Vitamin Days

The cancer diagnosis came on a Tuesday, framed in the sterile fluorescence of Dr. Kowalski's office. Marcus walked out with a prescription for a new multivitamin regimen and a recommendation to exercise more, as if either could reverse what his cells had quietly become.

That evening, he called Elena—his oldest friend, the one who'd slept on his couch through his divorce, who'd held his hand at his mother's funeral. They'd drifted apart in the past two years, mostly his fault. Depression had a way of making you terrible at friendship.

"Padel?" she suggested. "Saturday morning. You need to get out of your head."

He almost said no. But the vitamin supplements sat on his kitchen counter like tiny accusations, and something in her voice—concern without pity—made him agree.

Saturday arrived humid and unforgiving. The padel court baked in the sun. Elena was already there, stretching, her dark hair pulled back, that easy grace still intact after all these years. She'd been a collegiate swimmer once, cutting through water like she was born to it. Now she was in her forties and still moved like the pool was somewhere she could return to anytime.

They played. Marcus hadn't swung a racket since college. The first serve hit the net. Elena laughed, not unkindly.

"Your baseball arm's gone soft," she teased.

"I was a backup," he grunted, chasing a ball that skittered away like a betrayal. His body felt foreign—heavier, slower, aging in ways he'd refused to acknowledge until the diagnosis made it impossible to ignore.

But as they fell into rhythm, something shifted. His lungs burned, his shirt stuck to his back with sweat, and Elena kept pushing him, kept calling him back to himself with every returned volley.

Afterward, they sat on the bench, sharing water and silence.

"The cancer," he said finally. "It's not—it might be manageable. But it scared me."

Elena's hand found his. "I know."

"How?"

"You called back."

He looked at her—really looked—at the lines around her eyes, the way the sun caught the gray in her hair, the patience that had outlasted every version of himself he'd abandoned.

"I keep forgetting," he said, "that some vitamins don't come in bottles."

She laughed, and it was the sound of water, of swimming against a current and finding you could still breathe.

"Same time next week?" she asked.

Marcus watched a hawk circle overhead, sudden and certain as grace.

"Yes," he said. "Absolutely."