The Running of the Bull

Maggie stood on the trading floor at 2:47 AM, watching the red numbers cascade like blood across monitors. A bull market they'd called it, relentless and charging, but she'd learned the hard way that bulls always eventually turned. The money had become abstract—just digits dancing, meaningless except for the way it hollowed her out.

"You're still here?" The voice belonged to David, her former friend, the one who'd recruited her eight years ago with promises about changing the world. Now he looked like what he was: a man who'd sold his sleep for options that kept vesting while his soul atrophied.

"Somebody has to watch the Singapore open," she said, not looking at him.

"Maggie, you haven't been home in three days."

She finally turned. "Home to what? An apartment I barely recognize? A relationship that's already halfway out the door?"

"We used to be friends," David said quietly. "We used to talk about things that mattered."

"We used to be a lot of things."

The truth was, she'd been running for so long she'd forgotten what it meant to stand still. Running from the childhood that had taught her money was love. Running from the brother who'd killed himself because he couldn't outrun his own demons. Running toward something she couldn't name, something the spreadsheets and algorithms and endless, insistent demand for MORE would never give her.

She looked at David and saw everything she might become if she stayed. Another decade of this, and she'd be him—standing in the empty office at three in the morning, trying to remember who she was before the numbers.

"I'm done," she said.

"What?"

"With the bull. With the running. With pretending any of this matters."

She logged out of her terminal. Not logged off—logged out. Then she walked toward the elevator, and for the first time in years, she wasn't running from anything. She was just walking, one foot in front of the other, toward whatever came next.