Walking Dead

Sarah stood at the kitchen counter, staring at the clock. 2:47 AM. The third night this week her sleep had shattered before dawn.

Her golden retriever, Leo, whined softly at her feet. He was twelve now, his muzzle gone white, hips stiff with arthritis. He'd been her anchor through the divorce, through Tom packing his boxes and leaving her with an empty house and emptier bank account. Now even Leo was fading.

She filled his water bowl, watching the liquid swirl and catch the kitchen light. She remembered Tom saying he felt like a zombie in their marriage, just going through the motions. She'd wanted to scream at him that *she* was the one performing emotional CPR on both of them, that she'd been walking dead for years before he finally noticed.

The corporate job didn't help. Days spent in airless conference rooms, PowerPoint slides about synergy and deliverables, while her soul quietly withered. Her colleagues joked about being corporate zombies, but Sarah felt it in her bones—the gradual hollowing out, the way she caught her own reflection in office windows and sometimes didn't recognize herself.

Leo lapped at the water, the sound breaking her spiraling thoughts. His warm weight pressed against her leg.

"You're still here," she whispered, sinking to the floor. "Why are you still here?"

Leo rested his head on her shoulder, his familiar earth-and-corn-chip smell filling her nose. His tail thumped weakly against the cabinet.

In that moment, she understood. She wasn't dead yet. This connection—this creature who needed her, who loved her without condition or complexity—was still real. The grief and the numbness and the exhaustion were all just water passing through her. They'd recede eventually.

She cried then, really cried, for the first time since the lawyer's office. Leo stayed pressed against her, steady as a heartbeat, while the gray dawn light seeped through the kitchen window, bringing them both back to life.