The Drowning Room

The coaxial cable lay severed on the floor like a dead snake, its copper entrails exposed where she'd ripped it from the wall during last night's fight. Marcus hadn't come back to bed. He hadn't come back at all.

Emma lay curled around her iPhone in the gray light of dawn, watching the screen pulse with notifications she couldn't bring herself to answer. Her sister asking if she was okay. Her boss wondering where she was. Marcus's single text from 3 AM: *I can't do this anymore.*

She pushed herself up from the mattress, joints protesting like rusted hinges. In the bathroom, she stared at her reflection—hollow cheeks, eyes that had forgotten how to rest. The medicine cabinet was open. His antidepressants sat next to her prenatal vitamins, a bitter joke the universe had played on them two years ago when they learned she couldn't conceive.

The faucet dripped. Water, clear and indifferent, spiraled down the drain. She remembered Marcus holding her hair back when she had the flu, bringing her glasses of water with that careful tenderness he'd reserved for her weakest moments. Now she thought about how it would feel to slide under the surface of the bathtub, to let the water fill her lungs until the silence became absolute.

Her iPhone buzzed again—Marcus calling. She watched it ring, thinking about the cable outside, the way it transmitted all their conversations and fights and whispered promises through thin wires, how easily connections could be severed. How easily people could drift apart until they were just ghosts in each other's orbit.

She didn't answer. Instead, she swallowed a vitamin with a handful of tap water, telling herself it was something, pretending it meant she still believed in tomorrow.