The Vitamins We Swallow

Maya hadn't felt anything since the funeral. Not grief, exactly—more like a comprehensive emotional numbness that left her moving through her days like some corporate zombie, hollowed out from the inside. Her apartment collected dust. Her inbox accumulated unread messages. Her mother called, leaving voicemails about vitamin D deficiencies and how lack of sunlight could cause depression.

"You're wasting away, Maya," her mother said. "I'm sending you a bottle. They're gummies. You'll like them."

The vitamins arrived on a Tuesday. Maya stared at the bottle—bright orange label promising *mental clarity!* and *mood support!*—and thought about how her brother had died of an overdose while she was three hours away, finalizing a divorce from a man she'd stopped loving two years earlier.

She opened the bottle. The first gummy tasted like artificial peach and despair.

That same week, she found the dog.

He was a mutt—some kind of terrier mix, matted gray fur over ribs that showed too clearly—shivering outside the bodega on 42nd Street. He watched her with eyes that seemed almost humanly tired. When she crouched down, extending a hand, he didn't approach. He just looked at her, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Yeah," she said. "I know."

She named him Arthur, after her brother.

The vet said Arthur was probably three years old. Had been on the streets a while. Trust issues. "He'll come around," the vet said, handing her a bag of prescription dog food and instructions for supplements. "Dogs are resilient."

Maya thought about resilience. About how she kept showing up to work, kept paying rent, kept swallowing those damn peach gummies every morning with coffee that tasted like ash. About how Arthur slept in the corner of her bedroom, curled into a tight ball, flinching whenever she moved too quickly.

They were two zombies, really. Moving through motions. Waiting for something.

The breakthrough came on a rainy Sunday. Maya was crying—unexpectedly, violently, over something as stupid as dropping a glass. The sound of it shattering triggered something, and suddenly she was on the kitchen floor, sobbing into her hands, the past six months finally catching up.

She felt a wet nose press against her elbow.

Arthur. He'd never approached her like this before. She held still, afraid to scare him, and he crept closer, settling his head onto her lap. His fur was still matted, still needed grooming, but he was warm and solid and somehow he was vibrating—a low, rumbling sound she realized after a long moment was purring, only dogs didn't purr, they—

Arthur was whining. A soft, constant sound, like he was trying to tell her something.

"I know," she whispered, burying her face in his dirty fur. "I know."

They stayed like that for an hour. When she finally stood up, her legs cramped and her face blotchy, Arthur followed her to the kitchen. She gave him a real meal instead of the prescribed portion. She took two vitamins instead of one.

Some things, you couldn't fix with supplements. Some wounds didn't heal clean. But sometimes, on rainy Sunday mornings, two broken things found each other in the quiet, and something inside them—something small and tentative and real—began to wake up.

Arthur trotted back to his corner, but this time he didn't curl into a ball. He stretched out, belly toward the room, watching her with eyes that were still tired but something else too.

Hope, maybe. Or whatever came after.

Maya washed the coffee mug. She thought about calling her mother.

Maybe tomorrow.