The Wellness Check

The fluorescent lights hummed above Maria's desk as she stared at the spreadsheet, feeling like a corporate zombie going through motions she'd memorized years ago. Her friend Derek had texted at 3 AM again—some rambling message about how he'd started running at midnight to exhaust himself enough to sleep, as if physical collapse could fix the hole in his chest where his divorce used to be.

Maria's hand trembled as she reached for her morning ritual: a vitamin D supplement she'd started taking after her doctor pointed out her levels were critically low. The label promised sunshine in a gel capsule, but mostly it just made her think about how she hadn't seen actual sunlight in days, not since the cable guy came to fix the internet and she'd realized she hadn't left her apartment since the previous weekend.

"You look like hell," her coworker Jen said, dropping into the chair beside her. "Rough night?"

Maria almost laughed. Rough year. Rough life. She'd been running from everything meaningful since her mother died, substituting work and wine and the occasional meaningless hookup for anything resembling intimacy. Now even her body was turning against her—hair thinning, skin dull, that persistent cough that woke her at 2 AM like clockwork.

"My friend Derek's not doing well," she said instead, because talking about Derek was easier than talking about herself. "He's started running until he throws up. Says it's the only time he feels something."

Jen's expression softened. "The guy from the divorce?"

Maria nodded, swallowing the vitamin without water. It stuck in her throat like regret.

"Want to get dinner after work?" Jen asked. "Actual food. Not takeout eaten over keyboards."

For a moment, Maria almost said no. Almost retreated into the safe numbness of her apartment with its malfunctioning cable and work emails and silence that felt like an old friend. But then she thought about Derek running through dark streets at midnight, trying to outrun grief.

"Yes," she said. "I'd like that."

The fluorescent lights still hummed, but something in her chest shifted—not healed, exactly, but maybe just a little less dead. A start.