Spinach at 3 AM

The performance review was scheduled for 10 AM, but Elena had been awake since 3, picking at a spinach salad that had gone warm and slimy. Her cat, Barnaby — seventeen years old, kidneys failing, same as her father's had — watched from the windowsill with that particular feline judgment that said: you're doing this wrong.

She swallowed her vitamins with lukewarm coffee. The bottle promised radiant health, but mostly they made her burp the taste of artificial citrus and regret. She was thirty-five, single, and about to be laid off. The spinach stuck in her teeth.

"You should consider myself fortunate," her manager had told her yesterday, "that we're offering a package at all." The same man who'd asked her to order the spinach for the quarterly team lunch because it looked "healthy" on the receipt.

Barnaby hopped down and butted his head against her ankle. He'd stopped eating the prescription food last week. The vet had offered to keep him "for observation," which they both knew meant euthanize while she sat in the waiting room, pretending to review emails.

At the office, she watched her colleagues. The younger ones — late twenties, full of that terrifying confidence — ordered greasy breakfasts, no vitamins in sight. They'd be fine. They always were. The ones her age brought Tupperware containers full of spinach and kale and things that said: I am taking care of myself. I am responsible. I am not falling apart.

The review was exactly as expected. "Restructuring." "New direction." She nodded, signed the papers, thought about how she'd cancel Barnaby's next appointment.

She stopped at the pet store on the way home. Bought the expensive food, the soft kind. He ate it that night, purring in her lap while she watched reality TV and didn't take her vitamins. The spinach remained in the fridge, wilting.

Some mornings, she realized, you do everything right. You eat the spinach, take the pills, arrive early. And still, they let you go. Still, the cat gets old. But tonight he was eating, and she was warm, and sometimes that was enough.