The Wellness Protocol

The coaxial cable dangled from the wall where Marcus had ripped it out six weeks ago, when he'd declared they were cutting out the poison. No news, no social media, no streaming distractions. Just presence. Just them. Elena had agreed, because agreeing was easier than explaining that she didn't mind the numb of scrolling until 2 AM. It kept the thoughts at bay.

Now she lay on the California King they'd bought with his year-end bonus, watching the cable swing in the air conditioning's breeze, listening to him methodically crush his vitamins in the kitchen. Vitamin C, zinc, magnesium, D3—his armor against a world that felt increasingly dangerous to inhabit. He'd become obsessive about wellness since the layoff announcements started circulating at the firm.

'You coming?' he called. 'Smoothie's ready.'

'In a minute.' She turned her hand palm-up in the half-light, studying the lines the fortune teller in New Orleans had traced last spring. 'You'll bear a great loss,' the woman had said, gripping Elena's wrist with surprising strength. 'But it'll make space for something new.' Elena had given her twenty dollars and forgotten it within the hour.

Now she couldn't stop thinking about bears.

Not the animal—the verb. To bear. To carry. What she was bearing, day after day, without naming it. The way Marcus's optimism felt like a weapon sometimes. The way her job had slowly drained everything essential from her until she was moving through meetings and presentations like a ghost in her own life. The secret she'd been carrying for three weeks now, folded into the corner of her purse like a receipt she couldn't bring herself to throw away.

The positive test. The timing couldn't have been worse.

Marcus appeared in the doorway, silhouette backlit by the kitchen's harsh fluorescence. In his hand: the small plastic cup with his vitamin cocktail, cloudy green. He looked so hopeful it made her chest ache.

'Hey,' he said softly. 'You okay?'

The cable above her head kept swinging, a tiny pendulum measuring time she wasn't sure she wanted to pass through. Elena thought about the fortune teller's prophecy, about the way loss could also mean shedding something you'd outgrown. About the terrible, terrifying possibility of beginning.

She sat up, palm still tingling where the woman had touched her seven months ago.

'Marcus,' she said. 'We need to talk.'