Vitamins for the Soul

Emma stared at the amber prescription bottle on her granite countertop. Vitamin D supplements—the only thing keeping her bones from crumbling after forty New York winters. At 35, she'd become the kind of person who organized her pills in those plastic Sunday-through-Saturday containers.

"You're becoming that cat lady from those commercials," her friend Sasha had joked last night, though neither of them found it particularly funny. Sasha didn't know about thevitamin regimen. Sasha didn't know about a lot of things anymore.

Emma's cat, a tabby named Mathematics (Math for short), wound around her ankles, demanding breakfast. She'd rescued him three years ago after finding him crying in a dumpster behind her office building. He'd been her most consistent relationship since.

The corporate cafeteria buzzed with lunchtime conversations as Emma picked at her salad. Across the room, David laughed with that woman from accounting—the one with the smile that never quite reached her eyes. David, who'd told Emma last Tuesday that he needed "space" but still texted her at 2 AM on Saturday nights. David, the smoothest fox she'd ever dated, charming and unavailable in equal measure.

"You look tired," Sasha said, sliding into the chair opposite her. "Everything okay?"

Emma considered lying. She considered telling Sasha about the pregnancy test she'd taken that morning, negative but somehow worse than if it had been positive because it meant she wasn't even pregnant, just late and stressed and lonely enough to imagine things. She considered telling her about the way David looked at that other woman.

"Just my vitamin deficiency," Emma said instead. "Doctor's upping my dose."

Sasha nodded sympathetically. "You should take better care of yourself."

Emma swallowed her actual vitamins that evening with a glass of cheap wine, watching the sunset bleed across her apartment walls. Math purred in her lap, his warmth the only real thing in a world of simulated connections and prescribed nutrients. Tomorrow she'd stop texting David back. Tomorrow she'd call her mother. Tomorrow she'd maybe even make a real friend.

But tonight, she took another vitamin and pretended it was enough.