The Last Mile

Sarah's hair started falling out in clumps three weeks after the diagnosis. Each morning she'd run her fingers through what remained and watch the strands drift onto the bathroom counter like snow, except snow was beautiful and this was just betrayal.

"Take these vitamins," her sister had said, pressing a bottle into her palm during the last hospital visit. "They won't cure anything, but they'll help you keep your strength."

Sarah had nodded, because sometimes you accept things from people who love you even when you both know they're useless gestures.

Now she was running, actually running—not the metaphorical kind she'd been doing for months, circling around the truth, around the conversations she didn't want to have. Real running, along the river path at 5 AM, before the world woke up to witness her grief. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her legs burned, and somewhere around mile three she always thought: this is what dying feels like. This is what it must feel like.

She'd researched the vitamins online at 3 AM one sleepless night. Biotin, iron, vitamin D. For "healthy hair growth." The label might as well have said: FOR PEOPLE WHO STILL HAVE A FUTURE.

But she took them anyway. Every morning with breakfast, swallowing them down with coffee and denial.

This morning she stopped running at the halfway point, bent over with hands on knees, and noticed something in her peripheral vision. A woman across the river, also running, also stopping. They made eye contact through the morning mist, two strangers suspended in the same moment of exhaustion.

The woman touched her own head, where a scarf was tied. Sarah reached up and felt her own bare scalp beneath her hat.

Neither waved. They didn't need to. They just turned and started running again, in opposite directions, each toward their own unfinished business.