The Last Vitamin

The fluorescent light flickered overhead, casting sickly shadows across Julie's desk. She stared at the **vitamin** D bottle in her hand—the supplements her doctor insisted she take for bone health, for mood, for something she couldn't quite name anymore. At forty-seven, she'd stopped asking what was wrong and started swallowing pills.

"You're not going to believe this," Marcus said, appearing at her cubicle entrance. His tie was loosened, something that would have earned him a write-up six months ago. Now, nobody cared. The **cable** company had been bought, sold, and gutted twice in three years. "They're letting go of the whole floor."

Julie's computer screen showed the **dog** video her daughter had sent—some golden retriever jumping into a pile of leaves. She'd been watching it on loop for twenty minutes, finding something hypnotic in its uncomplicated joy.

"The whole floor?"

"Everyone except the new VP's team. You know what that means."

She did. It meant the people who'd built the network, the ones who knew which **cable** connected to which server, which VLANs carried the priority traffic—they were obsolete. Replaced by younger, cheaper versions who'd never touched a coaxial **cable** in their lives.

The **fox** had been coming to the parking lot lately. Julie saw it most mornings, sleek and cautious, darting between cars. This morning, it had paused at the edge of the asphalt, staring back at her with amber eyes full of ancient intelligence. She'd rolled down her window, expecting it to bolt. Instead, it lifted its head and scenting the air, and for a moment, she'd felt understood.

"My daughter starts college next week," Julie said. "I was going to take that vacation time."

Marcus's face softened. "Jules—"

"Don't." She unscrewed the **vitamin** bottle and shook two tablets into her palm. "I'm fine."

The **fox** in her head—the wild, adaptable part that had survived two divorces and a career reboot at thirty-five—knew better. This wasn't fine. This was an ending.

She swallowed the **vitamin**s dry. In the reflection of her darkened monitor, she saw herself clearly for the first time in years: a woman who'd spent decades maintaining systems that other people had built, while her own life frayed at the edges.

Outside, the **dog** across the street barked at something—maybe the **fox**, maybe just the wind. Julie stood up, gathered her personal effects into a box that felt impossibly light, and walked toward the elevator. Some endings were also beginnings. She just had to be brave enough to see them.