The Vitamin Deficiency

The market was a zombie — shuffling along, undead but still moving. Mike called it a 'correction', but Sarah knew better. It was 2008 all over again, and they were the ones about to get eaten.

She stared at her terminal, watching red numbers bleed across the screen. The bull market was dead, and in its place was this shuffling horror that wouldn't lie down and die.

"You look like shit," Mike said, appearing beside her desk with his customary bull-in-a-china-shop energy. His tie was already loosened at 10 AM. "Rough night?"

Sarah didn't answer. She'd told him about Tom two months ago — the separation, the move to a friend's couch, the endless negotiations over who got the coffee maker. Mike had nodded, offered condolences, then immediately started complaining about his own divorce. That was Mike: every conversation eventually circled back to him.

"Markets down another three percent," he continued, undeterred by her silence. "At this rate, we'll all be zombie employees — working for free, haunting the office like ghosts." He laughed at his own joke.

Sarah opened her desk drawer and counted the vitamin bottles: B12 for energy, D for the winter darkness, magnesium for the panic attacks that woke her at 3 AM. Her doctor called it 'supplemental support'. She called it survival.

"My assistant quit," Mike said, suddenly serious. "Said she couldn't work for 'the bull' anymore. Can you believe that? She actually used those words in her resignation letter."

"Maybe you shouldn't call yourself that," Sarah said quietly.

"What? It's just a metaphor! Charging ahead, breaking through obstacles —"

"Sometimes charging ahead just breaks things, Mike. Sometimes people get trampled."

He stared at her, really looked at her for the first time in months. "Is that what happened with you and Tom? I trampled you?"

Sarah laughed, a dry, exhausted sound. "Not everything is about you, Mike. But yes — sometimes the bull forgets who he's supposed to be protecting."

The market continued its zombie shuffle on her screen. But something shifted in her chest, a small crack opening where resentment had lived. The vitamins in her drawer weren't enough. She needed something else.

"I'm going to lunch," Sarah said, standing up. "Alone."

"Want company?"

"No."

She walked out, leaving Mike and his bull energy, leaving the zombie market and its endless bleeding red. Outside, the winter sun was weak but real. She'd forgotten what lunch alone felt like — no demands, no complaints, no one expecting her to carry their emotional weight.

The vitamin supplements could wait. Today, she'd take something real instead.