Vitamin B12 Protocol

The pill dispenser sat on his nightstand, a familiar plastic rainbow that had become the most intimate object in our marriage. Vitamin D on Mondays. B12 complex on Tuesdays. A pharmaceutical ritual that marked time better than any anniversary.

I'd started swimming at dawn—something to do with the hours he spent on his laptop in the study, the door always clicking shut behind him. The pool water was cold enough to make me forget I was lonely, chlorine stinging my eyes as I counted laps, trying to outpace the suspicion that had become my constant companion.

The corporate spyware on his computer had cost me three hundred dollars and what remained of my dignity. I wasn't proud of it, but thirty years of marriage will make you do things you never thought yourself capable of. When I found the encrypted folder labeled "Protocol," I told myself it was for us. That knowledge was protection.

What I found wasn't another woman. Wasn't some offshore account or mid-life crisis sports car. It was a spreadsheet. Meticulous. Complete. A catalog of every time I'd cried in six years. Every forgotten date. Every tense dinner conversation. Every "fine" that meant anything but.

And beside each entry, a vitamin supplement. A proposed dosage. A scientific paper citation.

He wasn't having an affair. He was trying to cure me.

"Your serotonin is low," he said from the doorway, his hair—salt-and-pepper now, like mine—still damp from his own morning shower. He held a coffee mug like a peace offering. "I was going to tell you about the blood tests. I just... I wanted to have a solution first."

I thought about all those mornings at the pool, all those laps measured in suspicion. How I'd swum through the darkness, convinced he was pulling away from me, when all along he'd been drowning beside me, reaching for anything that might keep us afloat.

"You could have just asked," I said, but the anger had gone out of me somewhere between breaststroke and butterfly.

"You would have said you were fine."

He was right. I would have.

The waterlogged report in my hand blurred. Tomorrow, I'd tell him about the spyware. Tonight, I took the B12.