The Wellness Pyramid

Maya felt like a zombie walking into the office Monday morning, the fluorescent lights already draining what little life the weekend had restored her. At 34, she'd mastered the art of looking alive while feeling hollow inside—the ultimate corporate survival skill.

The wellness initiative posters were everywhere now. PYRAMID OF HEALTH, they proclaimed, with vitamin supplements forming the base. The irony lost on the HR team that had approved the initiative while simultaneously demanding sixty-hour weeks. She swallowed her daily handful of pills at her desk—B12, D3, magnesium—tiny chemical promises of energy she never actually felt.

"You coming to padel tonight?" David asked, leaning against her cubicle wall. He was the kind of handsome that made straight women and gay men alike pause—tall, sharp jaw, eyes that actually seemed to see people.

"Can't. Deadline."

"Always the deadline." He smiled, and something in her chest tightened. They'd been dancing around whatever this was for six months—after-work drinks that lasted too long, text messages that edged toward personal but never crossed the line. "The office pool says you'll crack by Thursday."

"What pool?"

"The betting pool. When you'll finally tell Marcus to shove it."

Marcus. The pyramid scheme CEO who'd somehow convinced everyone he was a visionary rather than a man planning to sell the company to private equity and vanish with a golden parachute.

Maya looked at David. Really looked at him. "What's the buy-in?"

"Twenty bucks. But if you win, you get two hundred and the satisfaction of everyone rooting for you."

"And if I lose?"

"Then I take you for padel and drinks. My treat."

The simplicity of it disarmed her. Not a grand romantic gesture, just an invitation to exist outside the corporate machine for an evening.

She stood up, her chair rolling behind her. "David."

"Yeah?"

"Give me the worst odds. Thursday morning."

His grin was slow, genuine. "Done."

Maya walked toward Marcus's office, her heart hammering. She wasn't just quitting a job—she was cutting off her own limb, but sometimes amputation was the only way to stop the infection from spreading.

The zombie was waking up. And she was hungry.