CELIA

“So, what’s the actual problem…?”

“I’m not sure, doc. I’m sorry. But the referring physician’s office wasn’t the most organized operation,” Paula said, clearly frustrated.

I ran through a quick set of scenarios and alternatives in my mind, all of them time consuming for her administrative team. Why do things have to be so complicated?“You know what, Paula? Just process him as a brand-new patient. I mean, that would solve a lot of these annoyances, right?” I asked as I headed behind the workstation to grab a stack of paper charts. I was far behind with my documentation, and really needed to spend some time behind a locked office door to catch up.

My normally long gait was somewhat restricted by the grey above-the-knee pencil skirt I was wearing today. I’d paired it with a white sleeveless silk blouse and a plum-colored bolero shrug – layers were always good with the volatile weather.

Paula looked appreciative. I knew she was doing her best managing my busy practice, but it was a lot. Wherever possible, I tried to find ways to simplify things for her and the frontline team she managed.

“I hadn’t even considered that. Genius,” she said, shaking her head in wonder. “Thank you,” she nearly cried, clasping her hands together and then blowing me a kiss on her way back to her office. Midway down the hallway she turned back. “So he’s due in later today. At 2, I think …” then she ducked into her office.

It was always somewhat challenging when patients came to me without records. People always assumed that a clean health history meant that records were unnecessary. But there’s a story in that too, with important details. This patient was a referral from the west coast, so I couldn’t rely upon my familiarity with the referring office, place a casual call, and get what I needed. It’ll be fine. The body tells its own story.

The afternoon passed quicky and I found myself outside the door of my last patient of the day. This is the Jacobs guy. Okay. 42-year-old male, moved from San Diego, no obtainable records, occupation unknown … As I did a mental inventory of what I knew about this patient, I knocked on the door and entered.

“Hello,” I said with a quick smile as I closed the door behind me, set down the tablet, and sanitized my hands. The patient stood when I entered the room.

“Mr. Jacobs, yes …?” I said, approaching him with my hand extended. He was taller than I, which wasn’t uncommon when I saw male patients. He nodded.

“That’s right. Tanner,” he further clarified, grasping my hand.

“Lovely to meet you. I’m Dr. Valero. Please, have a seat,” I responded and followed suit, lowering myself into the chair facing him. He appeared to be generally healthy and in no apparent distress, he had good skin tone and integrity, didn’t appear to be laboring at all with his breathing, and was well groomed. I didn’t pick up on any awkwardness or anxiety from him. Hmm. He’s very attractive. I wonder what he does? I’ll find out …

“So tell me, what brings you in today?”

“I relocated recently and need to establish care with a primary here. You came highly recommended,” he added. His smile was charming. Then he dipped his head, almost bashfully.

“Well,” I said with a smile, aiming for cordial but not overly friendly, “I always appreciate referrals.”

I’d found that this was necessary with the men who, even if it wasn’t entirely conscious, tended to interact with me as though we were on a first date rather than in a clinical consultation. The next fifteen or twenty minutes were spent obtaining a thorough history of my patient. By all accounts he was relatively healthy and did not have any risk factors of concern, so it was time to move things along.

“Okay, then. I’ll step out and give you an opportunity to undress,” I said, standing up. Something flickered behind his eyes, something I couldn’t readily identify. It wasn’t the nervousness that I was accustomed to seeing. It looked almost like … was it anticipation? He stood as well, and watched as I made my way to the door.

“How would you like me to undress?” he asked.

My hand already on the door, I stopped in my tracks. I knew what he was asking me, but for whatever reason, it rang much differently in my ears. I turned and looked him squarely in the eyes. “All but the briefs, please,” I answered, then walked out of the room.

It wasn’t until I was on the other side of the closed door that I realized I hadn’t really been breathing. My hand lingered on the knob for several moments as I caught my breath.

What the hell?

TANNER

Holy fuck. What was THAT?

I hesitated for a moment, trying to process what had just happened. She had to have felt it too. The space between us had buzzed with electricity when she turned back to look at me. Don’t get me wrong, she had made an impression when she first entered the room, petite and pale complected with her blonde hair pulled up in a sophisticated French twist. I’d had to be careful to focus my attention on her face rather than her fantastic legs, set off by an above-the-knee pencil skirt. She had paired it with a pale silk camisole through which the faint outline of a lacy bra could be seen. I’m guessing it was the camisole’s transparency that compelled her to finish the ensemble with a pretty plum-colored shrug. No scrubs, no smock, no stethoscope but … quite lovely.

Snapping out of my little daydream I undressed quickly and sat on the exam table to wait, replaying that last interaction in my mind, my pulse quickening. I was always a little apprehensive at the doctor’s office, particularly if I was seeing someone new, so I was already a little wound up. Maybe that’s why that last thing felt so … charged. Whatever. I was probably imagining things.

I heard a light rap on the door and Dr. Valero stepped in and closed the door behind her with a perfunctory smile. I watched as she walked to the sink to lather and rinse her hands, before drying them and applying hand sanitizer.

“All set?” she asked, her eyebrows arched in anticipation of my response as she approached me at the exam table. She now had a black Littmann Master Cardiology stethoscope draped around her neck, and the sight of it made my mouth dry up. My eyes were drawn to the weight of the heavy diaphragm where it rested comfortably against her right breast, and the rest of my body reacted viscerally. I tried to shut it down in my mind and, when I looked up, I realized she was still waiting for my reply.

“Oh, yes,” I said, clearing my throat nervously.

“Great,” she said, grabbing the otoscope from the wall and testing the light on the inside of her palm. “We’ll do a full physical today since you’re a new patient, starting from your head and working our way down your body to your neck, heart and lungs, abdomen, peripheral pulses and circulation, and finally a genitourinary exam. We’ll see where things go from there. I might ask for some lab work as well. I like to lay out the components of the exam beforehand so there are no surprises. Any questions?”

“Why not start at the bottom and work your way up?” I thought to myself. She certainly left nothing to the imagination. Instead, a simple “no” escaped my lips.

“Okay then. Let’s get started,” she said, all business.

She made quick work of examining my head, ears, nose, and mouth, then conducted a brief cranial nerve exam. As she moved her penlight in front of my face, calmly instructing me to follow the light or look straight ahead, I noted that her eyes were a beautiful shade of blue. I think my heart skipped a beat. God. She really was beautiful.

“Okay, let me just quickly feel your thyroid here, and then we’ll move on,” she said, placing her cool hands around my neck and palpating at the base. “Swallow please.” I complied quickly and she resumed her position in front of me. Without warning she placed her fingers on both my radial pulse points and counted as the silence expanded between us.

Though her head was down most of the time that she was counting, she did glance up a time or two during those sixty seconds, and I swear I felt a pulse of that same electricity. She removed her hands from my wrists and a faint smile played on her lips as she reached for her stethoscope. Something about it made me feel intrusive for having seen it, like somehow the smile was meant only for her.

CELIA

This hadn’t happened to me in quite some time. Usually it was relatively easy for me to examine men, even attractive men, without a second thought. Learning to compartmentalize is part of the job, after all. That said, I’m human and there have been times over the years where I’ve felt a certain chemistry with a patient here or there. But whatever that was, it felt more like a crackling live wire. And I sensed that he felt it too. Which was going to make this encounter somewhat more challenging. Still, I was eager to hear what his body had to tell me.

Other than Jess, I’d never confided in anyone else about the heart thing. That’s what we called it because we never came up with anything better. I honestly considered going into cardiology rather than general medicine because of it. Listening to hearts – or having my heart listened to – is such an awesome thing. Like, truly, literally, awesome. It never fails to move me. And I love that it’s something I get to do every day in my work. Beating hearts are fascinating secret keepers, and you can only discover their deepest, most intimate secrets with a stethoscope. It makes using one feel like a special privilege, being allowed to listen to and discover these secrets inside of another person. I mean, that’s how I felt any time I picked up a stethoscope. Now, add carnal attraction to that delicate equation and ….

Shit. Pull yourself together. He’s a patient.

I said a silent prayer and re-entered the room, committed to maintaining a professional, somewhat detached, demeanor. I smiled politely on my way to the sink to wash my hands. My patient was waiting for me on the exam table and as I approached him, our eyes met briefly before he lowered his gaze and it landed where all men’s do, at my chest. So typical.

I liked to give patients a sense of what was coming to try and manage anxiety, so I always ran through what it was I’d be doing. I finished my little spiel by asking Mr. Jacobs if he had any questions before we got started. He seemed distracted. Maybe he wasn’t ogling my chest after all. Paying closer attention and feeling somewhat guilty for having jumped to chauvinist conclusions, I realized it was my stethoscope, not my breasts, that had him transfixed. Was I imagining it?

Damn. Wouldn’t that be amazing.