What the Bear Knew

I'd become a zombie somewhere between the merger and the layoffs—not the cinematic kind, but the corporate variety: shuffling to meetings I couldn't remember scheduling, speaking in words I no longer meant. My cube-mate Elena still called us friends despite two years of silence outside office hours, pressing neon vitamin bottles into my hand like they were apologies she couldn't speak.

"These changed my life," she'd say, eyes fixed on her screen. "B complex. For energy."

I took them because it was easier than honesty. I'd been bearing my department's closure for three weeks—knowledge I'd only learned from the VP whose bed I'd been sharing, a man who signed termination notices with the same hand he used to trace my spine at night.

The bear appeared on a Tuesday, pushing through the automatic doors like it owned the place. Security footage showed it standing confused in the lobby, taking in the fluorescent purgatory fifty of us inhabited. Below me on the mezzanine, coworkers scattered and screamed, but the bear just looked around with what I swear was disappointment.

Then it tilted its massive head back, looked directly up at me, and I felt more seen than I had in months. It lumbered out as abruptly as it had arrived, leaving behind the scent of wild things and the realization that I'd been waiting for permission to be alive again.

"Probably stress," Elena said the next day, not looking up from her spreadsheet. "They have vitamins for that now."

I flushed hers down the toilet that night, resigned instead, and told the VP I was done. Some endings you bear. Others you choose.