Seventh Inning Resurrection

The corporate grind had transformed me into something unrecognizable—another exhausted worker shuffling through fluorescent-lit corridors, eyes glazed, responding on autopilot. Sarah had insisted on tonight's baseball game, another attempt to resuscitate what we'd lost, but as I sat beside her in the stadium seats, I felt like a zombie inhabiting my own life.

She ordered a salad during the third inning, picking at the spinach with quiet determination. A leaf caught in her teeth—such a small, human detail—but I said nothing, just watched her profile against the floodlit field. She was trying. God, she was trying so hard.

"Remember Dad's old baseball cap?" she asked suddenly, and my chest tightened. That hat, worn and sweat-stained, had sat on his bedside table through chemotherapy, through the final goodbye. I'd worn it to his funeral.

"Yeah," I managed. "Yeah, I remember."

She reached over, squeezed my hand. Her palm was warm. Alive.

The crowd roared around us—some player had hit a home run—but the noise seemed distant, underwater. I looked at Sarah, really looked at her, and realized something terrifying: I'd been mourning for so long that I'd forgotten how to be present for the living. The dead don't need you. The living do.

I squeezed back.

"You've got spinach in your teeth," I said, and she laughed, really laughed, and for the first time in months, I felt something stir in my chest—not the hollow ache of grief, but something warmer, something terrifying and necessary.

Maybe becoming a zombie was my choice. And maybe, just maybe, I could choose to come back to life instead.