Vitamin Z

David stared at the amber prescription bottle on his kitchen counter—Vitamin D, the doctor had said. Take one daily, maybe you'll stop feeling like you're walking through mud. At 42, he'd become the kind of man who arranged his pills in neat little rows: multivitamin, omega-3, now Vitamin D. Each capsule a tiny prayer against the slow rot of middle age.

The baseball card collection had been his father's, passed down when the old man died. David kept them in a safety deposit box, visited twice a year like a dutiful son making pilgrimage. The 1956 Mickey Mantle was worth more than his car. He'd never played baseball himself—too clumsy, too nearsighted—but he loved the mathematics of it. The clean geometry of the diamond. The way a season stretched across six months, every game a new equation to solve.

"You're dead on your feet, Davidson." Tom leaned against his cubicle wall, bull neck thick above his too-tight collar. "I need those briefs by morning. Don't make me come back here."

David nodded, already dead inside. He'd stopped feeling anything around year three at the firm. Now he just moved through motions like a creature animated by something other than will. A corporate zombie in an ergonomic chair, eating other people's lunches from the breakroom fridge without remorse.

The office fluorescents buzzed like insects trapped in amber. 11:47 PM. His phone chimed—Sarah, probably wondering where he was. Probably wondering when her husband had been replaced by this hollow thing that looked like him but couldn't remember the last time he'd really laughed.

He opened the desk drawer where he kept his vitamins. Dry-swallowed two Vitamin D pills instead of one. What could it hurt? The phone chimed again. Outside, the city burned with life, while he sat in his cubicle arranging bankruptcy filings like stones in a graveyard, waiting for something—anything—to make him feel real again.

The All-Star Game was tomorrow. He'd watch it alone. Sarah would understand. She always understood, which was almost worse than her being angry. At least anger meant she still gave a damn.

David typed another paragraph, then reached for the vitamin bottle again. His hand trembled. Not from the caffeine. From something deeper. Something he couldn't supplement away.