The Vitamin Summer

The papaya sat on the counter, its skin mottled with yellow and green, a tropical monument to the summer we almost had. Mark had bought it two days before his diagnosis—before the word "deficiency" became the axis our world rotated around, before the pharmacist's warnings about low **vitamin** D levels and what they meant for his compromised immune system.

I stood in our kitchen wearing his fedora, the one he'd jokingly called his "doctor disguise" for appointments. The brim shadowed my eyes, and for a moment I caught my reflection—hollow-cheeked, wearing another man's identity like armor against the phone calls that weren't coming.

The papaya was supposed to be our vacation breakfast, eaten on the balcony of that Airbnb in Tulum we'd never book. Now it ripened alone, growing sweeter as everything else soured.

"Supplement with this," the oncologist had said, sliding a prescription across his desk. "And this. And for god's sake, get some sun."

Mark had laughed. "Easy for you to say. I've been working nights for fifteen years."

The **hat** smelled like his hair—coconut shampoo and that subtle metallic scent that had clung to him since his first round of chemo. I hadn't washed it. Couldn't.

I picked up the knife and cut into the papaya. Its flesh gleamed like something alien, black seeds pearled in orange that wept sweet juice across the cutting board. We'd never even talked about what happened if—what happened when the supplements stopped working, what happened when the D levels couldn't be fixed, what happened when the body became a traitor.

The doorbell rang.

My hand stilled. Nobody came by anymore. Friends had stopped calling after month three, when the updates turned from "progress" to "complications." Family sent cards.

I opened the door still wearing Mark's fedora, a woman in her husband's hat, holding a knife, wild-eyed and desperate.

"Delivery," said the teenager, thrusting a small brown box toward me. "Amazon?"

I took it. The return address showed the vitamin company.

Inside: a fresh bottle. Mark must have ordered it on autopay, his phone charging a credit card he'd never use again, setting up deliveries for a future he wouldn't have.

I closed the door and went back to the papaya, its exposed flesh already oxidizing, turning brown where the knife had cut. The seeds stared up like so many black eyes, witnessing this small domestic tragedy, this widow in a dead man's hat eating fruit for two.