The Last Green Thing

Maya stared at the spinach smoothie on her desk, the sludge-green liquid mocking her with its promise of health. At 43, she'd started believing that if she just ate enough leafy greens, swallowed enough vitamin supplements, she could outrun mortality itself.

"In my office, now," Marcus's email read. The Bull, her coworkers called him - not for his strength, but for how he charged through conversations, head down, destroying everything in his path.

Maya's doctor had called yesterday. Her vitamin D levels were critically low. "Sunlight," he'd said. "Or supplements. Your choice." But there was no sunlight in the maze of cubicles where she spent her days, no sunlight left in her marriage either, just two people orbiting each other like tired satellites.

The Bull was waiting. "Your position's being eliminated," he said without preamble. "Effective immediately."

The spinach churned in her stomach.

She'd known it was coming. The company's "restructuring" had been whispered about for months. But knowing didn't make it easier. She'd given this place twelve years. Twelve years of spinach smoothies and vitamin regimens and believing that if she just took care of herself, followed the rules, did everything right, she'd be safe.

The irony washed over her: all those years trying to cheat death with kale and supplements, while she was slowly dying anyway.

Maya stood up. "Marcus,"

"The Bull looked up, annoyed. "What?"

"Nothing." She walked out, leaving her security badge on the desk. Outside, the afternoon sun hit her face for the first time in months. It felt like a kiss from someone who'd been gone too long. She decided right then to stop trying to be immortal and start trying to be alive.

That evening, she told her husband she'd lost her job. He held her while she cried, and for the first time in years, they ordered pizza with extra cheese. No spinach. No vitamins. Just them, together in the mess of it all, finally awake.