Preservation

The blue light from Mark's iPhone paints his face in the hollow tones of the dead. He's lying beside me in bed, but his thumb keeps scrolling, scrolling, a quiet mechanical rhythm that's been the soundtrack to our marriage for three years. I watch the glow catch in his unblinking eyes and think: this is what they mean by zombie. Not the brain-eating monsters from movies, but something worse—someone who's given up, who's let the life drain out while the body keeps going.

I reach for my own nightstand. There's the orange bottle of vitamin D, the white one of B-complex, the probiotics I take religiously every morning, trying to preserve something in this house that still feels alive. My doctor says I'm deficient in everything. She doesn't know the half of it.

"Mark," I say. He doesn't respond. Maybe he's dead already and I haven't noticed.

I remember when we met, the way he used to look at me like I was the only bright thing in a gray world. Now I'm just the person who reminds him to take his vitamins, who pays the phone bill, who exists in the same physical space while his attention lives somewhere else—in group chats, in work emails, in the endless stream of other people's lives that he can access through that glowing rectangle.

The irony makes me want to scream. He's a zombie, and I'm frantically popping supplements trying to delay my own decay, as if vitamin C can fix what's rotting between us. As if swallowing enough pills can make me feel something other than hollowed out.

I sit up and the movement finally breaks his trance. He looks at me, really looks at me, for the first time tonight.

"Everything okay?" he asks.

I should say no. I should tell him that I can't do this anymore, that I need a husband who's actually here, not someone who's given himself over to the machine. But the words die in my throat. Because the truth is, I'm scared of what happens if I wake him up. Scared that if he stops being a zombie, he'll look at me and realize I'm not enough to keep him alive. scared that I'm not enough to keep either of us alive.

"Fine," I say, and I can hear the zombie in my own voice. "Just needed a drink of water."

I lie back down and watch his face return to the screen. Somewhere in the house, a clock is ticking. Somewhere, time is running out. But here, in the blue light of the screen, we can stay like this forever—preserved in amber, undead, taking our vitamins and scrolling through the endless night.