Page 7 of The Light Year (Stardust Beach #6)

barbie

. . .

"Vestibular dysfunction." The doctor is looking at Todd with a serious face.

Barbie, who is sitting on the side of the room, legs crossed, purse in her lap, feels her stomach fall.

She has no idea what vestibular dysfunction is, but it sounds serious.

Her eyes jump over to Todd to see how he's taking the news.

"Essentially, you have damaged your inner ear, and that disrupts the flow of information from the inner ear to the brain.

" The doctor, a man in his late fifties with salt-and-pepper hair and a white lab coat that's buttoned over a shirt and tie, stands and walks over to a life-size drawing of the human body and all its parts.

He points at the brain. "If the messages aren't being received properly, you can experience bouts of dizziness and disorientation, and it can be, frankly, quite debilitating. Particularly for an astronaut."

Todd grimaces and rubs one temple. "Will it just go away on its own?"

"Well." The doctor puts one of his hands into the big, square pocket of his lab coat and pulls out a pen and a note pad.

He holds them as he ponders Todd's question.

"It's possible. However, it's also possible that you'll experience nystagmus, which are rapid, involuntary eye movements.

It can also lead to headaches, tinnitus, and double vision. "

Todd groans audibly. "I can't afford to have any of that happen. I need to be fixed, doc. Like, now. What can I do to speed this along?"

The doctor's serious face melts into an amused smile, and for a moment, he gazes at Todd the way a father might look at an impatient son.

"We can get you started with rehabilitation and some medication to control the vertigo, and we'll check back in a couple of weeks to see if things are improving.

In the meantime, I can write you a doctor's note to get some time off work and focus on recovery. How does that sound?"

Barbie bites her bottom lip as she waits for Todd's reply; she knows exactly how this will sound to him, and she also knows that he hasn't yet let Arvin North know how he's feeling.

Barbie doesn't entirely agree with the way he's handling things here, and certainly being up front with the doctors at NASA would be his best bet, but it's not really up to her to dictate her husband's methods when it comes to work, so she stays quiet and watches the emotions that pass over his face.

"I don't know about getting time off," Todd says, patting his knee with one hand nervously. "Yeah, I think that will make me look like I can't handle things, and I know I can. We were in a full-blown, one rotation per second roll, and I think my body just needs a bit of time to right itself."

"Mr. Roman," the doctor says, looking serious again.

"While I don't dispute that you know yourself better than anyone, I will tell you that my bigger fear is that your body won't heal itself naturally and quickly, and that instead of a little physical therapy, we might instead be looking at surgery. "

Todd's face blanches. "Surgery? No. No, I'm not interested in that."

The doctor uncaps the pen in his hand and scrawls something on his notepad, the top page of which he tears off and hands to Todd.

"Then I suggest you fill this prescription, make an appointment for physical therapy tomorrow morning, take the absence note I'll leave for you at the front counter, and commit to recuperating. Am I making myself clear?"

Todd, clearly chagrined, looks down at the linoleum floor beneath his feet. "Yes, sir," he says, sounding like a school boy. "I hear you."

The drive home is quiet, and Barbie tries to focus on ways she can keep the boys busy and occupied during the time Todd is off work.

If she's being perfectly honest with herself, she's kind of excited at the prospect of having her husband home for a bit.

It will give her the opportunity to soak in his presence, and for them to do things together as a family.

By the time they pull into the driveway, Barbie is already imagining Todd resting on the couch as the boys play nearby, or the five of them in the pool, where Todd can easily lie back and float if he gets dizzy. It could actually be kind of nice for him , Barbie thinks.

Todd shuts off the car and pulls the keys from the ignition. He leans his head back and closes his eyes, looking utterly defeated.

“Todd?” Barbie sets a hand on his knee tentatively. “Are you okay?”

Without opening his eyes, Todd blows out a loud breath.

“I can’t do this, Barb. I can’t have surgery.

I can’t be on sick leave. I was lucky to even get on that mission in the first place.

” He opens his eyes and turns to look at his wife.

“We all knew that Booker was a lock, but the other spots are always up for grabs.”

Barbie frowns. “What makes Bill a sure thing?”

“His seniority,” Todd says, ticking things off on his fingers. “His military experience. His relationship with Arvin North?—“

“What, do you mean that he kisses up to North?” Barbie wants to understand, and if there’s an unfair advantage for someone else in Todd’s work life—even if it’s the husband of someone she likes and respects very much—then Barbie wants to know about it.

“No, not like that,” Todd says, shaking his head. “But North favors him. It’s not widely broadcast or anything, but he has a special affinity for Bill. I mean, why else would he go to the trouble of rehabilitating Bill and having him lead a mission after he punched your brother, for God’s sake?”

Barbie turns her head to look out the window.

She’d committed to not involving herself in the dramas of the men (even if one of the men in question is her only brother), and she isn’t really interested in parsing why Bill had felt compelled to hit Ted.

Frankly, if she’s being honest with herself, there have been plenty of times in her own life when she would have liked to hit Ted.

“I guess he sees something in Bill,” Barbie says, knitting her hands together in her lap.

The windows of the car are down, but it’s still hot in the September afternoon.

The boys are being watched across the street from their house by Carrie, who agreed to take Heath and Henry in after the school bus dropped them off, and Carrie has had Huck with her all morning, so Barbie is starting to feel the itch to run over and get the kids.

“Which is fine,” Todd says, putting both hands on the steering wheel and squeezing it until his knuckles go white. “But there’s a lot of behavior being rewarded that, in my humble opinion, shouldn’t be.”

Barbie nods. “The fight,” she says knowingly.

“Right. The fight, the way Bill spends far too much time mooning over Jeanie Florence, the?—“

Barbie’s head snaps to attention and she turns to look at her husband. “Is that true? The whole thing about Bill and Jeanie kissing?”

It’s Todd’s turn to look at her quickly, and when their eyes meet, she knows that Todd knows more than he’s let on.

“Todd Roman!” Barbie shouts, thwacking his upper arm with the back of her hand. “It’s true! You knew about it!”

“How did you know about it?”

“Carrie mentioned it over coffee,” Barbie says with a shrug. “But I thought maybe it was just gossip, and I didn’t want to hear it or spread it around.”

“Well,” Todd says, looking resigned to the facts at hand.

“I don’t think it’s just gossip. Bill is always watching her, and she’s always watching him, and the rumor is—between you and me, because please, I don’t want to get caught telling tales—that there’s actual video footage of them kissing in the stairwell on the night of the explosion at the Cape. ”

“Wow,” Barbie says, blinking a few times.

“Just wow, wow, wow.” Her mind immediately goes to Jo, as it had when Carrie first brought up the topic.

How is this fair to Jo, who works her tail off for everyone else, and how is Bill going to carry on like this and humiliate a woman as solid and good as Josephine Booker? Barbie can hardly imagine it.

“I know.” Todd gives a single shake of his head. “And he’s not even canoodling with a Cape Cookie like Mack Poulson. He’s gotta muddy the waters at work, which is just bad form.”

“Wait!” Barbie whacks his arm again. “Mack Poulson is messing with a Cape Cookie? Doesn’t he have that nice wife and the five kids?” She is stunned and scandalized at the thought of a nice, clean-cut guy like Mack Poulson carrying on with a loose woman.

“Yeah, that’s Mack.” Todd looks so nonchalant about it that Barbie is even more scandalized. “Is this something that happens a lot? Do the guys at NASA pick up girls at The Black Hole and step out on their wives?”

Todd makes a face and then revises it so that he looks slightly remorseful at having to deliver the news to his wife.

“I guess some do,” he says, shooting her an apologetic look.

“Guys being guys and all. But most of the core ones in my group are straight shooters, Barb. Believe that. Jay Reed, Vance Majors, Ed Maxwell—no way. They might appreciate a beauty as she sweeps by on her way to the jukebox, but I’ve never seen one of them so much as dance with another woman.

Now, Bill… before this Jeanie business, I would have put him in that category too, if I’m being honest. In fact, I thought of him as our unofficial leader.

A real no nonsense kind of guy. But knowing he might have kissed one of our engineers calls that into question… ”

“Okay.” Barbie nods, trying to accept this news about a man she knows relatively well. “Ugh. Do you think Jo knows?” This pains her to consider.

“Oh, jeez.” Todd puts up both hands in surrender. “That would be more your area than mine, hon. Women’s talk is not something I engage in a whole lot. Do you think she knows?”