The Vitamin of Lightning

The hotel pool was empty at 3 AM, which was exactly why Elena had chosen it. Forty-two years old and celebrating her divorce finalization with a solo weekend in Palm Springs, she floated on her back staring at the darkness where stars should have been. The storm clouds had been gathering for hours.

A small dog—some kind of terrier mix, gray-muzzled and arthritic—appeared at the pool's edge, shivering. Elena recognized him from the couple in room 204. They'd fought all afternoon. Now he was alone, just like her.

She swam over and lifted him onto the concrete. He curled into a ball near her towel, where her daily vitamin sat in a plastic organizer. She'd forgotten to take it. She'd forgotten a lot of things lately.

"You're not supposed to be out here," she told the dog, but she didn't call the front desk.

The first lightning strike illuminated the valley like a camera flash, the thunder following close enough that she felt it in her teeth. The dog whimpered. Elena gathered him into her towel, both of them trembling, and sat on the lounger watching the electrical storm rewrite the sky.

"My ex used to say I was too dramatic," she said to the dog. "That I manufactured crises because I couldn't stand peace."

The lightning answered again, closer this time. The pool's surface turned silver-white, a momentary photograph of water suspended in violence.

She remembered the vitamin then—what it represented: the daily maintenance of a body she'd stopped nurturing, the routine she'd abandoned along with her marriage, the small promises you make yourself just to keep going. She dry-swallowed it without water.

The dog licked her hand. His owners would wake soon. The storm would pass. She would check out and drive back to her empty apartment. But for now, in the violet intervals between strikes, Elena understood something about loneliness: it wasn't the absence of people, but the presence of yourself when you finally stop running.