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 his.

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.”

His mouth is close to mine. I can feel his breath on me, and smell it. It’s the first time I’ve really smelled something that wasn’t my stale bedroom in so long. He smells wonderful, incredibly manly, incredibly sexy.

Before I know what’s happening, his mouth is against mine, kissing me. His mouth crashes onto mine.

And I kiss him back.

My whole body feels awake like it’s never felt before. Not only am I not burdened by the horrible feeling that I’ll never leave my room alive, but… well, my body is screaming at me, “Now you’ve got your chance, you’re out of that hell. Time to activate those ovaries and pump out babies! Time to collect all the hottest sperm you can!”

It’s kind of gross to think about it that way. But I don’t care right now. I’m so turned on right now, with Liam’s muscles pushing against me, with his mouth against mine. Our tongues swirl together. My nipples are hard, and I’m ready. I’m ready to lose my virginity. Right here and right now. I couldn’t care less that there’s a horde of nurses making a huge racket by banging on the door, or that I’m in a hospital bed, or that Liam’s older than I am, or that I really don’t know him well at all.

“What the hell’s going on in here?”

It’s my dad’s voice!

I open my eyes and Liam pulls away from me. I catch the grin in his eyes, but he puts on a serious face for my dad.

I’ve never been more horrified in my entire life. I’ve never been walked in on doing anything, well except if you count that one time last year when my mother walked in on me right after I had finished… pleasuring myself. But I’ve never been caught messing around with a guy. And by my dad! I could just curl up and die.

My dad’s dressed in the ridiculous plastic, with the full face mask on.

A couple nurses stand behind him, wearing the same get up, their arms crossed angrily in front of their ample bosoms.

“You’re not wearing your mask!” shouts my dad at Liam. “Do you want to kill her? What the hell are you doing here?”

Liam doesn’t answer. But he doesn’t look in the least bit fazed by my dad’s tirade.

“Just paying a visit,” he says simply.

“And you’re… kissing her! You could kill her like that. You’re a fucking brain surgeon, you think you’d know what that could do to her!”

“Dad,” I say, trying to interrupt. “I’m fine… Liam…”

Liam shoots me a look that for some reason I know for certain means, “I could get in trouble for giving you the blue liquid. Don’t tell them.”

“I’m going to get going,” says Liam. He gets up calmly and walks towards the door, pulling off the plastic wrap as he does so, revealing that he’s wearing nothing more than a tight black t-shirt that shows off his gorgeous torso and his bulging biceps.

“Don’t ever come near my daughter again,” says my dad, visibly intensely angry even behind his mask.

“I’ll call you,” says the defiant Liam as he walks through the doorway.

Liam just changed my life forever. It’ll never be the same again.