The Vitamin Regimen

Emma stood before the bathroom mirror, running her fingers through hair that had started falling out in clumps three months ago. The chemotherapy pills sat in their orange prescription bottle like accusations.

"You need more water," David said from the doorway, not meeting her eyes. He held out a glass like an offering.

She took it. "You look like a zombie."

"Long night at the firm." He rubbed his temples. "The merger talks have everyone walking dead."

Emma wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe the dark circles under his eyes came from sixty-hour weeks, not from whatever he was hiding on his phone. The way he'd started showering as soon as he got home. The new cologne masking another scent.

"My sister sent these." David placed a bottle of gummy vitamins on the counter. "She said they helped when she was going through it."

"Through what?" Emma's voice cracked. "She had a sinus infection, David. I have—" The word caught in her throat.

"I know." He finally looked at her, his expression so unreadable it made her chest ache. "I just want you to have everything you need."

That was David. Always bearing the weight, always fixing. They'd met at a corporate retreat six years ago. He'd been the one to find her in the hotel bar at 2 AM, dissecting her failed presentation. He'd ordered her a water, told her she was brilliant, and carried her to her room when she'd had one too many.

Now he was carrying something else. She saw it in the set of his shoulders, the way his phone stayed face down on the nightstand. The metaphorical bear he refused to put down, the burden he wouldn't share.

"I saw the notification," she said quietly. "'Hope to see you again.'"

David's face crumbled.

"It's not—" He stopped. "It was just coffee. She's a client. I needed someone who didn't look at me like I might break."

Emma felt the water rising in her eyes. "So you found someone."

"I found a moment." His voice broke. "A moment where I wasn't the husband of the dying wife. Where I could just be David."

She turned back to the mirror, popped two vitamins from their container. They were bright, artificial orange.

"I'm not dead yet," she said.

"I know." He stepped closer, his reflection overlapping hers. "But I am. I have been since the diagnosis. I've been walking around like a ghost, waiting, and I couldn't—" His voice cracked. "I couldn't breathe."

Emma swallowed the vitamins. They tasted like fake fruit and surrender.

"You should have told me," she said. "We could have been dead together."

David's arms came around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder. Neither of them cried. They just stood there, watching themselves in the mirror, two people learning how to live with the dying, and with the living, all at once.

"More water," she said finally.

"Always," he said, and went to fill the glass again.