The Electrical Storm Inside

The vitamin bottle sat on the nightstand like a cruel joke—prenatal supplements she no longer needed, wouldn't ever need again. Sarah stared at it while Marcus slept beside her, his breathing steady and infuriatingly peaceful. Three miscarriages in eighteen months, and still he slept.

Outside, lightning cracked the sky open, a violent white fork that illuminated the room for half a second. In that flash, she saw everything: the dust on the dresser, the baseball card collection Marcus had dragged through thirty years of their marriage, the hollows under her own eyes in the mirror's reflection.

Their orange tabby, Buster, jumped onto the bed and settled between them. He'd been her comfort through each loss, the one living thing that didn't require explanations or awkward silences. Marcus called him "the consolation prize" once, after the second one. He hadn't meant to be cruel, but the words had carved themselves into her memory anyway.

She thought about that baseball game they'd attended last summer—how they'd held hands in the seventh inning, how she'd imagined holding a child's hand instead someday. The vendor shouting "Cold beer here!" and the crack of the bat and the perfect summer evening that had felt, for a few hours, like the life they were supposed to have.

Marcus stirred, his hand finding hers in the dark. "You're thinking again," he murmured, half-asleep.

"There's too much to think about."

"The supplements?" He reached for her hand, laced their fingers together. "We can donate them. There's a shelter downtown."

She turned to face him. The lightning flashed again, catching the wetness on her lashes. "That's not really the point, is it?"

"I know." His voice cracked. "I don't know what to do, Sarah. I don't know how to fix this."

"Maybe you don't fix it," she said. "Maybe you just live with it. Like everything else."

Buster purred between them, a warm vibration that seemed impossible in the cold room. Sarah pressed her face into Marcus's shoulder and finally cried—the good kind, the kind that might eventually leave room for something else to grow.