The Last Vitamin

Maria stared at the orange pill in her palm — her daily vitamin C, the first thing she consumed every morning for fifteen years. The routine felt like a lifeline, though she couldn't remember why she'd started it. Probably some health article she'd read during a different lifetime, back when she still believed small rituals could protect her from the world's chaos.

At 34, she'd become what her younger self would have called a zombie: moving through days with mechanical precision, showering at 7:00, commuting at 7:45, arriving at her desk by 8:30. Her colleagues were worse — hollowed-out creatures who spoke only in quarterly goals and team-building exercises. Sometimes she caught her own reflection in office windows and wondered when her eyes had gone flat.

The vitamin dissolved on her tongue, bitter and chemical. She swallowed anyway.

"You're still doing that?" David's voice came from behind her. She hadn't heard him approach. They'd been separated for six months, yet he still had a key. Still let himself in like the apartment was half his, like their marriage had been something you could pause instead of end.

She turned, palm still raised as if in supplication. "It's habit."

He reached out, took her hand, and traced the lines on her palm with fingers that knew them too well. "Remember when you made me read my palm at that party? You told me I'd live a long life and fall in love disastrously."

"I was drunk."

"You were right." His thumb pressed into her skin, over the heart line. "You never told me what you saw in your own palm."

Maria looked at their joined hands, his weathered fingers against her pale skin. The vitamin sat heavy in her stomach, useless and necessary all at once. Outside, the city hummed with millions of people walking, working, eating, loving — all of them performing their daily rituals like spells against meaninglessness.

"I never looked," she said. "Some things you're not supposed to know in advance."

David's palm warmed hers. For a moment, she felt almost alive.

"Stay for breakfast?" she asked.

He hesitated, then nodded. "Just coffee. I can't do the vitamins anymore. They make me feel like I'm trying too hard to live forever."

Maria smiled, and for the first time in months, it reached her eyes. "Maybe that's the point. Maybe we're not supposed to."

The zombie in her stirred, opened its eyes, and asked for seconds.