I was right. It was no more than five minutes in my arms that Melissa started twisting free, looking around frantically for her clothes and telling me about all the things she had to get done at 10:00 p.m. How what we had done was incredibly unprofessional and how it could never happen again.

I told her to show up again in two days and as she left, her hair a mess and her demure dress on a little crooked, I was sure she would come back. If she didn’t, I’d have to go to her. What that meant I was not going to delve into because frankly, I didn’t want to know.

With thoughts of her still swirling around in my early-morning brain, I run on the treadmill at the gym, her file in digital format open on my tablet. Natalie Imbruglia is blasting in my headphones, though blasting it a big word for soft-voiced Natalie. It’s not the kind of music I usually listen to, but when I was searching for a playlist to turn on, my fingers went to this one as if on their own volition. Maybe her broken style of feminine empowerment reminds me of someone.

It’s 6:00 a.m. and I’m well into my workout, with plans of making it into the office by 7:30 at the latest. I tend to squeeze my gym time in before I get to work because I can never know what time my day ends. Sometimes I’m out of there by 5:00 p.m., sometimes I’m in surgery until 5:00 a.m. The job takes what it needs and I love it.

Usually I use this time to go through my patient files for the day and sort out my schedule. Today, and not for the first time, I find myself flipping through Melissa’s file again. I know she doesn’t have CVS, that’s blatantly obvious, but I do think there’s something to her that’s not entirely all right. It goes beyond just being a rigidly set in her ways kind of person.

She’s a mystery and I’ve always loved a puzzle. With her, I’m even more intrigued than I thought myself capable.

Sweat rolling down my brow, I feel my phone buzzing in the pocket of my shorts. A regular at the gym walks past me and gives me a little wave. We went to dinner once. It turned into a quick fuck in the bathroom. Her name might be Alessia. Flipping her a quick smile, I answer the phone, pointing at my Bluetooth headset so she’d know that I’m not just ignoring her. Though it’s a damn convenient excuse.

“Mr. Big, I presume?” the voice on the other line greets me.

“It’s Dr. Big,” I say. It’s one of my favorite lines to deliver, I’m not even going to pretend that it isn’t.

“My apologies, of course. I’m calling about a Melissa Malone. I am Dr. Feinstein. My assistant told me you wanted to talk to me about her. I don’t know how I can help you though, Dr. Big. She hasn’t been my patient for more than five years now. I hope I’m not disturbing you, your message said that any time after 5:30 is fine.”

“Any information you can give me is worth its weight in gold. If you could just go through her history with me, I’d be much obliged.”

Dr. Feinstein is the third doctor to call me back in the long line of professionals Melissa has marked down in her medical history. I skipped a couple of obvious jackasses, people I knew, and went straight for doctors who’d seen her earlier. There’s this nagging feeling that I don’t know the whole story and every doctor I speak to helps me get a step closer to it.

I’m not supposed to take this kind of an interest and I’m definitely not supposed to be tracking down her doctors and asking them to divulge information about her now that we’ve concluded our ‘traditional’ patient-doctor relationship, but she’s a drug I can’t shake. I need to know.

Dr. Feinstein and I spend a fulfilling half an hour on the phone, going through the minutiae of Melissa’s medical history, and he ends up giving me a couple of other leads that weren’t in her file. Like the number to her former high school nurse’s office, and to her childhood GP, both of which I intend to follow up on. By the end of the call, I’m so thankful I don’t even tell Dr. Feinstein what a fucking dumbass he is for telling Melissa she has CVS, or at least confirming her suspicions that she might have it.

My run turns into a long one as I shoot off a couple of emails and make some calls that go straight to voicemail because of the early hour of the day. By the time I reach the hospital, it’s almost 8:00 and Ginny tells me sourly that my coffee is probably cold. She always has a cup waiting for me in the office.

If last night with Melissa wasn’t enough of a reason to keep me distracted during the day, the calls I get later in the afternoon definitely are. I end up having a long conversation with the nurse, a Mrs. Jenson, who as my luck might have it has been working there for twenty years. She remembers Melissa clearly and I have to clear an hour in my schedule to talk with her.

As she relates to me the story of Melissa Malone, I start with taking notes, and then stop completely and just listen. All those weird little ticks, her inability to step out of her comfort zone, her insistence that everything has to be her way start making sense. By the time the call ends, I’m speechless and for what might be the first time in my life, uncertain of what I should do next.

On one hand, Melissa is a woman who came to me for help in a professional capacity, help that I wouldn’t give her because I thought there was nothing wrong with her. That’s where it should have ended, but it didn’t.

On the other hand, she’s someone I can’t stop thinking about. I might be… developing feelings for her. It’s a thought best brushed aside – I don’t do feelings, my life doesn’t have time for commitments to a singular pussy – but one that I can’t disregard as easily as I’d like.

After another half an hour of staring at a wall, I shoot her a text and ask her to meet me for coffee this evening. The ‘I’ll make it worth your while…’ and accompanying emoji are an afterthought that come naturally. The ‘I miss you’ gets deleted before I send it out.

The fact that I do, in fact, miss her, is best buried under a heavy caseload that has to keep my mind off of her for the rest of the day before I see her again. A part of me thinks that if I could fix her, maybe it’ll go away. Maybe I won’t miss her then.

After all, on some level, she’s still just a medical mystery, one that I might be able to solve now, right?