Sous Vide

Hadley emerged from underwater into the humid air, breaking through the surface of water in a loud gasp — less like an elegant mermaid, she thought, and more like a gilled, buggy-eyed fish swimming upstream. Rarely had anything Hadley accomplished athletically with her body ever been considered elegant.

She pushed her wet braid out of her face and rubbed her eyes to ease the sting of chlorine, and she remembered her mother swatting her hands from her face when she did that as a child. But it felt good, so she did it anyway, well into adulthood, still not caring if she lost an eyelash or two over it.

And even at 29, it felt good to defy her mother whenever possible.

At 7 a.m. the gym was blessedly empty still, and rain fell steadily onto the glass geodesic structure covering the pool. She felt immersed inside a fishbowl. Hadley’s heart rate calmed to its normal pace as she climbed out of the deep end, and she took inventory of her pruned fingers as she walked, dripping, toward the locker room.

She debated the sauna. Sometimes it made her drowsy, other times claustrophobic. Tackling claustrophobia was getting easier; she could even spend the night sleeping in her dark, windowless closet now. It was a walk-in, but still. Progress was progress.

She found the sauna heat oppressive and suffocating, but she always emerged feeling lighter. She didn’t buy the nonsense of ridding her body of toxins — “that’s what kidneys were for, thank you very much,” as her med school roommate said, frequently — but there was some benefit to "sweating it out."

The scale decided for her. She was discouraged at what it read: 162 pounds. It was far from where she’d been this time last year, pushing 185, and the year before that at over 200, but it wasn’t nearly close enough. She has hoped to be down to 159 this week. She felt each extra pound — still too much at the hips, inner thighs, upper back. She never carried weight well on her 5’5” frame.

She took a deep breath and released it through puffed cheeks, the familiar weight-loss-induced anxiety already pressing against her chest, and tried to revel in non-scale victories. She ran her hand along her firmer stomach constantly, still surprised to no longer identify the familiar rolls she used to pinch, hard, as if that would will them away. Her arm muscles were now somewhat existent, and she flexed under her sweaters, identifying the hills where there were once valleys. She slept better and looked better, and she didn’t run out of breath running a mile anymore.

And she tried, as she did every day, to think of the Bigger Picture. She wasn’t losing weight to look better. She needed to be healthier to combat the effects of living in zero gravity for a year at a time. She needed to fit into standardized equipment and gear. She needed to be in the best shape humanly possible. So she took a deep breath, and stepped into the wood-paneled pod, and let the heat and steam work toward eliminating another stubborn pound. She tried to enjoy it, and pretended instead that she was in a geothermal bath in Iceland, outside in the open air, the starkness surrounding her — white and black and green, as far as the eye could see. The steam from bath purifying her, sulfur cleansing her senses, settling into her skin. Rich, black mud between her toes. She reveled in the thought, briefly, and pushed it away. Less daydreaming was another goal, but this goal was harder.

She was pretty sure there were no saunas on Mars.