd had that morning.

"It's not about the vitamins," Mark had said, his voice that careful calm he used with clients. "It's about what you're not seeing."

She surfaced, gasping, and wiped chlorinated water from her eyes. At the edge of the pool, in a crystal bowl that probably cost more than her first car, a single goldfish swam in endless circles. Someone's forgotten party favor, left behind when the guests fled.

The vitamin bottle sat on the patio table behind her. Vitamin D3, 5000 IU. The doctor had prescribed them after Mark's diagnosis — not for him, but for her. "Caregiver burnout is real," the doctor had said, as if burnout was something you could supplement away.

Emma pulled herself from the pool, water dripping from her skin like the last of her resolve. She sat on the edge, watching the goldfish. It had no idea it was swimming in circles. It just knew there was water, and there was movement, and that was enough.

"You're better at this than I am," she told the fish. It stared back with its terrible unblinking eye.

The screen door slid open. Mark stood there, thinner than he'd been three months ago when this started. He held a glass of water, not a vitamin supplement in sight.

"I thought," he said, "that maybe we could stop pretending."

"Pretending what?"

"That this is sustainable. The vitamins. The swimming. The pretending that you're not drowning too."

Emma looked at the goldfish, still circling. "Sometimes the circles keep you alive."

Mark nodded, set down the water glass, and sat beside her. Together they watched the fish swim, and for the first time in months, Emma didn't count the laps. She just let herself exist in the water's reflection.