The Seventh Inning Stretch

The antidepressants made Elias feel like a zombie, hollowed out and moving through motions he no longer believed in. Sarah sat beside him at the minor league baseball game, her usually perfect hair pulled back in a messy knot—she'd stopped caring somewhere around month six of the fertility treatments. Somewhere above them, the bull mascot danced drunkenly on the dugout, its giant foam head lolling as children screamed.

"You remember when we used to come here?" she said, not looking at him. "Before everything got so heavy."

Elias watched the batter swing and miss. He remembered: cheap beers, hope stretching ahead of them like an infinite highway, Sarah's hair loose and golden in the stadium lights. Now she'd cut it short, practical, severe. He'd wanted to say something about it when she did it, but the words wouldn't come.

A rust-colored dog—a mutt with one ear standing up—trotted onto the field from somewhere in the stands. The crowd gasped. Security guards lumbered after it like bad comedy. The dog circled the pitcher's mound, lifted its leg, and the pitcher, confused and delighted, started laughing.

"Look at that," Sarah said, and for the first time in months, she laughed. Really laughed. Her hand found his in the dusk, squeezing hard.

"It's like it's mocking us," Elias said, surprising himself. "All our seriousness. All our trying."

"Maybe we need a bull to charge in and wreck everything," she said. "Start over."

The dog's owner, an elderly man with shaking hands, finally caught it near home plate. The crowd applauded. Something cracked open in Elias's chest—not hope exactly, but something like it. Maybe he'd talk to the doctor about adjusting the medication. Maybe they'd sell the house and travel. Maybe.

"Your hair," he said, finally. "I like it."

She turned to him, tears standing in her eyes. "I did it for me," she said. "Not for you. Not for anyone."

The seventh inning stretch music swelled. They stood together, her cropped hair catching the stadium lights, and for the first time in a year, Elias didn't feel dead anymore. Just tired. Just human. The game stretched on, meaningless and beautiful, and he let himself want it to continue forever.