About a month went by after I first actually had physical contact with him. ...Okay, if you can consider me touching his elbow as physical contact. Whatever. But I doubted he remembered me. After all, I was just another one of those barfight patients that I'm pretty sure he gets all too often, seeing as how Dying Sun isn't that far from the ER. For health-related reasons. To him, I was probably just a nobody. A nobody who got into a tussle. Well, alright. Probably the only nobody in this godforsaken town with blue hair.

The next time we met, it was at a clinic. I guess he was doing some sort of rotation thingy. You know, as part of his fellowship or whatever you call those things that surgeons do as part of their training. God. If I had a choice, I think I'd rather be in the ER. I mean, in a clinic, basically what everybody there does is just give little kids their flu shots and whatnot. The ER seems like a way more interesting place to be.

I guess I was pretty lucky he was on that rotation when I went there a month later. Otherwise, I guess I never would have seen him again. And I wanted to see him again. I mean, I'd broken up with Ichigo...well, rather, he'd broken up with me because I couldn't give him sex anymore. That little slut. I didn't exactly know the reasons for it all, but...well, let's just say they were rather bad. And the circumstances I saw Ulquiorra under weren't the best...but, well, they were there.

I will say one thing for him, though: Ulquiorra was very calm throughout all of this. Sure, he could get a bit snappy sometimes, when he was really worried or really stressed, but he was very calm throughout all of this. I think he was putting on a brave face, because, well, there had to be someone strong in our relationship. And I didn't exactly fit that bill during that time.

When we met again, it was Christmas. He was passing through the lobby to get a cup of water from the water dispenser. He saw me out of the corner of his eye, and promptly dropped his paper cup, splashing the tiles with water.

Their clinic was one of the few clinics that were actually open on Christmas. I figured, "Hey, there's nobody to spend Christmas with, anyway, so I might as well get this problem of mine checked up, right?" and they just happened to be open. And he just happened to be there. It was coincidence. I filled out my paperwork, gave it to the receptionist, who gave it to Ulquiorra, whose mouth was open. She said, "Jesus, don't catch flies there, alright?"

I wanted to laugh. I really really did. But I figured he'd probably had enough shock for one day; I didn't need to add humiliation to it, too. Once again, I was under his care. And I wanted to be under his care, 365 days a year (366 on leap years) just to be in close contact with him. However, this time...I wasn't so sure about that last statement.

"So, Mr. Jeagerjacques," he began.
"Just call me Grimmjow already," I said, looking at him. He looked exactly the same as he had last time, except he didn't look quite so pale.

"Alright, Grimmjow, so can you tell me why you're here today?" God...that voice...it just made me melt.
"It's on the paper." Master of the Obvious right there. Can you tell?
"Yes, I realize that, but I would like to hear you say it."

"Well then, Dr. Schiffer. I've been having...pain in, like, my lower stomach and that place between your legs where you're not supposed to feel pain unless someone's kicked you there, I'm tired all the time even though I get lots of sleep, I have not had interest in sex, which is pretty rare for me, and when I do have sex, there's blood. Oh yeah, AND I'm single. Just comes with the package of sexual withdrawal, I guess." That's what I'd said.

I know I was flirting with him at the time. Because, in all honesty, even though I didn't know him quite as well as I should have been to be flirting with him, I really, really wanted to date him. To fall in love - no, screw that - to know that he loved me back, just as much as I loved him. To bed him. And all that other stuff that lovey dovey couples do. That Ichigo and I never did.

"Alright then. About how long ago did this pain start?" he asked.
"About...a month, month and a half ago."
"AND YOU DIDN'T COME SOONER?!" It was a whisper-shout, but in that instant, with his words, with the flash of anxiety and worry in his emerald eyes, I knew. I knew he cared.

"Well, I didn't think it was serious!"

"You RETARD! If you're having pain in your lower stomach and groin for a month and a half that NEVER went away, wouldn't you think something was wrong?" Yup. He definitely cared. And it made my heart go woozy.

"Well, no..."

He was mad at me. I could tell. But...this kind of mad, the worried kind of mad, God. I fell even more in love with him at that moment than I think I've ever been in love with anybody else. (Grimmjow: 1. Ulquiorra: 1.)

He went and filled out my electronic form, not talking to me, and I was lonely. I really, really didn't want him to be angry with me. Alright. I admit it. I was stupid as a pig trying to fool itself that it could look up into the sky. (Pigs can't look up into the sky. It's impossible.) He left the room, and I think I was on the verge of tears there. Well, the tears made its way onto my eyelashes, but I didn't let them fall. I hated myself. Hated myself for not coming sooner, hated myself for making him hate me. Well, alright, not hate me, exactly, but dislike me. That's probably a better term. Because I don't believe you can fall in love with someone you hate, and, well, he fell in love with me. Just as much as I did with him.

He came back into the room with this guy that looked a lot like Ichigo, except he had a tattoo on one arm and he had black hair. His name was Dr. Kaien Shiba. And I guess he was a urologist, or whatever that fancy name card thing he had on this jacket said. He looked really calm, and that calmed me down, too. And Ulquiorra looked "cooled-off", so to speak. So I figured I was okay. For the time being.

"Mr. Jeagerjacques, considering the symptoms you have undergone, it was quite, to put it frankly, idiotic -" Yeah, yeah. I know. Jesus. Thanks to everybody who called me an idiot. I really feel the love there.

"Yes, I know. Dr. Schiffer here has already chewed me out. So what do I have?"
"As of right now, I could be wrong, it appears as though you have testicular cancer."

"...In ENGLISH please?" I knew what he was saying. I just didn't want to accept it.

"Okay. Basically, you have a malignant - harmful - growth in one of your testicles."
"...like that one biker dude?"

"Yes, like Lance Armstrong. But anyway, there is a malignant growth in one of them and this is causing your symptoms. Assuming that it has not metastasized, or spread to other parts of your body, we will be able to cure you. Yes, you will be short one, but you'll still be able to lead a perfectly normal life and you will still be able to have children. HOWEVER, we would need you to undergo several tests so that we could determine the location of this tumor and the size. We would also need you to take CT scans to see if the cancer has spread. We would also need a blood test from you."

Alright. I admit it. It was a bit...stressing. But...well, what was I to do? There was nothing I could do, and that was simple fact.

"So...can you just give me the percentage of survival?"
"Since I do not know what stage your cancer is in because we have not conducted any tests yet, I would say that you have a 90 percent or more chance of survival. But we are not sure at this current point."

Ninety percent seemed like an excellent percentage to me. Heck, that was an A on a test in school! But this wasn't school. This was real life. And, I guess, somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that I could always be one of the ten percent. But the rest of my mind refused to accept this, refused to believe that I could die. You know how it is, when you're young, you think you're invincible, and then WHAM! Karma comes and gives you a huge bitchslap to the face to put you back in your proper place.

And you don't get a second chance.

That's what the ten percent was. And...well, let's just say I got an F in life. Instead of an A.