“Oooh, older men are great in bed,” says Shelly.
“But there’s no chance of any of that,” I say. “I mean he had to wear a mask just to come in my room, and all this horrible plastic wrap nonsense. You remember, from that time you came to visit me.”
“Ugh,” says Shelly. “Don’t remind me.”
“You’re not the one who has to deal with it every day.”
“You’ll figure out something,” says Shelly. “It’s just a matter of time.”
I’ve been telling myself that for a year, and I’ve finally given up hope that anything will ever work.
“Let’s be real, Shelly,” I say. “I’m going to die a virgin in this very room.”
Shelly starts to talk, but my phone starts vibrating, and in brief confusion, I accidentally touch the screen, switching over to the incoming call.
“Shelly?” I say. “Are you still there?”
Now I realize what’s happened.
“It’s me, Liam.”
“Liam?” I say, shocked that he’s calling me, the gorgeous doctor who I was just talking to my friend about… I hope he didn’t hear anything I said about being a virgin.
“Yeah, your dad gave me your number. Listen, I have something to tell you.”
I’m practically holding my breath.
Is he going to suddenly confesses his love for me over the phone?
Nope. “I didn’t want to get your parents’ hopes up, but I thought I needed to tell you. I was riding my bike home.” (He rides a bike? It seems strange to imagine a guy like him peddling along the road, all decked out in cycling gear, with the cars zooming past him.) “Anyway, I suddenly remembered there was a similar case in the literature… it was a very old case… I don’t remember the details, but there was a young woman who had a cellular condition that caused her to have intense allergic reactions, not unlike what you’re suffering.”
“A cellular condition?” I say. “What’s that mean?”
“The cells have these things called mitochondria. They’re like the power plant of the cell, producing all the energy. If they’re not functioning right, everything in the whole body can be off…”
“So it could be like my body doesn’t have the energy to fight off minor allergens or something?”
“Something like that,” says Liam. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tomorrow if I come up with something… I don’t want to get your hopes up… But I think there’s a cure.”
A cure?
I’ve heard a lot of things from doctors. I’ve heard that they could cure me, but I’ve never heard someone talk about it concretely like this, talking about an actual problem…
Well, I’ve been to holistic doctors who told me my “vibe” was off or something, but of course that never worked out.
But Liam’s a top surgeon. He’s not into anything crazy, just real hard science.
A smile growing on my face, my mind starts swimming in day dreams… I imagine myself out and about, enjoying life outside of this cursed room.
But will it really work? Am I just letting my dreams get ahead of reality?
“Are you sure?” I say. “I’ve been let down in the past.”
“I wouldn’t tell you this if I didn’t think so,” says Liam. “I really think there’s a chance it could work. And I never bullshit my patients. I always tell it like it is.”
Chapter 5
Liam
Have I promised too much? After all, it’s just a hunch, just a memory of an article. But then again, my hunches with patients are rarely if ever wrong.
But I already feel like she’s more than a patient. There’s more at stake here than there is with any old patient in the hospital. Well, I have more at stake.
I just can’t get her body out of my head. And her voice is so… sexy and innocent. Just incredible.
My cock twitches in my pants, beginning to stiffen, just thinking about her.
I set the Triumph motorcycle upright on its kickstand in the garage, near the Porsche, and head inside.
The house is large. Everything’s in its proper place. It doesn’t exactly look like what you might expect from a bachelor “pad,” or anything like that. I’ve got good furniture, a mixture of modern pieces with some antiques left over from my parents’ house.
All the lights are off, and I stand for a moment on the threshold from the garage, looking at the soft glow that comes from the streetlights outside, illuminating the curtains, making them glimmer like a backdrop. For some reason, it reminds me of my parents’ house, when I used to have insomnia growing up. I would wake up in the middle of the night and head into the living room without turning on any of the lights, and just admire things with my night vision. It was a sad time, with my parents arguing.
A feeling of sadness enters me now, but I brush it off. That’s what I’m good at anyway.
The easiest way to throw it off, I’ve found, is to throw myself at the nurses, or into my work. Or into a hobby, like my motorcycles and my cars, playing golf, staying intentionally intensely active, powering my way through life as if nothing ever affects me, just going from one thrill to the next.
Without turning the lights on, I grab a beer from the kitchen fridge, and head right down into the basement, flicking on the low level fluorescent lights.
I like it down here in the basement, where everything is exactly as I want it. Honestly, the rest of my house is really meant to make it easier for me to bed the women I bring home, not that I need much help. They’re usually begging for it by the time we get home, if we get that far and don’t fuck in a taxi or somewhere even more public first. But having a home that’s well put together certainly doesn’t hurt my chances.
But the basement, this is a place just for me. It’s not for the nurses, the waitresses, or the soccer moms that I pick up with ease.
I’ve got my tool bench down here, along with a bunch of expensive power tools I couldn’t help but buying. I’ve got a lathe, a circular saw, and even a kit for minor welding.
But tonight I’ve got a different sort of job.
A completely unpretentious metal table holds my work computer that I use for research. It’s hooked up to the hospital databases, allowing me to search through not only patient records but all the medical studies that aren’t even available to the public.
I crack the top of the beer by sticking the cap against my bicep and twisting, another bar trick meant to impress the ladies. Of course, I do it just for fun, though.
I log onto the medical databases and start looking for the study I remembered while riding my Triumph. An hour goes by, then another. I’m just barely drinking my beer, so engrossed am I in the studies.
I know there’s a cure out there for her, I just know it.
It’s just a matter of figuring out what’s really going on in her body. I know it has something to do with cellular fatigue, cellular energy. Nothing else makes sense. I asked her to send me blood work, but actually I have access to it through my computer. I have all her medical records pulled up, and nothing is amiss whatsoever. No wonder all the doctors haven’t been able to cure her—they always go by the tests themselves, and can’t do anything if everything appears normal.
It takes a mind like mine to look beyond what appears to be normal.
But so far, no progress.
I take occasional breaks, getting down on the concrete basement floor and doing 50 pushups at a time, until I’m out of breath, before diving back into the walls of text that the medical studies are.
I don’t bother checking the time, but I know I’m burning through the hours. Dawn’s not far away, when I think to start looking through the biological abstracts databases. These are studies for purely research purposes—researchers trying to figure out how biology works, how cellular energy works. These papers are the foundation on which the medical studies are based. We need to understand how things work before we can start devising drugs and cures for common medical problems.
After yet ano
ther hour of digging, I finally find it, the study I was thinking of.
The study describes some previously unknown mechanisms of cellular fatigue, conditions in which the mitochondria don’t produce the required energy. The summary of the study briefly speculates that these problems could cause all sorts of immunological problems.
That’s it!
Mia’s intense allergic reactions show that her immune system isn’t functioning. It’s got to be her mitochondria, her cells not producing enough energy for her body to cope with the demands of minor “foreign” substances like common dirt, pollen, perfumes, just about anything really.
Another couple hours go by, and finally… I find it.
The solution.
I know it is. There’s no way it can’t be.
And it’s something so simple I can barely believe it.
My cock starts to stiffen, just thinking about the possibility of Mia leaving that room. I imagine what she’ll wear… something like a halter top that shows her cleavage… thin spaghetti straps that show her gorgeous shoulders and plenty of her back…
I can be the one to show her the world.
But what about her dad? He’s an old friend. He’s not going to like the idea of me dating her daughter, is he?
I know I can have her. I just know it.
I lost track of the time hours ago. But it’s probably early morning by this point. I’ve been up all night looking for a cure for this sexpot beauty.
The phone rings. It’s John, Mia’s dad.
“Mia’s been rushed to the emergency room,” says John, breathless.
My heart starts to pound.
“What happened?”
“Some contamination. We don’t know. We found her in her room passed out. They’re worried she’s going to go into a coma…”
Chapter 6
Mia
I wake up in a hospital bed. My whole body feels stiff and painful, like I’ve been run over by a truck but don’t remember it.
I don’t have any memory of how I wound up here, but it’s not hard to put the pieces together. I must have had another allergy attack. Although this must have been a worse one than usual, because I can’t remember my body feeling this bad.
Plastic sheeting surrounds my bed, creating my own hypoallergenic bubble within the hospital. A normal hospital, with all its sanitary precautions, isn’t enough to keep me safe. No, I’m so weird and my body is so deranged that I need a special place just for myself, or else I’ll pass out again, who knows how many times and for how long.
The curtains start to move, rippling back and forth.
God, am I starting to hallucinate? I don’t need to that to my list of symptoms, do I?
Suddenly, a face appears, and I realize that I’m just exhausted—I’m not hallucinating. There’s an actual person there.
It takes me a couple seconds to recognize who it is.
It’s Liam.
God, that’s the last person I want to see here. I really don’t want Liam to see me in this state. Who knows what my hair looks like, and my skin is probably all blotchy and inflamed from whatever allergy attack I had.
“How are you feeling?” says Liam through his mask. He’s decked out in a surgical looking hospital suit.
“Why are you here?” I say.
“Your dad called me. I must have accidentally introduced some foreign allergenic agent to your room.”
I shrug my shoulders. “It’s not your fault,” I say. “You took all the precautions.”
I briefly wonder how I sound when speaking. It seems to take my mind forever to come up with the proper words.
The one thing that my mind is capable of doing, apparently, is getting excited. Despite the horrible pain I’ve feeling, my body is responding to Liam’s presence, to his huge muscles that can’t be concealed no matter how much ridiculous germ-shielding clothing he wears.
“Listen,” says Liam. “I’m not really supposed to be here.”
“You’re not?”
He shakes his head. “This isn’t my specialty,” he says. “And I’m not supposed to be treating people with your condition. I’m a brain surgeon, not an immunologist. I could get in a lot of trouble, but… I think I found it.”
“You found it?” I say, confused.
“Yeah, I found the cure for your problem. Just like I told you.”
My heart starts to beat quickly in excitement, but somehow this excitement just causes me more pain.
“I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck,” I manage to say, vaguely realizing that it’s out of the context of the conversation.
“You’ll feel better soon,” says Liam.
He pulls something out of his pocket, something that doesn’t look like it’s been sterilized.
“What’s that?”
“Fish medicine,” says Liam. I have the feeling he’s grinning at me from behind his mask. I can see it turning up, molding to his face.
“Fish medicine?” I say, suddenly getting worried.
Is Liam just crazy? He’s brought me fish medicine? Fish medicine that is probably in a dirty bottle that’s going to make me sick again.
“Has that been sanitized?” I ask, my voice quavering with fear. “The bottle, I mean?”
“No,” says Liam. And now he does the unthinkable, pulling his mask down.
I take a gasp in surprise… surprise at how hot he is in person, with his actual face showing… and surprise that he would dare to do that, when it’s certainly going to make me sick.
“What are you doing?” I say.
“Here,” says Liam, starting to unscrew the bottle of fish medicine. He won’t stop grinning. “This is going to make you better. Trust me. It’s going to make you better instantly. It’s going to help your cells work. They’re going to make energy again, and you won’t get these crazy allergy attacks all the time.”
“Fish medicine?” I say. “How is that even possible?”
“It’s called methylene blue, and it’s used for many types of cellular diseases. It just happens to be useful for fish, and this was the easiest way to get it.”
I’m starting to feel my chest tightening, and my breathing is starting to go ragged. I know these symptoms like the back of my hand. My skin is getting itchy… the allergy attack is coming at any moment. Liam’s not wearing his mask. Who knows what kind of contamination he could have brought into the hospital room.
“I’m having an… attack…” I manage to say. “Get someone…”
“I’m a doctor,” says Liam, ceaselessly grinning at me. “Trust me, take this. Just a single drop will do.”
He holds out a dropper that he’s stuck into the fish medicine bottle. The dropper holds a deep blue liquid.
“That looks like dish cleaner,” I would like to say, but my throat is starting to swell up, making speaking impossible.
“It’s just blue in color,” says Liam. “There’s nothing to fear about it. It’s completely harmless. Here, look.” He takes the dropper and drops a couple drops onto his tongue, which stains a deep blue… he still looks sexy.
He holds the dropper towards my mouth and I cringe backwards.
Knowing that the dropper has been near his mouth makes me… shudder in fear that it’s going to instantly send me into another attack.
“You’re having another attack,” says Liam. “If you want, I can call the nurse and they’ll administer another round of epinephrine and you’ll deal with all the consequences of that, the swelling… everything. And then you’ll head back to your room to do the whole process over again. Or you can take this funny looking blue liquid, just a drop, and it’ll all be over. I promise.”
I nod my head.
“You want the methylene blue?”
I nod my head again.
I mean, fuck it, right? It’ll probably work… maybe.
The liquid hits my tongue that I hold out for Liam.
He gazes right into my eyes as he drops the liquid onto my tongue and I gaze right back into h
is.
It tastes bitter, a strange chemical like taste like no medicine I’ve ever tried before.
A couple seconds later, and something’s happening.
I don’t know how to describe it, but something feels different in my body.
“How are you feeling?” says Liam.
“Fine,” I say, before gasping in surprise, realizing that my throat has stopped swelling up, and I’m now able to speak.
Liam grins at me, his face close to mine. He takes my wrist and starts taking my pulse. “I’ve never liked to rely on those machines,” he says. “Better to get the real feel of the patient.”
“I can’t believe it!” I say, getting excited. “That worked! Do you think it’ll keep working?”
“This treats the cellular problem,” says Liam. “You’re fine now. You just need to take one drop a day or so and you’ll be fine the rest of your life.”
“I can’t believe it!” I say again.
There’s a knock at the door.
“That’ll be the nurses,” says Liam. “I’m sure they’ll be just as shocked as you are.”
“Why aren’t they coming in?”
“Oh,” says Liam, smirking. “I needed to give us some extra time in here so I locked the door. I had a feeling that you’d need some convincing. After all, it does seem a little strange, doesn’t it?”
There’s a banging at the door. Loud knocking. It sounds like a couple people are starting to knock.
“They’re probably worried about me,” I say. My voice is starting to sound a little faint and far away. After all, the whole course of the rest of my life has just changed before my eyes… I can go to college. I can walk in the park. I can go ice skating. Most importantly, I can leave that fucking room.
“I never want to go back to that room,” I say emphatically.
Liam laughs. “That’s understandable,” he says. “Here, make sure to take this bottle with you.”
He hands me the small bottle of fish medicine. “You sure it’s safe?” I say.
“I read the lab analysis,” says Liam. “No heavy metals, no impurities. Fish are very sensitive creatures, after all, and you can’t be giving them anything bad or they’ll die right off. It’s bad for business.”
Doctor's Virgin (Innocence Book 3) Page 4