Vital Signs

The notification lit up her iPhone at 2 AM — another missed cycle app reminder. Maya stared at the ceiling as David's breathing rhythmed beside her, peaceful and oblivious. Three years of fertility treatments, and they'd become strangers who shared a bed and a calendar of ovulation windows.

Morning light filtered through the kitchen blinds. David stood at the counter, his iPhone propped against the coffee maker, watching some TED talk about optimizing morning routines while he measured out his vitamin supplements — D3, zinc, CoQ10, a pharmacopeia of hope in gelatin capsules.

"You want a smoothie?" he asked, not looking up. "I bought that spinach you like."

The spinach sat wilted in the crisper drawer, its vibrant leaves already turning slimy at the edges, much like her optimism. Maya shoved it aside and grabbed the eggs instead. "I'm good."

At work, her assistant waved a file folder. "Patient in room three. The one who's been trying for two years."

Maya forced a smile, the kind she'd perfected through countless consultations, ultrasounds, and phone calls delivering news that cracked lives open. The irony wasn't lost on her — the fertility counselor who couldn't conceive.

"Did you start the vitamin D I prescribed?" she heard herself ask, the question automatic, rehearsed.

The patient nodded. "And my husband's taking those supplements too. We're doing everything right."

Everything right. The phrase echoed in Maya's head all day. She'd done everything right too — the vitamins, the timing, the acupuncture, the meditation apps on her iPhone that promised to reduce stress and optimize fertility. She and David had become project managers of reproduction, their marriage reduced to basal body temperatures and nutrient levels.

That evening, she found David in the kitchen, chopping spinach for dinner. The rhythmic sound of the knife against the cutting board was almost meditative.

"I was thinking," he said, finally looking at her. "Maybe we could take a break. From everything."

The vitamins in the cabinet. The spinach in the pan. The iPhone charging on the counter, another ovulation reminder pending. Something in her chest unwound.

"Yeah," Maya said. "Maybe we could just be us for a while."

David dumped the spinach into the pan, where it sizzled and collapsed. It wasn't much — not a solution, not an ending. But as he reached across the stove to take her hand, Maya felt something shift. Not the beginning, perhaps. But the middle of something real.