short fiction · 2026-10-26

Titration

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The first week: five milligrams of morning texts, half-life six hours, steady state by day three. She woke to good morning and the world tilted measurable degrees — cortisol down 12%, dopamine up 34%, the numbers clean as a phase-one trial.

Week two: dose doubled. Good morning became good morning beautiful became I dreamed of you. The curve steepened. She stopped checking the weather. Started checking the timestamp. The therapeutic window narrowed without announcement.

Week four: twenty milligrams. Voice notes at midnight. Photos of coffee cups. The inside of his wrist. She developed tolerance — the same dose produced less effect. She needed more. She asked for more. He gave it: I miss you, I miss you, I miss you, a sustained-release formulation she wore against her skin.

Week eight: toxicity. The texts arrived during meetings, during her mother's surgery, during the minutes she needed to be someone else. Nausea. Tremor. The particular vertigo of being known too well. She skipped a dose. Withdrawal hit at 0400: cold sweat, the phantom vibration of a phone that hadn't lit up in six hours.

She tapered. Two weeks. One week. Every other day. The half-life of him in her blood: eighteen days by her calculation. She still checks the timestamp on the last message. Still calculates the concentration. Still waits for the assay to read zero.