The Absorption Problem

Ellen found the bottle in Marcus's bathroom, behind the guest towels. Vitamin D3, 5000 IU, expiration date three months past. She'd been his running partner for seven years, through three marathons and one divorce, but she'd never seen him take supplements. He was the type who believed sweat and mile markers could cure most ailments.

"You should be running," Marcus had told her six months ago, when she'd suggested they try the pool at the new community center. "Forty-three is too young for water aerobics."

"It's not aerobics, it's swimming lanes. Low impact."

He'd laughed, the same dismissive chuckle he used when she talked about maybe slowing down, maybe not signing up for the half-marathon, maybe listening to the clicking in her knees.

Now she floated on her back in the community center pool, watching the ceiling's water-rippled reflection, while Marcus moved through the lane beside her with slow, deliberate strokes. The stroke count wasn't what it used to be. The rhythm was off. The running partner who'd once outlasted her on twenty-mile training runs now struggled to complete a thousand meters without resting at the wall.

The doctor had called it "reduced absorption." Some things the body just stopped taking in, no matter how much you gave it. Vitamin supplements. Iron. Hope.

"Ellen," he said, treading water beside her, "you should be running."

"I like swimming," she said, and it was true. She liked how her skin felt rubbery and light afterward, how water bore the weight that gravity insisted on making hers.

He didn't say: I can't run anymore. He didn't say: I'm afraid. He didn't say: I've been taking those vitamins for six months and I still feel like I'm disappearing.

She didn't ask to see the test results. She didn't offer to organize the fundraiser or the meal train or any of the things people did when they wanted to help but mostly wanted to feel useful.

Instead, she said, "Race you to the end."

He smiled, something breaking open in his expression. "You're on."

They swam, and for a moment the old rhythm returned—him slightly ahead, her chasing his wake, both of them moving through something that held them up, something that demanded only that they keep moving forward, one stroke at a time, breath by measured breath.

Later, in his bathroom, she slipped the vitamin bottle into her purse. The expiration date meant nothing anymore. Some things you kept even after they'd lost their potency.