Maggie sat on the table, swinging her dangling legs idly back and forth as she waited for the doctor. Her tired eyes settled randomly on the wall clock in front of her, and she watched as its second hand swept quietly around, lazy and predictable. Every thirty seconds or so she rechecked her cloth gown to make sure it hadn’t slipped and was still closed protectively around her. “So. Dr. Winters,” she mused. “What are you going to be like?” Maggie’s imagination – which had been conjuring up the various indignities that awaited her – halted abruptly as she realized, “Wait …. Hold on. Winters? Winters. Tim Winters ….”

And then the knock on the door came, and the doctor entered.

“Ms. Stanford?” he said, closing the door quietly and pumping some sanitizer into his hands. Setting a laptop down on the counter by the door, he looked up and their eyes met. “Tim Winters,” he said, extending his hand. Maggie shook his hand, and any lingering doubt about whether or not she knew him disappeared. The doctor took a step back and scrutinized Maggie’s face. “Maggie Stanford. I thought your name sounded familiar to me. You went to UNC, didn’t you,” he said. It was a statement of realization rather than a question.

Maggie nodded. “Class of ’96,” she said, right before another wave of nausea seized her. She bent over instinctively, careful to keep her gown securely closed around her upper body.

“Well,” Dr. Winters said, shaking his head. “Small world. But you’re not here for a reunion are you?” he said lightly, sitting down on the stool by the counter and waking up the laptop. “You seem pretty miserable,” he said with sympathy, reviewing the intake notes from her chart. “Sorry about that. Tell me what’s been going on.”

Tim Winters hadn’t aged much in twenty years. Maggie wondered if time had been as kind to her. She wasn’t a reliable judge. They weren’t particularly close in college but shared a few close friends and were thus more than just casually acquainted.

He’d been the point guard of the UNC basketball team back then, and had dated one of her friends for a time. He had a reputation for being a good guy. A bit of a player, but a decent human being. Still, it was tough for Maggie to square that guy with the person sitting before her, clad in charcoal grey scrubs underneath a white lab coat. Tim had always been attractive and, to Maggie’s dismay, it seemed he’d grown into himself quite nicely. Broad-shouldered and tall, he’d retained his thick head of chestnut colored hair, though it was trimmed more conservatively these days. Today, it was a black Littmann stethoscope draped around those shoulders rather than a gym towel.

He had gentle features, most notably wide-set, expressive blue eyes and an arresting mouth. Maggie had always secretly admired his lips, something she was actively trying to forget as he quizzed her on her symptoms.

“I feel awful. Tired, fluish,” Maggie started. “My head is killing me, I’ve been nauseated for days, have a fever …” She was having difficulty focusing and trailed off, closing her eyes to try and find some relief.

“You okay?” Tim said, watching Maggie carefully. “Are you feeling dizzy Maggie?” he asked, coming to stand in front of her at the exam table. She shook her head and opened her eyes slowly.

“Not dizzy, no,” Maggie said. “I can’t …” She brought her hands to her temples. “ … focus. I just feel fuzzy, like my response time is … I just feel out of it,” Maggie explained uneasily.

Tim nodded. “Brain fog,” he said, turning Maggie’s wrist palm side up and placing two fingers over her radial pulse. “Little hard to concentrate?” he asked, eyebrows raised. Maggie nodded wearily.

“So … nausea. Any vomiting?” Maggie shook her head.

“And when did your symptoms start?” Tim asked, moving back to the laptop to document.

“About four days ago,” Maggie replied.

Tim nodded. Without looking up from the laptop, he asked, “Did the symptoms come on gradually or all at once?”

“They came on pretty quickly,” she said. “And now this weird brain fog and …”

He looked up.

“What else?”

“Something’s going on with my back. I don’t know …”

“Okay. I’ll take a look,” Tim said, grabbing the otoscope from the wall and shining it in his palm to test the light source. “Just relax, I’m going to check out ears, nose, and throat first, okay?”

After examining Maggie’s ears and nose, Tim asked her to open her mouth wide and stick out her tongue. “Big ahhh for me please,” he said as he depressed her tongue. He turned off the light source and backed away from Maggie, returning the otoscope to its cradle on the wall.

“You’re looking pretty congested and your throat is a little red, so something’s brewing,” Tim said. “No trouble swallowing?” Maggie shook her head.

“I’m going to palpate your neck here Maggie,” he said. He palpated from behind to assess her thyroid first.

“I think the last I heard from Ben Whittier, you were in grad school. Hopkins, was it?” Maggie was surprised he would’ve remembered that.

“Yeah. God,” she said incredulously. “That was like ten years ago.”

“Swallow for me,” Tim said quietly. “Any pain here?”

“No.” He came around the table to face Maggie and began gentle palpation of her neck along the anterior cervical chain.

“I know, crazy how fast the time passes,” Tim said, shaking his head. “Just relax for me here …” Maggie felt the pads of his fingers shift under her chin to examine the submandibular and submental spaces for inflammation or swelling.

“How is Ben? I haven’t heard from him in ages,” Maggie said, still trying to acclimate to the feel of Tim’s hands on her body as memories of his twenty-year-old self kept resurfacing in her mind.

Tim finished his neck exam and reached for the laptop, shaking his head. “Same old Ben,” he answered with a smile. “He’s well. Happily married, still working for Northrup Grumman.”

As an extended silence ensued, Tim documented efficiently on the laptop, a far cry from Larissa’s frenetic finger pecking. Maggie watched Tim’s hands as they moved expertly and quickly over the keypad, and noticed the absence of a ring. “Interesting,” she thought. She was somewhat surprised.

“Okay Maggie, I need to listen to your lungs,” Tim said, rising from the stool. “Do you think you can manage some deep breaths for me?”

“I think so,” Maggie nodded vacantly, too distracted by the pending auscultation to say anything more.

“Good,” he nodded. “Let me take a look at your back first before I get started,” he said, lifting the gown up her back and exposing her torso. Maggie felt Tim’s warm hand make contact with her back. “Yeah, last time I connected with Ben he told me Alison was back up this way too,” he said. “Oh,” he remarked, before Maggie had a chance to respond. “I see what you mean, you’ve got a pretty angry looking rash brewing back here, Maggie,” he said.

“Yeah, Allision is teaching women’s studies at Temple,” Maggie eventually replied.

Tim grabbed a pair of latex gloves from a box on the wall and gently probed the area. “Well,” he mused, cautiously probing the rash on Maggie’s back, “thanks for letting me know so that now I can duck and cover on my way out to my car tonight.” This made Maggie laugh, which in turn made Tim’s gentle palpation feel more like tickling, which just made it worse. “Yes she always was a bit of an anarchist,” Maggie agreed. Allison was Maggie’s roommate junior and senior year of college, and the one that Tim had dated for a time.

“Am I hurting you Maggie?” he asked, not wanting to press too hard.

“It burns, like sunburn almost. But it’s okay,” Maggie replied, arching her back a bit.

“Does it itch?” he asked, peeking around her torso on either side to make sure the rash was contained to that area.

“Maybe a little. If I could reach it, I probably would’ve scratched it by now,” Maggie admitted. Then she heard the earpieces of Tim’s stethoscope clicking against themselves as he slid it from around his shoulders.

“Okay, now the lungs. When you’re ready Maggie, please inhale and exhale slowly through your mouth so I can listen to your breathing, okay?”

Maggie nodded silently, knowing that her voice would have betrayed just how anxious she was to be auscultated.