What We Feed Ourselves

I stood in the supplement aisle, staring at rows of promises in amber bottles. Vitamin D for bones I haven't broken yet, B-complex for energy I no longer felt, fish oil for a heart that felt strangely hollow since Maya's diagnosis. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead—the same sound the hospital lights made, I imagined. I'd been doing a lot of imagining lately. Maya had stopped returning my texts three weeks ago, and I'd filled that silence with running: five miles every morning, thighs burning, lungs gasping, as if I could outrun the knowing.

Her hair had been the first thing I noticed when we met sophomore year—wild, dark curls that refused to be tamed, much like her laugh. Now I wondered if she'd lost it yet, or if she was still clinging to each strand like a secret. I'd read somewhere that cancer patients sometimes cut it off themselves, seizing control before the treatment takes it. That sounded like Maya. She always chose her sacrifices.

I bought the vitamins anyway. Drove to her apartment with my heart hammering against my ribs, running red lights I swore I'd stop at later. When she opened the door, she was thinner, yes, but still standing. Still here. The hair was gone—a soft peach fuzz covering her scalp like something new trying to grow.

"Vitamins," I said, holding out the bag like an idiot. Like amber glass could fix what chemotherapy was trying to kill. Like I could fix three weeks of radio silence with supplements.

She smiled, tired and knowing. "Come in, Sarah."

I sat on her couch. She made tea. We talked about everything except what mattered—work, weather, the new coffee shop downtown, how long it had been. Running from the conversation we needed to have, the way I'd been running from her hospital room since her diagnosis.

"I'm not dead yet," she said finally, setting down her mug. "You can stop mourning me."

"I was giving you space."

"You were giving yourself distance. There's a difference."

She was right. I'd spent our entire friendship measuring safety in proximity—close enough to care, far enough to survive the losing. But watching her now, bald and brilliant and terrifyingly alive, I understood what I'd been feeding myself all these years: the fiction that protecting myself was the same thing as loving her.

"I'll come tomorrow," I said. "And the day after."

"Just bring real coffee next time," she said. "Hospital shit will kill you faster than the cancer."

I left knowing I'd run tomorrow morning, but not away anymore. Some things you have to run toward, even when they break your heart. Especially then.