The Morning After Everything

The morning light hit Marcus's kitchen counter at exactly 6:47 AM, illuminating the **vitamin** supplements lined in military precision. Vitamin D for the seasonal depression his ex-wife swore he had. B-complex for stress. Omega-3 for heart health, because at forty-two, your body starts keeping score even when your mind pretends it doesn't.

He swallowed them dry, a ritual of self-care that felt more like penance.

The **dog**—a golden retriever named Copper that Sarah had insisted they adopt five years ago, in that optimistic phase before the infertility treatments, before the resentments curdled into something permanent—stared at him from the doorway. Marcus had fought for custody of the dog, fought harder than he'd fought for the marriage itself. Now he wondered which of them had really lost.

His **iPhone** lit up on the counter. Sarah's name. Marcus's thumb hovered over the screen. Three months of silence broken by a 6:48 AM notification. She wanted to tell him she was seeing someone. Or maybe she was pregnant—with someone else's child this time, because sometimes the universe had a dark sense of humor.

He left it unanswered, grabbed his running shoes instead.

**Running** had become his new meditation, his new church, his new way of punishing his body until his mind went quiet. The winter air bit at his face as he hit the pavement, each footfall a small rebellion against the quiet apartment and thevitamins and the goddamn dog with eyes like judgment.

Three miles in, his phone buzzed again. He stopped running, bent over, hands on knees, breath clouding the morning air. Not Sarah. His mother. 'Your father died. Heart attack. 4 AM.'

Marcus straightened up, blood pounding in his ears, and realized he was still wearing Sarah's **hat**—the gray beanie she'd left behind, that he'd secretly kept, that he told himself was just practical for cold weather runs. He pulled it off and stared at it, this artifact of a dead marriage, in a morning that had suddenly become about death, real death, not the metaphorical kind.

The vitamin D dissolved in his stomach, useless against this particular darkness.

He tucked the hat into his pocket and started running toward the hospital, toward whatever came next, because what else was there to do?