The Last Salad

You're chopping spinach when the phone rings. It's Marcus, calling from the hospital where your other friend — your actual friend — is dying. The spinach is vibrant green, almost too green, like something out of a cartoon. You keep chopping because if you stop, you'll have to feel.

"She's asking for you," Marcus says. "She wants her goddamn orange juice."

You laugh, because of course. Sarah always had to have her morning orange juice, pulp and all. It was ritual, superstition, a small thing she could control when everything else in her life was chaos. The breakup with Daniel, the miscarriage, the diagnosis — through it all, the orange juice.

"I'm bringing her vitamins," you say, and you don't know why you say it. She doesn't need vitamins anymore. She needs a miracle, or she needs to let go.

The spinach goes into the bowl. You're not hungry. You haven't been hungry since the diagnosis three months ago. Food tastes like nothing, like eating paper or cardboard. But you keep making these salads, keep chopping, keep pretending that routine means something.

Marcus is quiet on the line. Then he says, "She told me something yesterday. About you."

Your heart hammers. Sarah knows everything. She knows about the abortion you had at twenty-two, the affair that almost destroyed your marriage, the nights you've spent staring at the ceiling wondering if anyone would notice if you just disappeared.

"She said you're the only person who never treated her like she was already dead."

You sink onto the floor, the salad bowl forgotten. The spinach wilts in the heat of your apartment, in the heat of your sudden, ragged breathing. Through the window, the setting sun paints everything orange — the walls, your hands, the future you're suddenly terrified you might have to live without her in.

"I'm coming," you say. "I'm bringing her the juice."

You hang up and grab your keys. The spinach can wait. The vitamins can wait. Sarah can't.