The Drowning Notification

She checked her iPhone again. 3:47 AM. The blue light washed over her face like a pale moon as she lay beside Mark, who breathed in that rhythmic, unconscious way of people who'd long since stopped pretending to care. She felt like a zombie herself—sleepwalking through marriage, through motherhood, through the marketing job that demanded her soul in exchange for dental insurance.

The spinach from dinner had lodged itself stubbornly between her teeth. She'd cooked, trying to recreate the meals Mark used to praise before the promotion, before the long silences at dinner became their primary form of communication. Now even her attempts at love felt like performance art, and she could feel the green leaf mocking her with every breath.

Her phone buzzed again. A work email from Jason. Her heart did that complicated little flutter—part guilt, part thrill, part exhaustion. Jason, who listened. Jason, who noticed when she changed her shampoo. Jason, with his baseball metaphors and the way he looked at her across conference tables like she was the only person in the room who wasn't sleepwalking through life.

"You still awake?" Mark's voice was rough with sleep.

"No," she whispered, but she was already reaching for the phone, thumb hovering over Jason's name.

The bathtub had seemed like a good idea earlier—wine, candles, water rising around her like possibility. Now the thought of it returned, insistent. Water had always been her element. She'd been a swimmer in college, loved the way the world went silent and muffled beneath the surface, how her body became something graceful instead of clumsy.

"Sarah?" Mark stirred.

She slipped out of bed, phone in hand, and moved through the dark apartment to the bathroom. The bathtub was still full, cold now. The iPhone screen lit up the small space as she sat on the edge. Jason's message was simple: "Thinking about you."

She lowered herself into the cold water. The shock of it made her gasp, made her feel suddenly, violently awake. Not a zombie anymore. Not sleepwalking. Just cold water and blue light and the terrible, beautiful weight of choice pressing down on her chest like she was underwater, everything muffled and clear and impossible all at once.

She typed back, "Me too."

Then she set the phone on the counter and slid beneath the surface, holding her breath, waiting for the moment she'd have to come up for air.