The Bullshit Vitamin

Marcus stood before his bathroom mirror at 5:45 AM, his palm slick with the expensive vitamin D serum his dermatologist swore would reverse the thinning at his crown. He worked it into his hair with desperate, circular motions, watching the strands catch the fluorescent light—still mostly brown, though he'd caught a few silver invaders last month. At forty-three, he was fighting a war on two fronts: his hairline and his liver enzymes.

The corporate apartment was silent, as it always was. Elena had left eight months ago, taking the dog and her patience. "You're married to your job," she'd said, throwing her vitamins into a bag—actual ones, from an actual pharmacy, not the bespoke shit Marcus ordered from Switzerland. She'd been right. She'd also been sleeping with her yoga instructor, which somehow made it worse.

He checked his phone. Another bullish email from Richard, his boss, demanding answers about the Q3 projections. Richard, with his full head of white hair and his predilection for calling himself "a bull in bear markets." Marcus hated that phrase. He hated Richard. Most of all, he hated that he still wanted Richard's job.

The elevator ride to the forty-second floor was always the same: his reflection in the polished steel doors, checking his hair, adjusting his tie, wondering when exactly he'd become this person. Running on caffeine and ambition, running from the quiet in his apartment, running toward a promotion he wasn't sure he wanted anymore.

The vitamin serum made his scalp tingle. That was supposed to mean it was working. Like the multivitamins he choked down each morning, like the quarterly bonuses he deposited into accounts he never checked. All of it supposed to add up to something—to health, to success, to meaning.

Instead, he stepped onto the trading floor, watched the numbers ripple across screens like some desperate electronic ocean, and felt nothing at all. Just the tingling on his scalp and the terrible, quiet certainty that he was running in place, forever, while his hair fell out and his vitamins went to waste.