The Wellness Protocol

Elena watched herself in the office bathroom mirror, pulling a stray gray hair from her temple. Thirty-four and already coming apart at the seams. Outside, the sales team moved through the open-plan office like zombies — hollowed out by Q4 targets, fueled by caffeine and desperation.

"You doing the padel thing tonight?" Marco asked, appearing behind her in the reflection. He'd been her work husband for three years, their relationship consisting entirely of shared complaints and emergency text messages during meetings that ran past seven.

"Can't. My wellness protocol calls for an early night."

"Your what now?" Elena turned around. Marco was clutching a plastic container of something green and vile-looking.

"Wellness protocol. I'm eight days in." He gestured with the container. "Raw spinach, activated almonds, vitamin D injections. My functional medicine doctor says my cortisol levels are attacking me from inside."

Elena laughed before she could stop herself. Marco's hair was thinning. They both looked like shit. They'd helped launch three startups together and none of them had made them rich, just tired in increasingly expensive apartments.

"We're not sick, Marco. We're just doing capitalism wrong."

"That's what the zinc supplements are for," he said, completely serious. "Come play padel. One game. I'll buy you a toxic, vitamin-deficient dinner after."

She should have gone home and finished the spreadsheet that was due Monday. Instead, she found herself on the padel court at 8 PM, sweating through her work clothes, laughing as Marco missed an easy shot and blamed his "inflammation levels."

"You know," she said, catching her breath between points, "my mother died at forty-two."

Marco froze, ball in hand. "I didn't know that."

"Cancer. And here I am, spending my thirties building products that help people buy faster." She gestured at the empty court. "What are we doing?"

"Trying not to be zombies," Marco said softly. "Even if it means eating spinach that tastes like sadness and paying someone to stick vitamins in our arms. We're trying to care about being alive."

He served. She returned. They played until the court lights flickered off, two people running toward nothing, hearts pounding, alive enough to feel the loss of all the time they'd already spent pretending otherwise.