Vitamins for the Walking Dead

Emma placed the orange pill bottle on the kitchen counter, her movement precise and practiced. Vitamin D, the doctor had said. Vitamin D for the darkness that had settled over David's life like fog over a ballpark at dusk.

She'd found him at 3 AM again, sitting in the garage staring at the baseball glove he hadn't worn in fifteen years. The leather was cracked now, the pocket worn smooth from summers when they still believed in the possibility of extra innings.

"You're running yourself into the ground," she'd told him that morning, watching him lace up his running shoes for another predawn jog. Another escape. Another temporary anesthesia.

"It keeps me sane," he'd said, already halfway out the door.

The pills were her contribution. Her way of fixing what refused to be fixed. Vitamin D, B-complex, magnesium—each a small chemical prayer against the hollow-eyed zombie her husband had become. Not the flesh-eating monsters from movies, but something worse: a man who'd forgotten how to want anything.

Their marriage had become a series of rituals. His running. Her vitamins. The silence between them growing louder than any argument.

That afternoon, she found the bottle empty. Beside it, a note written on the back of an old baseball ticket stub: "I'm tired of running. I'm tired of being dead while still breathing."

The funeral was three days later. Not his body—himself. The parts of him that could still laugh until his ribs ached, still believe in comeback seasons, still look at her like she was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Emma stood alone in the garage, surrounded by boxes labeled in his careful handwriting. She picked up the glove, pressed her face into the worn leather, and finally understood: some deaths happen while the heart still beats, some vitamins can't cure what ails you, and sometimes the person you love becomes a ghost long before they're gone.

She placed the glove in the donation box and closed the garage door for the last time.