The Supplement of Regrets

Marcus arranged the vitamin bottles on his kitchen counter in descending order of height—a tower of promises he'd been swallowing for thirty years. B12 for energy he never felt. D3 for bones that still ached. Omega-3 for a heart that had forgotten how to race.

He lifted his glass of orange juice, pulpy and bright against the gray dawn. His wife Sarah had always squeezed it fresh, until the dementia turned her hands into trembling strangers who couldn't grip the fruit. Now he bought the carton, thick and processed, another compromise in a life built from them.

"You're going to be late," she'd said this morning, her voice drifting from the bedroom where she sat watching television shows she couldn't follow. She still knew his schedule, even as she forgot his face sometimes.

Marcus drove through city streets that had transformed since he'd first navigated them decades ago. The corporate headquarters rose like a glass pyramid, its facets reflecting clouds that moved faster than anything inside. Thirty-five years he'd spent climbing those levels, each promotion another vitamin swallowed—necessary, routine, barely tasted.

In his office on the forty-second floor, he watched an orange sunset bleed across the skyline. His phone buzzed. Another text from his daughter: "Dad, Mom keeps asking for you. When are you coming home?"

He thought of the first time he'd seen Sarah—her orange dress swirling at a college party, how she'd laughed like she'd just invented joy. They'd talked about traveling to Egypt, climbing real pyramids together. Instead, he'd built this one, floor by fluorescent floor, while she'd poured herself into making a home that now held only pieces of her.

Marcus opened his desk drawer and found the vitamin bottle he kept there—some proprietary blend meant to sharpen memory and focus. The label promised everything he'd already lost. He dry-swallowed two capsules.

His assistant appeared in the doorway. "The meeting's starting, Mr. Chen. They're waiting for your presentation on the restructuring."

Restructuring. Another word for lives dismantled to feed the pyramid.

"I'll be right there," Marcus said, but his fingers found the photograph on his desk—Sarah in that orange dress, young and whole and convinced the world was theirs to climb.

He stood up and walked to the window instead. Below, the city stretched toward distant darkness, every light someone's compromise burning bright. Marcus pressed his palm against the cold glass and finally understood what the vitamins couldn't fix: some things, once lost, can never be supplemented back.

"Cancel the meeting," he said, turning toward the door. "I'm going home."