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 another 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…”