The Long Unraveling

The vitamin sits on my tongue—a bitter orange pill I can't bring myself to swallow. Across from me, Marcus stares at his hands, thick and capable, hands that once carried me over thresholds and now can barely hold a fork without trembling. The doctor called it "cognitive decline," but I know what it really looks like. It looks like my husband is becoming someone else, piece by piece.

He bears the indignity with a patience I don't possess. Three years since his diagnosis, and I've become a creature of routine, my days measured in medication schedules and the slow erosion of the man I married. I move through meetings and grocery runs and dinner preparations like a zombie—alive, technically, but hollowed out by grief for someone still sitting across from me.

Our sphinx cat, Bast, jumps onto the table, her hairless body warm against my arm. She was Marcus's idea—a rescue from a shelter, all wrinkles and sudden affection. Now she's my only witness to this unspooling, this long goodbye that isn't a goodbye at all because death won't claim him yet. She curls into my lap, purring against the absence.

"El?" His voice breaks. I meet his eyes—still clear, still Marcus, even as everything else hollows out. "I don't want you to disappear too."

The vitamin on my tongue suddenly makes sense—my own precautionary measure against a future I'm not ready to face. I swallow it, feeling it dissolve into nothing, knowing that soon there will be nothing left of him to dissolve. Outside, I hear the neighbor's dog barking, the world continuing its indifferent rotation. I take Marcus's trembling hand in mine and hold on, wondering what part of him will remain when the person I love finally vanishes completely, and whether the remnants will still recognize me.