title: organ recital
fandom: bleach
characters/pairings: grimmjow jaegerjaquez/orihime inoue
rating: t/pg-13
warnings: violence
summary: "mr. jaegerjaquez, this is your eighth time in the emergency room in the last thirty days."
a/n: can you even believe i'm writing for the same stupid ship eight years later? i love them. i will love them until the day i die.
anyway, this was inspired by tumblr user xaquaangelx's au prompt "i do stupid shit and you're my doctor" and really, is there anything more perfect for them. i normally like to put a lot of effort into what i write but this is just a fun thing to pass the time with between my more legit stuff lel
disclaimer that i'm a speech-language pathology major and am only tangentially educated in medicinal matters, and despite my research into the basics as well as how japan's healthcare system works, there will be discrepancies. so to all my med friends out there, please suspend your disbelief.
enjoy!
The first time he stumbles into the emergency room in the dead of night (so quiet, so silent she often swears she can hear ghosts), Orihime Inoue knows it will not be the last.
She had quietly filed this fact away with the slightest tinge of resignation. She has paid her dues in Karakura Hospital long enough to be able to discern the repeat offenders, so to speak, from the rest of them. She bears no grudge, no bitterness to speak of against these people; they are either the chronically clumsy, incurable in their lack of grace, or the lost souls, typically young teens, who fraternize with the wrong crowd. It only makes her regret that she can't do more for them.
But this man, with his blue hair and wild eyes to match, is going to be a piece of work, and she knows it.
She was discussing a patient's discharge with Hanatarou, the trepidatious intake nurse on this particular night, near the emergency room's lobby when she noticed him. The left side of his face was bleeding as he staggered in, littered with scratches and cuts, and several layers of flesh were missing from the majority of his left arm. His jeans were ripped, his white shirt reflecting the state of his face with blood and dirt stains. It was one of the grislier injuries she's had to bear witness to so far this year, to be sure; what surprised her more, however, was the way he simply walked in, limping slightly, without any ado at all. As though it were nothing more than a mild inconvenience.
He limped toward the receptionist's desk (completely ignoring the poor girl who was actually there) and immediately averted his gaze toward her and Hanatarou as they were preparing to resume their normal positions.
He lifted his arm up, showcasing the gruesome abrasion.
"Hey. Fix it."
He somehow managed to get those words out, his voice low and brusque, before nearly collapsing.
And that is how she ended up here, making the arrangements for minor surgery and priming him for it in the hallway as she waits for Isane Kotetsu's confirmation before heading straight into the procedure room. They would normally rush the patient right in after triage, but the lack of available anesthesiologists is delaying the process, much to Orihime's discontent. Thankfully, her charge isn't in a position where a few minutes' delay will endanger him; he's conscious, coherent, and his vitals are stellar for someone in his position.
He's settled into the bed, and she stands awkwardly next to him. The emergency ward is eerily quiet, so quiet that she can hear his labored breathing clearly, so quiet that she can vaguely hear her heart beating steadily, resonating in her ears.
"So, Mr. Ja-Jag…" She glances down at his intake form, growing slightly flustered as she trips over his impossible surname. Jaegerjaquez? That didn't even begin to address his equally peculiar first name. Grimmjow. Grimmjow. Grimmjow. She turns it over in her mind, briefly marveling at how someone with a name like that came to be hanging around a modest town like Karakura. It appears that Hanatarou had some difficulty reconciling his name too, if the uncharacteristically jerky katakana is any indication.
"Jaegerjaquez. Jag-er-jack," he rasps, clearly attempting to stifle the pain threatening to leak into his voice. He looks at her critically from the bed as he attempts to shift his position without disturbing his limbs.
"Mr. Jag-er-jack. Right! I'm Dr. Inoue, the emergency physician. It looks like you have a road rash injury from a motorcycle incident. Is that right?"
He gives a noncommittal nod.
"It also looks like you have a fractured fibula according to the x-rays. We'll have to set that back into place. The abrasion is a little severe for an injury of its type, so we'll be debriding and maybe grafting it, if it comes to that. That is, we'll remove and replace the damaged tissue. It's pretty simple and shouldn't take too long, so you have nothing to worry about," she says with a smile, trying her best to remain cheerful in the face of his unforgiving stare and the sheer draining essence of the 4 AM hour.
"Goddamn it," he mutters as he closes his eyes. "Do whatever you have to do, lady. Just stop runnin' your mouth about it."
Ah, one of those patients. One of the first things Orihime learned when she was doing her rotations - when she was just a little saner and more starry-eyed than she is now - was how to deal with Those Patients. Those Patients regularly tested the boundaries of her saintly patience and determination. She would initially shrink back and retreat, sometimes taking a few minutes out of her day for muffled sobbing in a supply closet. She couldn't understand; it was too unfair, it was too cruel for people to treat the ones who were only trying to heal them that way.
"I don't understand, Dr. Unohana," she finally admitted one day after her rotations were over. "Why do they act like that? I'm only trying to help..."
"Remember that anger doesn't usually occur for its own sake, Orihime. It comes from hurt, frustration - from fear," she reminded her. As the leading physician of the hospital - more accessible and prominent than the nebulous and elusive Ryuuken Ishida (who, it seems, despises a sizable portion of his hospital staff for some inexplicable reason that she has yet to discover) - Retsu Unohana is the beacon of professionalism that all its young students strive to emulate; her technical prowess is matched only by her tenderness in handling even the most cantankerous of charges.
Orihime took her superior's words to heart—
(although with the recent rumors regarding Unohana's prior endeavors weaving their way through the hospital's various departments, Orihime isn't quite sure what to think of her patient relations skills anymore)
and found that she was not only able to steel herself against (some of) her patients' acerbic natures, but also ameliorate them.
Mr. Jumping Jack here, however, appears to be a little different from the patients she's come into contact with so far in her two years as an actual physician. She hazards a glance at him from over her clipboard. His subdued ferocity is nigh tangible, and there's a restrained rage in his deep blue eyes. He isn't like his peers in the Those Patients category in this regard; he doesn't lash out, doesn't spit demands and subsequent insults in her direction.
And yet, there's something much more threatening beneath the surface. Despite her commitment to proper bedside manner, she can barely bring herself to look at him at all, let alone in the eye. If her hunch is correct and he does end up back here soon enough, he likely won't be so calm next time, she thinks with a frown.
She can hear quick footsteps echoing in the long, barren corridor, and she sees Isane heading over to where Orihime is tending to their lovely new patient to the best of her ability.
"We're ready, Dr. Inoue. Kiyone will monitor him while you prep yourself," the head anesthesiologist says, surveying him all the while. She raises an eyebrow quizzically, but makes no further remarks.
"Thanks, Dr. Kotetsu. I'll be right there." She passes her clipboard over to Isane's sister as she saunters into the room, looking as full of her typical zest as possible for someone completely unaccustomed to the graveyard shift. Orihime turns to Grimmjow and beams. "It'll be over in no time. No worries!"
His eyes are still closed, but he's still cognizant and coherent, if his furrowed brow is any indication. He shifts slightly, and not a single inch of him looks anything but tense.
"I get the point. Just patch me the fuck up, all right? Christ, docs always love to hear themselves talk," he mumbles. He opens one eye lazily and looks at her, a bitter smirk playing on his lips. "Or is it just you?"
She feels the heat rise to her cheeks as the corner of her lip twitches ever so slightly, though her smile doesn't falter. "It's probably just me."
Orihime starts walking with Isane, who had been glaring at him the entire time.
"Let's get this done and hope he never comes back," Isane says, scowling. "I knew he would be a problem before even I heard him speak. I have no patience for men like that."
She acknowledges her words with a slight nod, but she finds herself unable to endorse them.
"We can only hope."
"Mr. Jaegerjaquez is awake now, doctor!"
Kiyone finds her as she eats her first meal — though a small bowl of bland rice isn't exactly her idea of a meal — in the physicians' break room. It's minimalist and clinical, just like everything else in the hospital, but Orihime couldn't bear the thought of sitting in the grim, minuscule room that passed for a cafeteria here, with its morose blue walls and lifeless white linoleum flooring. Her eyes are beginning to burn with exhaustion; her shift began at midnight, and it's just now pushing 9 AM. With only another hour until she was free, she can practically feel soft pillows beneath her head, warm sheets and blankets wrapped around her like a cocoon, in the peace and quiet of her apartment…
"Dr. Inoue?"
She snaps out of her reverie and looks up at Kiyone, who is standing in the doorway with her head slightly tilted. "He's awake?"
"Yep. He's in the PACU, and it looks like he'll be ready to go in a couple hours," she explains. An even mix of apprehension and disdain suddenly darkens her expression; she leans forward and drops her voice, whispering conspiratorially. "Between you and me, I wouldn't spend too much time with him. He looks like he's gonna wreck the next person who looks him in the eye!"
Orihime manages a determined smile, though she can feel a gelid wave of fear running down her spine. She isn't sure if she has the mettle to deal with him again.
"I'm sure a guy like that has bigger fish to fry than a doctor, Kiyone," she says with a quiet giggle.
"If he tries anything—"
"I've got a few tricks up my sleeve! If he messes with me, he'll be sorry."
She says it with such confidence less to reassure Kiyone and more to convince herself that she can handle it. Realistically, there isn't much he could do to her in his incapacitated state, and really, who picks fights in a hospital, that would just be ridiculous, although he did say she talked too much and he sounded really annoyed, and with blue hair like that and those weird teal markings (tattoos?) near his eyes he clearly just doesn't care, he'd fight a doctor in a hospital, he'd fight a cashier in a convenience store, he'd fight a baby in a daycare center, he'd fight all the babies if they irritated him somehow—
She somehow manages to stop that train of thought, which managed to derail and fall right into a canyon in her mind. It occurs to her just how badly she needs to sleep if she's concocting scenarios in which a grown man is fighting multiple babies.
Orihime throws the styrofoam bowl out and follows Kiyone out of the break room and toward the post-anesthesia care unit. The young nurse hands her Grimmjow's charts before making her way to another unit.
When she finally arrives in the PACU, it's impossible to miss him; not simply because of his outlandish appearance, but because every inch of her can feel his violent, torrential aura emanating throughout the entire room. A quick scan of the rest of the beds tells her that she isn't the only one intimidated by Grimmjow; yet, she intuits that she is the only one whose skin is crawling, whose entire self is resonating with his energy. Even confined to a hospital bed, his appearance is as commanding as any of her superiors; even around Isane and Unohana, she feels the reverberation of their essence, an undeniable pressure that she has only somewhat grown used to. She never questioned the sensation, never discussed it with anyone but Tatsuki. She vaguely suspects Kurosaki and a few of their other friends share the sensation, but it's not something that she's brought up with them (—yet).
"What took you so fucking long?" he bellows as soon as she crosses his line of sight. She somehow resists the reflexive urge to recoil.
"I was told that you were awake only ten minutes ago," she says, inspecting the cast around his leg and pointedly avoiding eye contact. She can only hope he recovers as quickly as her patients usually - inexplicably - do. Considering how he could barely stand being kept in the clinic longer for an hour in the face of a major procedure, she'll go out on a limb and guess that he isn't the type who patiently waits to heal and gets back to business after a few weeks. "How are you feeling?"
"Good enough to get the hell out of here." He grimaces, and in the brief moment she glances up at him, she can tell that his pride is as wounded as the rest of him. He's sitting up so that he's level with her face as she sits down in the uncomfortable wheeled stool beside his bed.
"That's great! The procedure went very smoothly, although you'll want to follow up with another doctor when you leave. The anesthesia probably hasn't completely worn off yet, so we'll keep you for another hour or so—"
"An hour?" He laughs dryly; it's a terrible sound, a sound that racks her body with chills. He grabs the saline drip IV and — much to her abject horror — rips it away before hoisting himself off the bed, careful to place most of his weight on his good leg. He towers over her; even in his ailed, bandaged, and casted state, his very existence is an implicit threat. "You think I've got time for that? All I wanted to hear was that you unfucked my leg so I didn't have to chance it when I left. Should've ditched this place sooner, since it feels damn near good as new."
"W...Wait just a minute, Mr. Jaeger—"
She rises to her feet in an effort to assert herself, but he has already roughly made his way past her.
"See ya."
She watches him walk away with more ease than he did the night before, broken leg and all. She can't tell if it's because of her uncanny abilities or his own ungodly fortitude — perhaps it's both.
Orihime purses her lips and drops back down in the stool.
If her futon sounded good before, it sounds positively divine now.
"...And then he just left, just like that! His leg was still broken, but he walked away like it was nothing!"
She emphatically stabs her chopsticks into a piece of yellowtail sashimi smothered with raspberry vinaigrette and topped with coriander. Tatsuki kindly refused the odd trimmings and swore up and down that she was content to dip the strips of yellowtail in plain soy sauce, which she is doing repeatedly, absentmindedly as Orihime relates the tale of her oh-so-unique patient and his various quirks.
The clock inches toward 10 PM, which would be far too late for dinner for most people; for her, it's standard. (It felt slightly odd to eat dinner in her pajamas at first, but if she's being honest with herself, she wouldn't have it any other way now.) Tatsuki, being an instructor at the dojo in town, has the coveted privilege of a normal schedule, but somehow manages to make it work with Orihime's.
"He was just so...weird, Tatsuki," she says with the barest hint of exasperation in her voice before shoving a strip of sashimi in her mouth. "I have a feeling he'll be coming there again."
"With your luck lately, you'll be the one seeing him every damn time." Tatsuki stifles a yawn and leans forward, resting her elbow on the small table that remains the centerpiece of Orihime's modest studio apartment. "I don't know how you haven't managed to lose your mind, Hime."
She smiles and twists an errant strand of hair, having come undone from her bun, around her finger. "For every patient like that, there are a dozen more who are as kind as can be, and those are the ones that make it all worth it!"
"I wish I had that attitude. If I had a hundred yen for every time I wanted to knock the daylights out of some brat in the dojo, I wouldn't even have to work there anymore."
They fall into a brief but comfortable silence as they finish off the last of the yellowtail. She furrows her brow pensively as she swirls her last slice in the vinaigrette — she can see Tatsuki making a face out of the corner of her eye and chuckles quietly — as she thinks about what truly makes her position so worth it.
Yes, it's the kind patients and the tears and declarations of gratitude from friends and family. Yes, it's the satisfaction of knowing that she has saved someone from an untimely demise, a terrible fate; and it's the exultance of exercising her talents on a daily basis. She toiled away for many years, both in high school and beyond, (pleasantly) surprising her friends with her sheer tenacity in the face of such trying studies. She is here through her own blood, sweat, and tears - as well as that of others.
And that is the subtle shadow that follows and haunts her with increasing frequency; the ones she couldn't save, the ones she still cannot save, the horrifying guilt of allowing someone's loved one to die, the continual reminder that she is not omnipotent.
Unohana, Isane, even the awkward and terminally gloomy Izuru Kira (who has since left the hospital to work under a rather shady sounding fellow named Gin Ichimaru) — they have all attempted to impart to her the firm belief — no, the knowledge that she, nor any other doctor, can save everyone. And yet, it never quite resonated with her, even after all this time.
"Whoa, you okay? You look like you just saw a ghost."
She snaps out of her reverie to see Tatsuki waving her hand in front of her face.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine! Just thinking about...stuff."
Tatsuki quirks an eyebrow and sets her chopsticks down on her plate. "I think your crazy schedule is catching up to you. Or maybe that guy rattled you a little more than you think."
Well, both of those ideas aren't exactly wrong.
"You're probably right! This is the first time I've gotten a break in a while, so everything's probably catching up to me," she says, scratching the back of her head and laughing nervously.
"Yeah, well, I worry about you, Hime. I don't want you overworking yourself, you know," Tatsuki murmurs, regarding her with deep concern. Orihime can't help but feel a pang of guilt at making her fret. It isn't an unfamiliar scenario; Ichigo, Rukia, Ishida - they all, at some point or another, have taken issue with how relentlessly she works herself to the bone.
Orihime takes Tatsuki's hand into her own in an attempt to reassure her and softens her expression; an act that comes so naturally to her to begin with, but a skill that has been perfected through her profession. "It'll be fine, I promise. There are people who are much worse for the wear than I am, after all!"
The concern on Tatsuki's face melts away, save for trace amounts, and she smiles. "If you say so, then."
"I do say so, so it's all good!" Orihime gives a thumbs-up for good measure.
"But hey," Tatsuki interjects, her features suddenly hardening. "If I see that bastard around here, I'll give him a personal asskicking, free of charge. And if he bothers you again, you tell me, and I'll be waiting for him the second he gets outta the ER."
She can't help but giggle at Tatsuki's severity, which in turn causes her to break down into laughter as well.
(She might just have to take her up on that offer.)
As much as Orihime enjoys the tranquility of the night shift — relative to the day and evening shifts, anyway — it seems like a death sentence on this particular night.
The two days she had off were not quite enough to recover completely from the brutal shift she miraculously persevered through prior to that. Well — objectively speaking, her night wasn't quite so torturous, but between the length of her shift and her testy patient, it was trying enough.
She goes through her rounds with as much enthusiasm as ever, and it's a relief to see how relatively empty the emergency ward is. She finishes her rounds and heads purposefully back down the hallway towards her office; she might as well take advantage of the peace and get some paperwork done. She passes by Isane, who, bless her heart, is looking terribly worse for the wear. Orihime can't say she envies the life of an anesthesiologist.
"Dr. Inoue," Isane acknowledges with a formal smile and brief nod of her head. "It's been slow today, as I'm sure you've noticed. Hopefully that trend will continue until you leave, for both of our sakes."
"Aw, you've jinxed it now, Dr. Kotetsu! Just watch what's gonna happen!" Orihime replies with a pout. She says it in jest, but following the events of her most recent shift, she can't help but feel slightly apprehensive.
Much to her relief, however, the night proceeds normally. They have a few minor cases coming in and out the door, some stitches here, a hefty amount of gauze there - it's nothing too severe.
Sunrise breaks over the horizon and the world becomes a little lighter with each passing hour. The light demands of this particular night have done nothing, however, to stymie the onset of utter fatigue that threatens to overtake her.
Isane yawns and visibly resists the urge to rub her eyes. "The sun has been up for a few hours now. Dr. Iemura should be here any minute…"
"Try not to act too excited to leave when he gets here," Orihime reminds her cheerfully, though she can also feel cumbersome exhaustion weighing down on her very being. Despite getting an ample amount of sleep before starting the graveyard shift, she can somehow never escape it without feeling like a dead woman walking; if Isane's depleted state is anything to go by, she isn't alone in that regard.
"I'll do my best, but I make no promises." Isane offers a smile, and they both prepare to head back into the ward before they hear someone enter the waiting room.
Normally, she'd think nothing of it, but the hairs on Orihime's arms stand on end; there's an abrupt spike in energy in the vicinity. She watches Isane's face pale ever so slightly before twisting in disgust.
She directs her gaze to the entrance, and sure enough, there he is, in all his blue and bloodied glory.
Blood seeps out of a deep gash just below his jugular; any higher and he wouldn't even be here, she thinks with a shiver. Complementing that is a deep puncture wound in his stomach, although her vantage point prevents her from getting a decent look at it.
"How's it kickin', doc?" he rasps, and a slow, sinister grin spreads across his face. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
When she forces a hospitable smile onto her face, it is wholly to conceal her internal screaming.