The Last Goodbye

The vitamin bottle sat on her nightstand for three months before she finally threw it out. Dr. Morales had prescribed them for the fatigue, said her levels were dangerously low. But Maya knew better. The exhaustion wasn't nutritional—it was the slow accumulation of small deaths, the way her soul leaked out through her pores while she sat in meetings she couldn't remember, nodding at initiatives that would be abandoned in six weeks anyway.

Her golden retriever, Buster, sensed it first. He'd stopped greeting her at the door with his usual enthusiasm, instead watching her with those knowing brown eyes from his bed by the window. The dog had always been her anchor, the one living thing that couldn't be fooled by her corporate mask.

"You're becoming a zombie," Sarah had told her last night, Maya's palm pressed against her lover's cheek, feeling the warmth she no longer could generate herself. "And not even the cool kind that eats brains. The boring kind that just updates spreadsheets and forgets to live."

The cable box had stopped working three days ago—no signal, just the blinking light mocking her with its persistent reminder of all the entertainment she wasn't consuming. Maya hadn't called to fix it. Something about the silence felt honest.

Tomorrow she'd give notice. Tomorrow she'd book that flight to somewhere with palm trees and salt air, somewhere she could remember what it felt like to want something. But tonight, she sat on her balcony with Buster's head in her lap, watching the city's lights flicker like dying stars, and finally let herself feel everything she'd been postponing.

The bottle of vitamins was in the trash. Tomorrow was coming. And for the first time in years, Maya was ready for it.