What the Fox Knows

The fox appeared at dusk, a rust-orange shadow slipping through the garden fence. Elena watched from the kitchen window, her chardonnay forgotten on the counter. She should be at the hospital, sitting beside David's bed, counting the slow rhythm of his breath, monitoring the vitals, being the good wife. Instead, she'd told the nurse she needed vitamins. She needed to not be dying by inches.

Her hair had started falling out three weeks ago—not from chemo, but from stress. The doctor called it telogen effluvium, gave her a prescription for biotin supplements and iron pills, said it would grow back. But standing before the mirror that morning, pulling handful after handful from the brush, she'd felt something inside her hollowing out too.

David had been bearing his illness with unbearable grace these six months. Even the nurses commented on it. But his goodness had become a weapon. You can't leave a dying man who's never been anything but kind. You can't admit that sometimes, in the sterile dark of his hospital room, you wish it would just end.

The fox paused, looked back at her through the glass. Its eyes were intelligent, ancient. It knew something about survival that she'd forgotten.

She thought about the vitamin bottle in her purse—not the biotin, but the morphine pills she'd stolen from David's room yesterday. The temptation to simply stop bearing it. To let go. The fox would understand. The fox did what was necessary.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. The hospital. She let it ring.

The fox melted into the shadows, gone as quickly as it had appeared. Elena finished her wine, put the glass in the sink, and took the vitamin bottle from her purse. She swallowed three—just vitamins—and headed for the hospital. Some weights you bear because you have no choice. Some things you survive because that's what animals do.