Vital Signs

She stood in the kitchen at 6:47 AM, exactly as she had every morning for three years. The orange glow of sunrise filtered through blinds they'd never fully opened, casting stripes across the countertop where she arranged her supplements with surgical precision. Vitamin D for the bone-deep fatigue that no amount of sleep could cure. B-complex for the numbness that had started in her toes and was slowly working its way to her heart.

Marcus appeared in the doorway, already dressed, already somewhere else. "Working late again."

"Okay," she said.

"There's leftover papaya in the fridge."

"Okay."

He kissed her cheek—a ghost of pressure, like something that had forgotten how to be solid. Then he was gone, and she was alone with her vitamins and the orange light that made everything look like it was burning, even though nothing was.

She remembered when they'd met at that medical conference, both young and idealistic, believing they could save people. Now Marcus worked for a pharmaceutical company that priced life-saving medications beyond reach, and she treated patients who couldn't afford the basics. But the real zombie wasn't the corporate machine or the broken healthcare system—it was what happened inside their apartment, between the hours of 7 PM and midnight, when they sat on opposite ends of the couch scrolling through phones, bodies present but something essential hollowed out.

At the hospital, her patient Mrs. Hernandez was dying. Not dramatically, not in some cinematic crescendo, but in the way that life sometimes simply unwinds. "You're so young," the old woman said, watching her force down a protein bar for lunch. "You should be eating papaya. My grandmother always said it feeds the soul."

"Does it work?" she asked, genuinely curious.

Mrs. Hernandez smiled, her papery skin crinkling around eyes that had seen nearly a century. "Honey, nothing feeds the soul except feeding it. You have to choose what matters." She gestured at the hospital bracelet on her own wrist. "I'm ready. I've lived. But you—you're already dead and you don't even know it yet."

The words knocked the air from her lungs. That night, she came home to find Marcus asleep on the couch, television flickering blue across his slack face. For a moment, he looked exactly like what they'd both become—animated matter, going through motions without memory of purpose.

She went to the kitchen, threw all the vitamin bottles into the trash. Then she cut herself a papaya, watched the orange flesh gleam in the harsh electric light, and ate it standing at the counter, juice running down her wrists, messy and vital and alive.

When Marcus woke, she was sitting in the dark, waiting. "We need to talk," she said.

He blinked, something flickering behind his eyes—recognition, maybe, or the old fear. "About what?"

"About whether we're going to keep being zombies," she said, "or if we're going to live."

Outside, the last orange light of sunset was surrendering to night. Tomorrow, she didn't know what would happen. But tonight, finally, she was hungry.