The Supplemental Life

The iPhone glared at 3:14 AM, its blue light illuminating Elena's darkened living room. She'd been scrolling through photos of Marco for three hours, her thumb moving on muscle memory, pausing on the one from Tuscany—him holding up that terrible glass of Chianti, laughing at nothing. That was six months ago. Now his phone number belonged to someone else, a stranger whose calls she kept accidentally dialing at 2 AM when loneliness felt like a physical weight in her chest.

Buster, Marco's ancient golden retriever, stirred at her feet. He'd been waiting by the door every evening since the funeral, that heartbreaking hope in his clouded eyes. Some days Elena wanted to scream at him: He's not coming back. But instead she'd stroke his softening fur and whisper promises she couldn't keep. The vet had suggested easing his transition, whatever that meant—code for putting him down, as if Buster were just another thing Marco left unfinished, another loose end she couldn't bring herself to tie.

"You hungry, boy?" She rose, joints popping. The kitchen was a museum of their life together: his coffee mug still stain-marked from the morning he never came home, the grocery list on the fridge including "vitamin D supplements"—something about bone health he'd read about, worried about aging gracefully while she worried about living at all.

She opened the cabinet where she'd organized his medications into weekly pill organizers after the first heart attack. There they were: the vitamin D, the omega-3s, the CoQ10 he swore by. She'd been taking them since February, some strange bid to keep part of him alive inside her. The physician had warned against it—something about drug interactions—but Elena couldn't stop. It felt like communion, each swallowed pill a tiny secular prayer.

Buster appeared in the doorway, tail thumping hopefully against the doorframe. "Yeah," she said softly. "Me too."

She poured the last of the kibble into his bowl. The sound was deafening in the quiet apartment. Then she opened her own vitamin bottle, shook out two tablets, dry-swallowed them without water. The iPhone buzzed on the counter—her sister, probably, calling to check in again. Elena let it go to voicemail.

Instead, she sat on the linoleum floor beside Buster, running her fingers through his coat while he ate. They were both just taking nourishment where they could find it, both waiting for something that wasn't coming. But at least they were waiting together.