Thirty-four-year-old pharmaceutical representative James Miller carries a physical burden that ruins every sales call: a severe, low-anchored jaw structure that pulls his mouth down into an unyielding frown. In an industry run on easy handshakes, polished grins, and boxes of fresh cider doughnuts, his stern expression makes clinic supervisors mistake him for a debt collector. With territory consolidation threatening his livelihood and sixty-four dollars owed on retread tires, desperation pushes him to a closed laboratory in North Sumpter.

There, he acquires a jar of experimental compounding paste from a failed clinical trial. Applied to the inner gums, the potent mixture shocks his facial nerves, forcing his features upward into a wide, symmetrical grin that holds for precisely twenty-two minutes before giving out without warning. Armed with this temporary advantage, he takes on the snowy corridors of regional healthcare clinics, racing against a ticking travel clock to pitch generic pediatric suspensions.

The borrowed expression quickly turns into a logistical nightmare. When the formulation abruptly wears off mid-pitch, suspicious physicians read his sudden collapse as cold calculated misery, while broken service elevators and blizzards shatter his timing. As local authorities descend to audit questionable vendor practices, a clear-headed pediatric nurse intervenes, forcing him to discard the toxic mixture and confront the realities of his trade.