Maintenance

The vitamin regimen sat on his nightstand like a small, desperate prayer: D3 for bone health, Omega-3 for his heart, B-complex for the energy he no longer felt at forty-two. Elias swallowed them dry, the pills clicking against his teeth, each one a tacit admission that his body was slowly failing him.

Downstairs, Maria was already at her laptop, bathed in the blue light of a 7 AM spreadsheet. The cable from the back of the machine snaked across the kitchen table like an anchor line, tethering her to a job that had stopped fulfilling her three years ago. She didn't look up when he entered.

"The cable guy is coming between ten and two," she said, not looking up from the screen.

"Again?"

"Internet's been cutting out. I can't work like this."

He touched her shoulder, and she leaned into his palm for just a second before pulling away. That was their marriage now: brief moments of connection surrounded by vast distances of silence.

The cable guy arrived at eleven. A younger man, probably twenty-five, with knuckles that told stories Elias couldn't read. They watched him work, watched him replace cables and test connections, watched him restore the digital lifeline that made their lives possible.

"You folks have a good setup," the kid said, packing his tools. "Nice house."

Elias looked around at the empty rooms, the unwritten novels, the children they'd never had. "Thanks," he said.

After the cable guy left, Maria closed her laptop. She took Elias's hand, tracing the lines on his palm with her thumb. "Remember when you used to read these?" she asked. "You told me my lifeline was broken. That I'd die young."

"I was twenty. I didn't know anything."

"You were right, though," she said quietly. "The girl I was then, she did die young."

She stood up, opened the cabinet, and took out her own bottle of vitamins—prenatal, they both noticed, from three years ago when they'd still been trying. She poured them into the trash.

"I'm going for a walk," she said. "Don't wait up."

Elias watched her go. The internet connection was restored. The house was quiet. He took his vitamins, one by one, and wondered what else he was trying to keep alive that had already died.