Signal Loss

The rain tapped against the window while Elena sat at the kitchen table, running her fingers through the loose strands of Maya's hair that she'd found on the couch again. Another clump, like the ones before. Maya's chemotherapy had thinned it dramatically, but neither of them talked about it. They talked about cable bills and work deadlines and whether to order Thai or pizza again, but not the hair gathering in soft gray tumbleweeds across their apartment.

Maya emerged from the bathroom, her iPhone clutched in her hand like a rosary. "Cable's out again," she said, not looking up from whatever doom-scroll had captured her attention. "Called the provider. They said three hours minimum."

"We could talk," Elena offered, the words hanging fragile in the space between them. "Without screens, without—"

"I have emails, El. This merger at work..." Maya drifted into the living room, her screen illuminating the gathering dark.

Elena watched her wife's silhouette against the gray window and felt something hollow open in her chest. Three years of treatment, two miscarriages, and now this—Maya moving through their shared life like a ghost, like something that had already departed but hadn't bothered to inform the body. A zombie, really. Not the undead kind from movies, but something worse: the still-living kind, going through motions she no longer remembered how to feel.

Her phone buzzed on the table. Work. Always work. Elena let it ring.

"Maya."

No response. The blue light from Maya's iPhone cast her face in something resembling life.

"Maya, please. I found more hair."

Maya turned slowly. Her eyes were wet.

"I know," she whispered. "I'm sorry." She set the phone down on the coffee table and crossed the room, and when she reached for Elena's hand, her fingers were warm and real and trembling. "I thought if I didn't look at it, it wouldn't be happening. That if I scrolled enough, I could—what? Outpace it?"

The cable box remained dark. The storm continued. But something shifted in the kitchen's stillness—something that had been curled tight and afraid inside Elena's chest for months began, finally, to loosen.