The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1)(59)

“And he asked her why she wanted to do that, and she said, ‘I want to go into space with Dr. York and be a lady astronaut like her. ’”

And that was when my attempts to not cry failed. Completely. But these tears were of an entirely different sort, and welcome. Nathaniel was crying with me, because that’s the sort of wonderful man I married.

Anyone looking at us would have thought that we were grieving, but it was the happiest I’d been in months.

*

You know you’ve worried your husband when he makes a doctor’s appointment for you. I couldn’t blame him. I was angry about it, but I couldn’t blame him. He drove me to the doctor’s office and sat in the waiting room. He probably would have come in, if I’d let him.

Instead, I was sitting in a gown on a cold table with my feet up in stirrups while a man I didn’t know did unmentionable things to my nether regions. Really, though. Would it be too much to ask that they warm these things?

The doctor pushed back his rolling stool. “You can sit up now, Mrs. York.”

He had a beautiful Scottish accent, which made his appearance a little less forbidding. Lean and intense, he studied me with pale blue eyes under heavy eyebrows. One focuses on such things, rather than the indignities of being a woman.

Clearing his throat, he turned away to a pad of paper. “Well, you’re definitely not pregnant.”

“I know. Thank you, though.”

“Can you tell me a little more about the vomiting?” His nose bent down like a hawk.

“Vomiting?”

“Your husband mentioned it when he made the appointment.”

I was going to kill Nathaniel. Pressing my lips together, I ground my teeth, before forcing a smile. “Oh, it’s nothing, really. You know how husbands get.”

He wheeled around to face me. “You have every right to be angry at his interference, but I’ll ask that you not use social niceties when I’m inquiring about symptoms. I need to know the frequency and nature of the vomiting to make certain that it isn’t related to another matter.”

“Oh.” I rubbed my forehead. The doctor just wanted to know how things were without Nathaniel’s misdiagnosis, the same way I wanted to see the raw numbers before they ran through a machine. Not that my husband was a machine, though I was aggravated with him as if he were. “It’s not … it’s not an illness. I just get nervous when I have to speak in front of a large group. That’s all. It’s been happening since I was a teenager.”

“Just before speaking?”

“Sometimes … sometimes after.” I twisted the hem of my gown, my head bent.

“What other times?”

“If I … it really doesn’t happen very often.” I hadn’t been preparing to speak this last time. My cheeks burned with shame, remembering. “But there have been times … when I feel … overwhelmed? If I’ve made a number of mistakes or feel like I’m … shirking?”

He grunted, but provided no other commentary. “And did anyone ever treat you for it?”

I shook my head. Hershel had wanted me to go to a doctor, but I was afraid that he would say I wasn’t fit for university. Or tell my parents, which would have amounted to the same thing.

“Do you have shortness of breath at these times? Sweating? Racing heart? Before vomiting, I mean.”

My head came up of its own accord. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

He nodded and pulled a prescription pad toward him. “You have anxiety, which is unsurprising, given the age we live in. The papers are calling it the Meteor Age, but I think the Age of Anxiety is more apt. I’m going to prescribe Miltown and refer you to—”

“I don’t want to take any drugs.”

He lifted his pen from his pad and turned to glare at me. “I beg your pardon.”

“I’m not sick. I just get upset sometimes.” This was exactly why I hadn’t wanted Hershel to take me to a doctor. Next thing you knew, I’d be in a sanatorium filled with women getting shock treatment and hydrotherapy for “nerves.”

“It’s perfectly safe. This is, in fact, the most common prescription I write.”

“But I’m fine.” I did not want to join the brigades of women taking “mother’s little helpers.”

The doctor pointed his pen at me. “If I had told you that your vomiting was caused by influenza, would you also refuse to take any medicine?”

“But that’s different.”

“It most certainly is not.” Rolling his stool closer, he held out the prescription. “My dear lady, your body is not supposed to react to stress in this way. You are, in literal fact, being made ill by forces outside yourself. Now, I want you to take this, and I’ll give you a referral to my colleague, who can discuss some other therapies as well.”

It was easier to take the piece of paper than to argue. So I did, and I thanked him, but I would be damned before I was going to drug myself into oblivion.

*

In the waiting room, Nathaniel was sitting in a chair by the window where I’d left him. His right knee bounced up and down, which it only did when he was really nervous. He had a magazine open, but I’m certain that he wasn’t reading it, because his gaze was just staring at the same spot on the page—until I walked over.