What Remains

Sunday mornings at the padel club were supposed to be her sanctuary, but Elena moved through the court like a zombie, her body remembering the drills her mind had abandoned weeks ago. The fluorescent lights caught the rim of her white visor—her hat pulled low enough to hide the dark circles under her eyes, not that anyone was looking closely enough to notice.

Across the net, Greg laughed at something his partner said. The same Greg who'd sent her that email at 11:47 PM Friday. "Let's circle back Monday on the Q3 projections, El. Really need you to bring your A-game."

Her A-game. She didn't know if she had an A-game anymore. She barely had a B-game.

The rally continued. Thwack, thwack, thwack—rhythm without meaning. She thought about quitting. About walking off the court, driving home, curling up on the couch with Buster. Her dog, at least, seemed happy to see her when she came home, even if she was just the person who filled his bowl and opened the back door.

"You okay, El?" Greg called between points. "You're playing like your head's somewhere else."

"It is," she said, surprising herself. "My head is somewhere else."

She walked to the bench, sat down, and took off her hat. Her hair was matted to her forehead with sweat. The reality of it hit her all at once: she was thirty-four years old, making six figures, clinically successful by every metric she'd been taught to care about, and she hadn't felt genuinely present in her own life in months. She was a zombie, and the worst part was that no one seemed to notice. Zombies were good at blending in. That's how they survived.

"What are you doing?" Greg asked.

"I'm not finishing the match," Elena said, and the words felt both terrifying and liberating. "I'm going home to walk my dog and figure out why I've been pretending I'm okay with this."

She picked up her bag and walked toward the exit, not waiting for a response. The fluorescent lights reflected off the polished floor, bright and demanding, but she didn't look back. For the first time in a long time, she was heading somewhere that actually felt like forward.