Zombies Need Vitamins Too

The divorce papers sat on the kitchen counter for three weeks before Julian finally started leaving them again—post-it notes, that is. Little yellow squares with messages like 'Eat something' and 'You look like death.'

He'd started leaving vitamin C tablets next to my coffee mug. One each morning, arranged in a neat little row like he was trying to cure something contagious. Like he thought my depression was a scurvy he could vitamin away.

'You're moving like a zombie again,' he said Tuesday evening, finding me staring at the refrigerator at 3 AM.

'I'm fine.'

'You haven't been fine since the miscarriage, Sarah. It's been eight months.'

The truth was, I wasn't moving like a zombie. I was moving like someone who'd learned that wanting things too much was how they got taken away. So I stopped wanting. Stopped running toward anything. Just let the days happen to me instead.

Friday, I came home to find a padel racquet on my pillow.

'What's this?'

'We're playing tomorrow. Court's booked at 10.'

'Julian, I haven't played since college. I can't—'

'You can. You just won't.' He kissed my forehead, something he hadn't done in months. 'Please, Sarah.'

The court was brutal. My body remembered movements my mind had forgotten, muscle memory from a life I'd lived before the baby, before the silence settled between Julian and me like dust. We played in near-silence, the rhythmic *thwack-thwack* of the ball against the walls filling the space where we used to have conversations.

I ran for a ball I shouldn't have reached, diving sideways, my ribs screaming. When I looked up, Julian was smiling.

'There she is,' he said softly.

I realized then that he'd been waiting for me to come back to him, just as I'd been waiting for myself to return. We were both haunting our marriage, two zombies bumping into each other in the dark.

That night, I took the vitamin. And the next morning, when Julian left another on the counter, I swallowed it too.

Some days, I still feel like I'm moving underwater. But now, sometimes, I run toward things instead of away from them. And Julian—the patient, stubborn man who refused to let me disappear completely—he's usually there, waiting for me on the other side.