For the first year that the women lived next door to Phil, he assumed Elizabeth had a boyfriend, even though there was no evidence to suggest that she did. She always came home alone and there were never any unidentified men lingering in the hallway. It just seemed to Phil that Elizabeth should be attached, maybe to an equally attractive hippie guy, someone with a full beard who played Frisbee.

Phil hoped to talk to her one day and steal her away from this fictional man. He lingered in the hallway to hold doors for Elizabeth, but he couldn’t think of a way to start up a conversation.

He was finally given an opportunity, a gift from God, as he told his friends, two years ago, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, when the building was mostly empty. Phil’s apartment complex, which wasn’t far from the University of Maryland medical buildings, was mostly inhabited by graduate students who left on holidays to be with their out-of-state families.

At about eleven that night, long after Phil had reheated and consumed the salty turkey leftovers sent home with him by his mother the night before, he heard a soft tapping on his door. He opened it to find a pale and clammy Elizabeth leaning against the hallway wall, trying to smile politely as she clutched her stomach and winced.

“I’m Elizabeth from next door,” she said, her eyes red and dry. “There’s something wrong. I think I’m sick. I need you to call somebody.”

Quickly Phil took Elizabeth’s hands and walked her to his couch, where she lay down, her legs knocking over a small stack of sports magazines that had been collecting dust on his coffee table.

“Do you want some water?” Phil had asked without moving. He was frozen next to the couch, looking down at his patient, who, based on her facial expression, was in an immeasurable amount of pain. “Do you know what’s wrong?”

“What does it feel like when you need your appendix out?” Elizabeth asked. “I think my back is exploding.”

Phil kept quiet, taking a moment to enjoy the adrenaline rush. He felt panicked because he feared Elizabeth might die on his couch. But he was buoyantly giddy, suddenly light on his usually heavy feet, because this was the best thing to happen to him in at least six months, which was the last time a girl had been horizontal on his couch.

And this wasn’t just any girl; it was Elizabeth, the mystery neighbor he’d imagined kissing every time he spotted her locking her bike to the pole in the lobby.

He adored her size, her petite stature. She couldn’t have been more than 105 pounds. He liked to imagine being naked with her, with her curled up on top of him like a baby bear. In this fantasy, when he took the time to have it, he imagined that he did not have any chest hair and that he had a prominent six-pack as opposed to his real-life four-pack that was threatening to become a two-pack every time he ate a second peanut butter sandwich.