Measures of Health

Emma stared at the smoothie in her blender—kale, spinach, ginger, the morning's performance of someone who was trying. Thirty-five and still performing.

"You taking your vitamins?" Mark called from the bedroom, muffled by the closing door.

Emma dumped the green sludge into a glass. Yes, she was taking them. The prenatal ones with DHA and iron, even though they'd been trying for two years. Two years of measuring. Two years of spinach smoothies and organic everything and Mark's mother asking, with that thin smile, if they'd considered adoption yet.

Their aging Labrador, Barnaby, thumped his tail against the kitchen cabinets. He was the only one who didn't seem disappointed in her.

The fertility specialist yesterday had been gentle, which was almost worse. "Sometimes it just doesn't work," she'd said. "We can try IUI, we can do IVF, but sometimes—the body has its own logic."

Bullshit, Emma had thought. The body had logic, but it wasn't poetic. It was proteins and receptors and timing and money. It wasn't some divine mystery. It was a system that could be hacked, if you had enough resources, if you were willing to inject yourself with hormones in bathroom stalls between meetings.

She'd gone back to work and sat through a presentation on "holistic wellness" from HR, some twenty-something with a yoga instructor's serene smile talking about mindfulness and stress reduction and how health was about balance, not metrics.

Emma had wanted to stand up and scream that she knew all about metrics. She knew her AMH levels and her progesterone and her thyroid and her basal body temperature, charted with religious precision on an app that sent her notifications like gentle threats.

Mark came into the kitchen, knotting his tie. "Big meeting today," he said. "The new VP from Chicago. Apparently he's a real bull." He paused, catching her expression. "Sorry. That was—"

"It's fine." Emma rinsed her glass. The spinach aftertaste lingered. "Go. Get your big meeting."

"Em."

"What?"

"We're okay, right?"

She looked at him—really looked. At the concern in his eyes, the way his tie was slightly crooked, how he aged more beautifully than she did. At Barnaby, who was now watching them with that uncanny perceptiveness dogs develop when something is wrong.

"We're fine," she said. "Just tired of the spinach."

He laughed, surprised. "Yeah. Me too."

After he left, Emma took her vitamins. One by one, like she'd been taught. Then she sat on the floor with Barnaby and buried her face in his soft fur, letting him lick the tears from her cheeks before she could decide whether they were worth crying. The body had its logic, yes. But so did the heart, and sometimes—just sometimes—it decided to stop measuring.