Supplemental

Maya stood at the kitchen counter, forcing handfuls of spinach into the colander as if she could scrub away the past three hours of crying. The water rushed over her hands, cold and impersonal, carrying wilted green leaves down the drain in lazy spirals. It had been the spinach that started it—the goddamn organic spinach she'd bought from that overpriced market because Ethan had been lecturing her again about antioxidants.

"We're rotting," she muttered to herself, watching the water pool in the sink. That was his word for it—rotting—not aging, not growing old, but rotting from the inside out like forgotten produce in the back of the refrigerator.

The fight had been meaningless. The usual arsenal: why she'd stopped taking the multivitamins he purchased in bulk, why she drank tap water instead of the filtered stuff he obsessed over, why she couldn't just care about their future together. But underneath it all was the word they never spoke aloud: the baby. The one they weren't having. The one that had become a vitamin deficiency they couldn't supplement away.

She'd gone to the doctor that morning. Alone. The walls had been painted in calming blues, the nurse had smiled with practiced warmth, and the pamphlet had offered cheerful illustrations of couples holding hands. "Sometimes," the doctor had said, "these things just need time. Sometimes they need intervention. Sometimes they need acceptance."

The key turned in the front door. Maya shut off the water, her hands pruned and cold. Ethan walked in, his tie already loosened, that familiar exhaustion etched around his eyes. He set a paper bag on the counter—another bottle of vitamins. Premium grade. The good stuff.

"I got the ones with vitamin D," he said, not meeting her eyes. "Since you're always tired."

Maya watched him, really saw him for what felt like the first time in months. He was trying. He was always trying, in his inadequate, systematic way. And she was drowning in a glass of water, unable to articulate that some deficiencies couldn't be fixed with supplements.

"Ethan," she said, her voice sounding foreign to her own ears. "I'm not deficient. I'm just empty."

He stopped, his hand halfway to the refrigerator door. The spinach lay forgotten in the colander, dripping slow, rhythmic tears onto the counter. For a long moment, neither of them moved. Then he turned toward her, really looked at her, and she saw the understanding dawn in his eyes—painful, terrifying, but finally real.

"I know," he said softly. "Me too."

And somehow, that admission felt like the first nourishment they'd shared in years.