Chapter 4

Ray Pinsky wasn't absolutely certain what to make of Carolyn's parting remark, urging that he not check out of his motel room early, but from no matter what angle he examined her apparently innocent comment, it sounded pretty much like good news.

Maybe it meant that his fervent goodbye kiss in the hospital parking lot might have been not merely Past, but Prologue.

Maybe, Ray thought, he was going to get rewarded for curing her asthma. Maybe she couldn't be absolutely certain just yet that he had cured it, but Ray had every reason to trust that his always-reliable curative powers would easily be up to such a relatively simple task.

Perhaps, come morning, she'd be able to tell him something about an absence of symptoms.

Ray had a hard time falling asleep. He didn't feel as exhausted this night as he had the night before after his tour of the local hospital. Aside from Carolyn's father early in the morning, and Carolyn herself that evening, he had done no other good deeds during the past nineteen or so hours.

Mostly, the difficult time he experienced in dropping off was because he kept wondering whether the next morning, Carolyn Maxwell was going to be sharing this bed.

The motel he was staying in had no restaurant. Nothing but a corner of the lobby where one might obtain dry cereal or an undersized bagel. And he and Carolyn Maxwell had not made plans for meeting at the neighboring restaurant for breakfast. Presumably, when she got there, she would call the room from the lobby.

Around eight a.m., she'd said.

Maybe she'd come on up to the room. Maybe breakfast would be delayed.

Ray intended to be flexible. He generally liked to start the day with a large cup of coffee or three at the earliest feasible moment, but he didn't intend to stand on ceremony if the little nurse had some other activity in mind.

The room telephone rang at 7:47 a.m.

"I'm here," Carolyn's cheerful voice declared. "I'm in the lobby. You want to meet me at the Cracker Barrel next door?"

"Just wait for me where you are. I'll come right down," Ray said, trying not to sound disappointed.

"Did you sleep well?" Carolyn asked as soon as they'd been seated at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant and handed menus.

"Reasonably well," he said. "But you! You look ridiculously fresh for someone who's just come off an eight-hour shift, and who's been up for — what? — fourteen hours and counting?"

"Well, it was a pretty quiet night in Intensive Care," she said. "No patients to care for - intensively or otherwise. Oh, I'll start feeling run down later at some point, no doubt - but John! I mean ... Ray! I'm so happy! My asthma symptoms are entirely absent, and I didn't take any medication all night long! It's so wonderful!"

She seemed almost embarrassed by her good fortune. "I mean, sure, compared to what you've been doing for all these people with life-threatening illnesses, it probably seems like nothing to you. But to me! It's a gift from God."

"Maybe it is a gift from God," Ray said. "I certainly don't know where it came from. I know I'm not entitled to get any credit for it. It just - came."

"Wherever the gift came from — your gift — I thank you for it," Carolyn said. "And I called my dad this morning on my way out here. He's up and at 'em already this morning. I had to remind him — again - to go and see his doctor. He's ready to declare himself cured!"

"He is cured," Ray told her. "I'm confident of that much. But he needs to discuss it with a physician anyway. He needs to know what to do now, to maintain his newfound good health. I mean, who knows what my 'cures' do for things like a person's propensities? Your dad could have a recurrence of diabetes, for all I know, if he doesn't follow a proper diet. I certainly don't have any information on the question. He ought to assume the worst and guard against it."

"Ray Pinsky, you really need to reconsider what this guy — this benefactor of yours — has suggested to you about coming in out of the cold," Carolyn said. "If you had experts to - you know - examine you and to follow up on what happens to the people you help, they could find the answers to some of those questions. And they are awfully important questions!"

"I still worry over that one on a daily basis," he told her. "But now, some of the research you're talking about? Probably it's already being done. I mean, there are dozens of places where my little 'visits' have been recognized and noted by the local doctors. Surely there are people who already are looking into these 'cure' cases with great care."

"I guess you're probably right," she said. "Oh my God! Look at these enormous omelets!"

"Yeah, but these look like pretty ordinary home fries," Ray complained. "I kinda miss the diner."

After breakfast, Carolyn sat back, comfortably well-fed and working on her third cup of black coffee. "Now is when a cigarette would be wonderful," she said.

"You had asthma, and you were a smoker?" Ray said, astounded.

"I was never a regular smoker," she said, "and sure, when I grew up, I wised up and quit completely. But as a teen-ager, I tried smoking like everyone else does. It was wonderful with coffee after a good meal. Or after sex. Don't tell me you never smoked after sex?"

"I don't know," he said. "I never looked."

Carolyn moaned so loudly at Ray's time-honored answer to that old, old joke that neighboring diners looked up from their meals.

"I guess I really set you up for that one," she said.

"Whether inadvertent or intentional, it was a fat pitch - right down the middle," Ray agreed, smiling.

"Now that I don't have asthma anymore, I could smoke again - after my morning coffee, at least," Carolyn said.

"And if you're like most people, you'd soon be up to a pack a day and back to fighting a full-blown nicotine habit."

"Yeah, I guess I better not do it," she agreed. "After all, you might not be around later to cure my lung cancer. Are you still going to leave town today?"

"Yes," he said. "If you hadn't offered to meet me for breakfast, I'd probably be in Alabama by now."

"Early riser, eh?"

"It's all right. I've been trying not to let myself go all Type A about what I'm doing. There are always going to be more sick people than I can get to. But I do want to keep on truckin'."

"Literally," Carolyn said. "In your little camper truck, rolling down them long lonesome highways."

He didn't respond. He just looked at her. God, but this Carolyn Maxwell person was terminally cute. He wanted her as badly as he'd wanted any woman he'd ever met, all the way back to and definitely including his horny high school days and before.

"What if you could pass this on to other people?" she said.

"The ability, you mean?"

"What if it was something genetic. Like something in your blood? All that sort of stuff - it needs to be researched, John ... Ray, I mean."

"I know. I know you're right," he said. "But once I come out of the closet, that's it. My life is going to be down the toilet. Britney Spears would think she had all the quiet and privacy of a cloistered nun, compared to me."

"At least talk to your guy — the benefactor guy - about it," Carolyn said. "Have him find out, from discussing it with scientists, what kinds of things you could do. There's stuff that would allow them to perform some basic research, at least. Blood tests, DNA samples, whatever. Things you could provide them without having to, y'know, actually turn yourself in."

"I'll do that much," Ray said. "It's a damned good idea, and I promise you, I'll do just that. I can work it through Cosgrove."

"What time is your checkout?" she asked.

"Not until noon," he told her.

"You mind if I take a shower first?"

He'd been waiting for the first hint. That one was broad enough even for Ray to recognize. "I don't mind if you do," he said, "and I also don't mind if you don't."

"But you've already taken a shower this morning, haven't you?" she said.

"Yeah. But I could always use another. Cleanliness is next to godliness, you know."

"Do you suppose," she asked, "that they sell cigarettes here? We could buy a pack and then throw eighteen of them away, just to be safe."

"Maybe we should hang onto four," he replied, "just to be sure we don't run out."

It turned out that Cracker Barrel didn't sell cigarettes, and the nearby place the cashier directed them to where they could buy a pack was not nearby enough. Coming out of the restaurant, they took a long look across the expanse of concrete between their location and where the cigarettes could be purchased. Wordlessly, they decided they'd do without.

Getting back to the room just seemed more important.

They took the shower — together. Since Ray had already had his, he was able to concentrate mostly on assuring that no part of Carolyn Maxwell's tight little body was left unattended.

She had tiny little-girl nubbins for breasts, but it didn't matter because everything else was in miniature too - and all of it delightfully curvaceous and womanly. There wasn't an ounce of fat anywhere, but her little buttocks were as tight and juicy looking as any he had ever beheld.

And they were being held as well as beheld, there in the shower, and they felt absolutely perfect, cupped in Ray Pinsky's eager hands.

Carolyn's pussy was trimmed, not shaven, but her puffy little labia were visible through the curly brown hair that decorated the entrance. Like everything else, her pussy looked like a three-quarter scale model. Nevertheless, of all her womanly parts, it was the one that appeared to be the most entirely grown up.

As small as Carolyn was all over, Ray was somewhat relieved to see the pubic hair. Had she been entirely shaven, the resemblance to a prepubescent girl would have been a little frightening.

"Don't worry," she said when she caught him looking at her nakedness. "It's all grown up where it counts."

When he had stripped down to join her in the shower, he said "As you can see, I'm not going to present any unusual challenges."

She wrapped a small, soapy hand around his erect penis and said, "To quote Goldilocks, 'not too big, not too small, but juuuuuuust right!'"

He made certain that Carolyn was squeaky clean, but they didn't waste water during that shower. Soon he was carefully and lovingly — and a little urgently - drying her off with the biggest towel the Holiday Inn Express had to offer.

She grabbed another towel and returned the favor. She dried his balls with the gentle touch of the trained nurse that she was.

Together now in the already-disheveled bed, their skin still cool and damp from the slipshod, hurried way they had used the towels, Ray felt the wonders of a woman's naked body for the first time in almost two years.

It was a body still wet enough to be slippery. "What the hell," he thought. "We can air-dry."