The Preservation Protocol

Arthur sorted his vitamins with surgical precision: A in the morning, B complex with lunch, C and D at dinner. At forty-seven, he'd decided to outlive his loneliness through chemistry.

His only real companion was Barnaby, a rescue mutt who'd seen him through divorce, layoffs, and the slow erosion of most friendships. Barnaby didn't care about Arthur's bizarre vitamin regimen. The dog simply loved him, which was both heartbreaking and sufficient.

Until the phone rang.

"Arthur? It's Elena."

His stomach dropped. Elena, who'd moved to London five years ago. Elena, who'd been his best friend since college, who'd drifted away in that terrible, quiet way friendships sometimes do. Not with fights or closure, just with the gravitational pull of separate lives.

"I'm back in the city." Her voice wavered. "Cancer. Stage four."

Arthur stood in his kitchen, vitamins scattered across the counter like colorful confetti at a celebration he no longer understood. Behind him, Barnaby whined, sensing the shift in atmosphere.

"I wanted to see you," Elena said. "Before..."

The irony crashed over him: all this time, he'd been meticulously preserving his body with his daily pills, his careful routines, his self-imposed isolation. And Elena had been dying three thousand miles away, probably actually living while he was merely existing.

Barnaby nudged his hand, and Arthur looked down at the dog who'd never left him, who'd never asked anything except to be fed and walked and occasionally scratched behind the ears. The simple, uncomplicated devotion of animals. The safe kind of love.

"Arthur? Are you there?"

He looked at the vitamins again—all those little promises of extended life, of more time in this empty apartment with this good, simple dog who asked for nothing and gave everything. And he realized he'd been preserving himself for nothing.

"I'll come over," he said. "Tonight."

As he hung up, Barnaby thumped his tail against the cabinet door, and Arthur finally understood what he'd been supplementing all these years: not life, but the fear of losing it.