The Mathematics of Survival

The lightning struck somewhere beyond her window as Maya sat at her kitchen table at 2 AM, staring at the amber prescription bottle that contained her entire future compressed into gelatin capsules. B12, she thought bitterly. The vitamin her body had stopped absorbing, the reason she felt like she was moving through cement, why David had started looking at her with that particular brand of exhausted concern that was worse than pity.

She had bought spinach at the grocery store earlier that day—organic, pre-washed, expensive—because somewhere she'd read that leafy greens helped with fatigue. The bag sat on her counter, slowly wilting like her marriage. David had rolled his eyes when he saw it. "You know that's not actually going to fix anything," he'd said, and she'd wanted to scream that she knew, she knew everything was permanent now, that her body was broken and their relationship was collateral damage.

Another flash of lightning illuminated her face in the dark window. She looked like a stranger to herself—hollowed out, sleepless, holding onto a bottle of vitamins like it was a lifeline. David was asleep in their bed, or maybe pretending to be. He didn't understand what it was like to feel your own body betraying you in slow motion, to realize that your mortality wasn't some distant concept but was happening right now, in increments, in fatigue and numbness and medical bills.

She opened the bottle and swallowed one dry. She'd make the spinach tomorrow, she told herself. She'd make breakfast and they'd have the conversation they'd been avoiding for months, about futures that no longer aligned, about how sometimes love isn't enough when biology gets in the way. The lightning flashed again, closer this time. Tomorrow was going to be hard. But tomorrow was also going to happen, and for now, that was something.