Vitamins and Lightning

The bottle of vitamin D supplements sat on their bedside table, a daily ritual that had become a silent testament to everything they'd stopped saying. Mark swallowed his pill without water, as Ella watched him from her side of the bed, her eyes fixed on the television where the baseball game played without sound.

"You're missing it," she said, gesturing toward the screen where a player slid into home plate. "That was the double play that could save their season."

Mark didn't turn. "I'm tired, El. It's been a long week."

It was always a long week now. He worked later, she slept earlier. They existed in the same house like two planets orbiting a dying star—close enough to feel the gravity, too far to touch.

The storm outside had been building for hours, the sky turning that bruised purple that means something's about to break. When the first lightning struck, it didn't just flash—it fractured the darkness, illuminating their bedroom like a photograph developing in reverse.

In that sudden, terrible clarity, Mark saw everything: the vitamin bottle between them like a border wall, the fading numbers on the clock (11:47 PM), Ella's hand half-reaching toward him before pulling back. The baseball game continued its silent drama on the screen, players frozen mid-swing, forever caught in moments that meant everything to strangers and nothing to them.

"Remember when we cared about things?" Ella asked, her voice barely audible over the rain.

Mark thought about it for a long time. He thought about the vitamins he took to stay alive, the baseball games she watched to feel something, the lightning that had just revealed how thoroughly they'd learned to survive without each other.

"I still care," he said finally. "I just don't remember what matters anymore."

The second lightning strike was closer, and somewhere in the distance, a car alarm began to scream. Ella turned off the television. The vitamin bottle sat between them, small and innocent and absolutely devastating. They lay there as the storm broke, and for the first time in months, they didn't turn away from each other. They just watched the darkness return, waiting to see if the next lightning would bring them closer or finally tear them apart.