Sherlock Holmes frowned halfway through buttoning his shirt back up. There had been a screen, of course, but the damned nurse had been snickering behind her hand the entire time. "Do you really need to know that?"
"It's important, yes," the doctor sighed, pen pausing on her sheaf of notes. "Just answer the question, Mr. Holmes."
"Why exactly do you need to know the last time I had… relations?"
The nurse giggled. The girl was truly not in the right line of work.
"Because it may very well be a disease transmitted sexually, and if this is the case I can either identify it as such or inform your recent partners. You don't have to give names or details," Dr. Trenton all but coaxed. She was used to prying this information out like a dentist pulling teeth, her usual clinic patients being women, young women mostly, who were proper ladies in every other sense but keeping their knees together. "Actually, I'd rather if you didn't go into detail."
"Fine…" the detective finally grumbled as he fought to get his tie redone. It was hard with anyone other than his reflection watching. "About six or seven weeks ago."
"You're telling me the Great Detective can't remember the exact date?"
"Forty-four days ago. I don't quite remember the time. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough," agreed the doctor, scribbling down the last of it. "I'll get back to you as soon as I have half an idea, Mr. Holmes. At the moment I'm in the mist, but no one person can remember every single disease, and I suppose that's why they made the printing press and the medical textbook. Contact me if your symptoms worsen."
The man scuttled out the door like a schoolboy from detention, leaving Dr. Felicia Trenton to puzzle over a set of symptoms that seemed somehow familiar yet still entirely off.