The Vitamin Season

The baseball stadium lights hummed overhead, casting everything in that artificial glow that makes moment look like memory. Sarah sat alone in section 203, peeling an orange, the citrus scent cutting through the stale beer and popcorn air. Fourth inning. Her marriage had ended somewhere around the third.

A fox darted across the warning track below—a real one, not some metaphor for cleverness or deception. Just a wild creature navigating the manicured geometry of American pastime, looking for scraps. The crowd barely noticed. They were too busy watching another man strike out.

She swallowed her vitamin D supplement with the orange juice—her therapist said she needed it, said the darkness had been literal as much as figurative. Vitamin deficiency mimicking depression, or depression depleting vitamins. The chicken or the egg, except the egg had been cracked open and emptied months ago.

"Mind if I sit?" The woman beside her pointed to the empty seat where Mark used to be. "My dog dragged me here. He's at home, but I blame him anyway."

Sarah laughed, surprised by the sound. "What kind?"

"Golden retriever. Emotional support animal, though honestly, he's more emotionally needy than supportive. Wakes me up at 3 AM to discuss his feelings." She extended a hand. "I'm Elena. Also recently single. Also here because someone gave me tickets and I refused to let them go to waste."

The baseball game continued below—men in tight pants throwing balls, hitting balls, missing balls. The ancient ritual of American distraction.

"My husband left," Sarah said, the words still foreign on her tongue. "For a younger woman. She's twenty-six. She probably doesn't need vitamin supplements."

"Mine left because I wouldn't get a dog," Elena said, opening her purse to reveal an orange almost identical to Sarah's. "Twenty years together, and the dealbreaker was canine ownership."

The fox reappeared, this time near the dugout. A player stopped to watch it. For a moment, the whole stadium seemed to hold its breath.

"You know," Sarah said, "I read that foxes mate for life."

Elena smiled, peeling her orange. "Then perhaps they're smarter than we are."

The vitamin tablet sat heavy in Sarah's stomach, artificial sunshine in a world that had gone gray. But beside her, Elena laughed at something the umpire did, and for the first time in months, Sarah thought the gray might be lifting.

Bottom of the ninth. Two outs. The crowd rose as one. And somewhere beyond the stadium lights, the fox vanished into the night, carrying a hot dog bun in its mouth—a small victory in a world that offered few guarantees.