Surface Tension

The prenatal rattled in her hand — the amber bottle with its white label promising something she couldn't have. Elena dry-swallowed two vitamins without water, the pills scraping her throat like regret.

Her iphone vibrated against the poolside concrete, Mark's name glowing in the afternoon sun. She didn't pick up. Three missed calls already, each one another plea she wasn't ready to answer.

The pool below her hotel balcony stretched turquoise and impossible, filled with laughter that seemed to belong to another lifetime. Young bodies slick with water, couples tangled in each other's arms, everyone so painfully alive.

Elena pressed her palm against her stomach — flat, despite seven months of hopeful waiting. The doctor's words from yesterday still burned: "Some things just don't take."

She'd ordered the vitamins online, discreetly, obsessively. A different brand each month, as if changing the formula might change the outcome. As if she could vitamin her way into motherhood.

The phone lit up again. A text: I know you saw the tests. I'm sorry, I didn't know how else to tell you. Not about the baby. About her.

Her sister's voice echoed from memory: "He's been distant for months, El. You're the only one who doesn't see it."

The pool beckoned. Not to jump — Elena wasn't suicidal, just hollowed out, a shell of herself standing at the edge of something vast and unknowable. She dropped the iphone. It hit the water with a splash no one noticed, sinking into the blue depths like a failed confession.

Like the vitamins she'd swallowed daily for months. Like the marriage she'd stopped nurturing. Like the future she'd built in her head.

"Everything okay?" A woman in a swimsuit appeared behind her, toweling off damp hair. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Elena turned, empty-handed, throat tight from the unlabeled vitamins. "I think," she said, "I think I'm finally ready to drown."