The Wellness of Ghosts

Maya stood in the breakroom, staring at her spinach smoothie like it might whisper the secrets to a life she no longer recognized. Forty-two years old, three months post-divorce, and somehow she'd become the person who brought fresh produce to an office where everyone else ordered takeout and destroyed their livers with IPA.

"You look like shit," said Ryan, leaning against the counter. His eyes were dead—corporate zombie eyes, the kind she'd seen on everyone who'd survived the last round of layoffs. "Need a vitamin? I've got those gummy ones. They taste like artificial strawberry and existential despair."

She declined. She'd been taking vitamins for six months, ever since the panic attacks started. Little gelatinous promises that if she just optimized her nutrition, her life would somehow reassemble itself into something recognizable.

Her phone buzzed. The dog walker sending photos of Barnaby, her golden retriever, the only living thing that still seemed happy to see her. In the photo, Barnaby was frozen mid-shake, water droplets suspended around him like laughter.

"My ex-wife took the dog," Ryan said, noticing her looking at the screen. "Best thing I had going, honestly. She married a guy who actually likes hiking. Can you fucking imagine?"

Maya could imagine. She'd imagined a lot of things these days.

"I'm thinking about quitting," she said, the words leaving her mouth before she could swallow them back down.

Ryan laughed, but it wasn't unkind. Just tired. "We're all zombies, Maya. We eat the spinach, we take the vitamins, we walk the dogs. We do the things that are supposed to make us feel alive. But mostly we're just walking around with all this life insurance and no one to collect it."

She went back to her desk and opened the drawer where she kept her vitamins. She counted them—twelve left. Twelve days of pretending she could optimize her way out of grief, out of loneliness, out of the creeping suspicion that she'd already lived her best years and they hadn't been very good to begin with.

Barnaby would be waiting. He'd press his warm weight against her leg and remind her that she was still here, still breathing, still capable of being loved by something that didn't ask for a resume.

She threw the vitamins in the trash and went home to her dog.