The Pharmacist at First Base

The third time she prescribed vitamin D for seasonal affective disorder, Maya caught herself wondering if the pharmacists before her had felt this hollow. Behind the counter, she arranged amber pill bottles in neat rows, each one a tiny promise she'd stopped believing in.

"You need this," she told the elderly man, sliding the bottle across. "Take one daily with food."

He nodded, grateful for her certainty. Maya's certainty was professional. It was also manufactured.

Outside, the baseball stadium lights flickered on—Friday night games always drew crowds to the pharmacy afterward. She'd met David at a game three years ago. He'd bought her a stale pretzel, explained the infield fly rule with patient enthusiasm. They'd spent last season entrenched in the cheap seats, his hand warm on her thigh, debating stats like they mattered.

Now David's office light stayed on until midnight. Maya learned to navigate their apartment in darkness, stepping over the cat—a stray they'd both agreed to keep temporarily, as if they could return anything unopened.

The cat, whose name changed depending on which of them you asked, wound around her ankles as she locked up. Storm clouds gathered above the stadium, that particular purple-green that meant something.

David was already at the kitchen table, papers spread like a defensive perimeter.

"Eat," he said without looking up. "I made that spinach thing you like."

Maya picked at the wilted greens. "You hate spinach."

"It's good for you." He finally met her eyes. "Like the vitamins you keep forgetting to take."

"I take them."

"The bottle's full, Maya."

Lightning fractured the sky—a white crack through the window, sudden as a revelation.

"I'm not sick," she said.

"I never said you were."

"You keep trying to fix me."

"I'm trying to take care of you." His voice cracked. "I'm trying."

The cat jumped onto the table, sending papers fluttering. David's hand hovered over the animal, then dropped to his side.

"I called the divorce lawyer," Maya said.

David stared at her, then down at the spinach growing cold on his plate. Outside, thunder finally caught up with the lightning—a delayed, inevitable consequence.

"Okay," he said.

They sat together in the storm's aftermath, not touching, as the cat purred loudly between them, indifferent to everything except its own comfort. Some things, Maya thought, you couldn't prescribe away.