The Last Vitamin

Marcus stood on the balcony of his suite at the Grand Esmeralda, watching the sunset paint the Caribbean in impossible oranges. He was forty-three, a VP of Regional Operations, and felt like a zombie moving through his own life.

Inside, Emma was packing. She'd found the receipts, the texts, the entire constructed life he'd been living in parallel. The bull he'd sold her about "working late" and "business trips" had finally collapsed under its own weight.

"You're not even angry," she'd said earlier, her voice calm and terrible. "You're just... hollow."

He popped a **vitamin** D supplement from the travel pack on his nightstand. His doctor had prescribed them last month—said his levels were critically low. Take three a day, the instructions read. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he'd been operating at a deficit for so long he'd forgotten what it felt like to be whole.

The **palm** trees below swayed in the evening breeze, their fronds like beckoning fingers. This resort, this paradise, was where they'd come to reconnect. Instead, it had become the autopsy site for their marriage.

His phone buzzed—another Slack notification from corporate. Something about Q4 projections and synergy. The language of the living dead. He was a zombie in a suit, shuffling through meetings and metrics, consuming relationships like resources, leaving nothing behind but depletion.

Emma emerged from the bedroom with her suitcase. She stopped in the doorway, framed by the dying light.

"I'm going home," she said. "Without you."

Marcus nodded. He couldn't blame her. He'd been taking those vitamins for weeks, waiting to feel something real. But sunlight couldn't reach what was already dead inside.

He watched her walk away through the garden, past the illuminated palms, toward the exit. The sunset burned itself out behind him. On the nightstand, the remaining vitamins sat in their foil blister, tiny promises of vitality he'd never kept.

The corporate chat pinged again. Marcus picked up his phone and typed his resignation. Then he called the front desk: "I'm going to need another week. And send up a bottle of rum."

For the first time in years, he didn't feel like a zombie. He just felt. And that was something.