The Palm Reader's Prescription

Elena found the bottle of vitamin D supplements in Marc's coat pocket—the same pocket where he'd kept the velvet box with her engagement ring fifteen years ago. The irony wasn't lost on her. Back then, he'd promised her forever. Now, he was hiding pills from a doctor who'd warned him his bones were becoming brittle as old chalk.

She watched him from the doorway of their bedroom as he adjusted his hat, carefully angling it to hide the thinning patches at his crown. His hair had been the first thing she'd noticed about him in that crowded bar—thick, dark, defiant against gravity. Now he was forty-six, and gravity was winning.

"You're staring," Marc said, not turning around. His reflection caught hers in the mirror.

"I found the vitamins."

He sighed, the sound heavy with the weight of three years of careful silence. "I didn't want you to worry."

"I'm your wife, Marc. Worrying is in the job description."

He turned then, reaching for her hand. His palm was warm against hers, the lifeline she'd once traced playfully during drunken nights now etched deeper, more pronounced. "Let me read your fortune," she'd teased then. Now she wondered what his own palm would say if she looked closely—whether the lines could predict how much time they had left, whether denial was written into his destiny.

"The doctor says it's manageable," he said, but his voice cracked. "If I actually take them."

Elena stepped closer, reaching up to remove his hat. His hair caught the light, silver threads through the darkness. She ran her fingers through it, and he leaned into her touch like a starved animal. "I don't care about your hair," she whispered. "I care about the man under it."

The vitamin bottle sat on the nightstand between them—a small orange plastic promise that things could be fixed, that deterioration wasn't inevitable, that they could pretend their bodies weren't slowly betraying them. Marc took two pills dry.

"Together?" Elena asked.

He nodded. "Together."

They lay back against the pillows, hands intertwined, palms pressed together in silent prayer to a god neither of them believed in anymore. Some things, Elena realized, you couldn't supplement away. But you could face them side by side, even as everything fell apart.