Vitamins and Other Small Burdens

Marcus shouldered the weight of his duffel bag, feeling like a grizzly bear lumbering toward hibernation. Forty-two and already his body had started its quiet rebellion. The bottle of vitamin D supplements in his pocket clinked against his keys — his doctor's orders after the bloodwork came back last week. "Modern life," she'd said, "we don't see enough sun anymore."

The padel club hummed with Friday afternoon energy. Glass courts, heated conversations, the rhythmic thwack of balls against walls. Sarah waved from Court 3, already in her skirt and polo, looking like she hadn't aged a day since they'd met in graduate school. Some people, he thought, didn't need vitamins. Some people just... stayed.

"You're late," she said, tossing him a racket. "Again."

"Work."

"Work, or Elena?"

The question landed between them like something fragile and already broken. Marcus's iPhone vibrated in his pocket, insisting. He'd stopped looking at the messages three days ago, but he couldn't bring himself to block the number either. It was cowardice, plain and simple. The kind of weakness that accumulated, like cholesterol or regret, until something finally gave way.

They played in silence for the first set. Sarah's competitive edge had sharpened lately, each point fought like she was keeping score of something larger than the game. Marcus found himself watching her across the net — the determined set of her jaw, the way she'd started coloring the gray at her temples last month. When had they become people who needed to color their hair? When had they started swallowing fistfuls of vitamins just to feel human?

"Your phone," she said during the changeover, not looking at him. "It's been vibrating all afternoon."

"Work stuff."

"It's Friday, Marcus. Nobody from work emails on Friday except someone sleeping with their assistant."

He felt it then — the specific, terrible weight of what he'd been carrying. The bear he'd been feeding, half-knowing it would eventually consume everything.

"It's not Elena," he said, and this was true, strangely. "It's the lab results."

The silence between points returned, but different now. Charged.

"From the bloodwork?" she asked, her voice tight.

"Yeah."

"And?"

"And they want me to come in Monday. To discuss the findings."

Sarah studied him across the net, really looked at him, maybe for the first time in months. The iPhone in his pocket buzzed again, urgent and repetitive. Some notification or reminder, the electronic pulse of a life that kept demanding attention even as everything in him wanted to lie down on the court and not get up.

"Vitamins," she said suddenly. "You've been taking those damn vitamins for months. The D, the B-complex, that other one I can never pronounce."

"They help."

"Do they?" She returned to the service line, racket bouncing once, twice. "Because you look like you're carrying something a hell of a lot heavier than a few vitamin pills."

The bear inside him shifted, restless.

"Maybe I am."

"Then put it down, Marcus. Whatever it is. Before it breaks something that can't be fixed."

He watched her serve, the ball arcing toward him in the artificial light, and thought about how many times in a marriage you get warned before everything changes. His iPhone buzzed again. He reached into his pocket, found the bottle of vitamins instead, and swallowed two dry, right there on the court.

"Game point," she said. And he thought: maybe some games you win. Maybe some games you survive. Maybe the real victory was showing up at all.