A/N: Another chapter I believe I had too much fun typing, and this was originally the chapter I was working myself to since the beginning. Altered it here and there but it's pretty much how I had imagined it.

"You look like shit."

"Shut up Quincy."

"Three day drinking binge, I presume."

She muttered to herself slightly and grabbed a hold of the dark tie that hung from his neck. "One more word out of you and I will strangle you out here in public; do not take that threat lightly if you so much as value an inch of your life."

There was no denying the harsh tone in her quiet voice and yet… still part of him wasn't planning on taking her seriously. But, he supposed if he did want to remain on her good side and not push it just yet, he would let it go. "Alright, alright, no need to get violent."

"Yeah well, violence seems like the only way to get close to you." she mused suddenly before she released him from her grasp and continued on towards her desk.

"You have really got to stop playing those games with me."

"I don't know what games you're talking about."

"I hate you."

She smirked lightly as she collapsed back into her chair; watching as he only shook his head at her. "Oh, how disappointing that my love isn't returned."

"Don't count on it ever being returned." he replied.

"You're breaking my heart."

"You don't have one."

"Hey, Doctor-"

"Be quiet Albert, we're trying to have a moment here." Cirucci interrupted; catching the blonde-haired nurse off guard the moment he stepped out into the lobby. "Now then, where were we?"

"No where specifically." Ishida commented before he turned back to the nurse. "What were you saying?"

"There's a patient waiting for you in the ER, I think she might've broken an arm or something." Albert started. "I figured we could get your input on it first."

Perfect way to start off the day. "Alright, I'll be there in a few minutes." he nodded.

"She's kind of hot-"

"Albert, stop rating the patients."

Cirucci waited for the nurse to leave before she turned back to the doctor. "Tell me if she's as hot as the last one was, although that last one was kind of setting some high standards for the rest to follow."

"Yeah but you'll never find one whose standards are able to match your own."

"Aw, is that your way of telling me I'm pretty?" she teased.

"No, just my way of saying you're still as self-centered as you were before."

"Close enough."

He shook his head once more before he went on to follow the winding, intertwining corridors to where the E.R. was located almost on the other side of the building. Normally the E.R. remained empty aside from the occasional scrape or bruise some kid got himself on the playground- there really weren't that many 'emergencies' they ever had to attend to. A broken bone was the most common they had next to stitches. Hell, the emergency room itself was fairly empty with the exception of a few patients here or there; the number of nurses actually outnumbered the patients, which was a rarity sometimes.

"Ishida!"

He looked up at the call of his name and half-expected one of the nurses to need him. Although… none of them referred to him as such. So who the hell was it? It didn't sound like Cirucci, and it's not like she would use that name to yell out in front of people. The sudden attachment of a pair of arms around his neck broke him from his thoughts as the sound of a high-pitched squeal nearly turned him deaf.

"I haven't seen you in so long!"

Okay, who the hell-

Almost immediately, he watched as the figure- actually a woman- stepped back away from him and flashed a wide grin. Her orange hair was pulled back from her face and lightly decorated as the long strands danced down the back of her neck. She pulled together a white blouse with a blue vest and finished it off with a pair of cut off shorts.

"Orihime?" he questioned; for a moment, he wanted to convince himself that it really wasn't, but the sight of her flowered hairpins proved otherwise. "What are you- wait, are you the one with the broken arm?"

"Yeah, I slipped outside the steps of my university." she answered with a light chuckle before she showed the bruised shape of her right forearm. "The swelling started to get really bad, so I thought I would drop by before my next class."

He started to question why she didn't heal herself instead but decided to stop himself at last minute; after all, there was probably a reason… or maybe not. "Yeah, that looks new." he carefully took a hold of her arm to examine it further. "I don't think it's broken, it could just be a sprain but we'll have to take x-rays to be sure."

"I hope not, I don't think I can risk losing my right hand to a cast."

"If anything, you'll have a brace instead but there's still the possibility." he remarked. "We can take the X-ray now, but you might have to wait for the swelling to go down before we can administer anything else." he could get Milianne to take this over in a few; he didn't have the time to deal with an X-ray at the moment.

"It must be exciting to be a doctor." Orihime started. "I mean, you get spend all day helping people, although I kind of thought you'd go into the business side of the hospital- kind of like your father."

And, there was a the kill switch.

"Yeah well… after so many hours of seeing traumatizing wounds and near fatal disembowelments, you start to think that filing papers isn't really going to be all that exciting." Ishida answered as he carefully released her arm from his grasp. "It wasn't really my first choice but can't say that I regret it."

Although now, if they were to talk about hiring specific purple-haired secretaries, then yeah there would be some regrets there.

"But, what about you? I haven't heard from you in, years maybe?"

"Oh, well it's nothing interesting." she replied. "I'm in my second year at the university and I haven't quite decided on a major yet. It's all kind of possible at this point. I thought about being a nurse, but can you imagine you and me working together? I don't think we'd get anything done."

He forced a light chuckle to follow after her more cheery one. "Yeah… yeah we probably wouldn't, but who knows. I guess it wouldn't hurt to have a few more nurses who can actually do their jobs."

"Hey, not cool!" Albert shouted from the distant corridor.

"For now though, I'm still a little undecided." she shrugged. "But I guess I'll just hold on to these last few months before they force me to choose something."

"I'm sure you'll find something that suits you well." he assured before he made a quick glance at the nearest clock. "If you'll excuse me now, I have other appointments I have to attend to but I'll be sure to send Milianne your way to get this whole thing figured out."

"Thanks." she grinned before she pulled him into another tight embrace. "It was so good to see you again."

He hesitated slightly before he calmly returned the gesture. "You too."

"We'll have to make plans to get together soon!"

"Yeah… definitely." like he would actually stick to them. He felt her finally pull away and issued one last goodbye before he headed out of the E.R; making sure to speak with Milianne the first chance he got. He sighed lightly and shook his head. First, it was Nemu and now it was Orihime, was there someone else who wanted to jump in out of the blue?

"… Is she stupid like that on purpose or is she for real? I mean, everyone thinks girls act stupid to get attention but that… that was like a Grammy-winning act there."

"Cirucci!"

She only shrugged at his sudden reaction and leaned back against the wall behind her; a water bottle found its way back and forth between her hands. "I'm just saying, there's better ways to get a guy to notice you than acting retarded-"

"You know, most people frown upon using that word now and days."

"And I frown upon girls like her. But alas, they can't all be as beautiful and confident as I am." she replied with a fake, dramatic sigh.

He merely rolled his eyes at her and continued on down the corridor. "Yeah, I guess we could go with that one."

"Well, that was rather modest of me but I thought I would be coming off too strong if I referred to myself as a former Goddess."

"That was her… wasn't it?"

He looked up from the files in hand and took note of her figure standing in the doorway; her arms were crossed as she half leaned against the doorframe and looked in at him. As much as he would rather avoid the answer… he guessed she finally deserved it. After she had been hounding and chasing him down for it, he really had no other excuse to use.

"Yeah… yeah it was."

She watched as he seemed to had been organizing the folders but for the moment, he had completely stopped; he preoccupied himself with flipping through the year old files instead. Yeah, she could tell he had that look like he would much rather avoid the whole situation, but hell she got this far in breaking down his defense; she wanted to get down to the very root of it. "If it means anything, she did not look like your type in the least bit."

"Maybe, maybe not, I wouldn't really know." he shrugged as he eventually tossed the folders aside; at this point, not really caring much for where they landed.

"What about that other one? The one who showed up a a few days ago?"

"Yeah… maybe her too."

She carefully shifted her balance so a majority of her bodyweight rested against the doorframe. "Now, she looked like your type. That dark-haired, intelligent, nice-looking broad-type, right?" she humored; listening as he seemed to humor her back with a light chuckle. "Definitely a catch any man would like to have… What went wrong with that one? She looked like she was pretty into you."

"Nah… her father and I… we're on bad terms; he would more than likely kill her for even being near me."

"So, what? He doesn't want a nice Quincy doctor dating his daughter? Most fathers would rather enjoy their daughters dating a doctor; it sure as hell is better than them dating a street thug, right? Unless you do that on the weekends or something."

"It's a bit more complicated than you think but the Quincy thing does play quite a part in it. And also if you count the fact that he killed my grandfather and in retaliation to that, I almost killed him." he explained. "My arrow was off by a few inches."

"Well then… yeah, I can see how this whole thing plays out now." she nodded slowly before she pushed herself off of the doorframe and walked over to him. Leaning against the filing cabinets across from him, she slowly worked herself down till she was seated on the floor. "Come on, sit with me, Quincy."

He watched as she smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirt before she ushered for him to join her; sighing lightly, he eventually followed her motives and took a seat across from her. "Why do you still keep calling me that? You know what my name is."

"I do but that doesn't mean I have to call you by it." she replied. "And until I feel like respecting you, you're just going to have to deal with my onslaught of nicknames."

"Okay, but don't break into my office and refer to me as 'Dr. Worthless' again; I'd also appreciate it if you didn't refer to me as 'Quincy' in front of the other personnel. They might get suspicious." he chuckled.

"Just do what I do. When someone gets suspicious about me, I kill them."

"… Yeah, I'll try to keep that in mind."

"But, to be on the safe side, let's move away from that topic and go on to another…" she remarked as she carefully brushed aside a lock of her curled bangs. "What happened to that girl?"

He shrugged and let out a long sigh as he slightly slumped back against the cabinets behind him. "I don't know… she was in love with someone else who didn't really return those kind of feelings; then she fell in love with someone after him- an Espada. I don't remember all of it, you'd be surprised how quickly you lose interest in details after things have moved on. Now… now I don't really know what she's doing or what she has been doing for these past few years; we lost touch after the whole Aizen thing and I never really bothered to reconnect."

"Well, if it's any consolation… you deserve someone better than her." she commented. "I mean, you deserve someone who actually possesses common sense."

"Cirucci." he started with a light chuckle. "That's a horrible thing to say."

"I'm just going off on my first impression of her."

"Well it's wrong."

"Why are you defending her?" she questioned.

"Why are you…" he started before he stopped himself for a moment. "Are you jealous?"

"What? Ew, gross no." she denied. "Ugh, there wasn't a thing that woman was wearing that I thought was the least bit cute or even in style for that matter."

"Oh I'm sure there was something."

"… Okay, you caught me, she did have this cute bracelet."

"Yeah, I bet."

She chuckled lightly to herself and titled her head to one side as she studied him for a moment. His dark hair curved along the shape of his face and seemed to emphasize the still youthful appearance that she remembered from years before. The front of his shirt was pulled down slightly to reveal the deep drop of his collarbones- something she found oddly attractive for some reason; his tie was pulled loose as if he had been in the middle of removing it before another matter distracted him. Maybe it was a little odd to see that his usual stiff-neck attire had been broken but she wasn't going to complain about it. "So tell me then, Quincy… what kind of guy are you?"

He looked over at her question and gave a light shrug. "I don't know, what kind of guy do you think I am?"

"You look like… one of those guys who spends his time at home reading novels by a single lamplight while residing in the corner of a room. The kind of guy who stays up to watch late night news channels and feels nothing from them; who watches old medical dramas on Sunday because nothing else is on and makes note of all the in-corrections." she started before she stopped to study him a bit more. "You're the kind of guy who only smokes when he drinks but only drinks occasionally."

"Scarily enough, that sounds about right." he nodded.

"You're a doctor, you're not supposed to smoke."

"Yeah, well when you spend most of your day with screaming people or with guts up to your elbows, sometimes you need something to relieve stress." he shrugged as he brushed aside several black strands of hair. "Not to mention, it's a bad habit I picked up from Ryuken, which is also another reason why I'm trying to quit."

"Who's Ryuken?"

"No one important."

"If you say so." Cirucci replied.

"What about you? What kind of woman are you?" he questioned.

"I don't know, what kind do you think I am?"

He watched as she seemed to grin in anticipation for his answer. Her thick, purple locks were pulled down from their usual style and bounced over her shoulders in thick strands; she looked odd with her hair down, he had been so used to seeing her in her trademark pigtails any other style didn't seem to fit. The white blouse she had worn throughout the day had been slightly pulled loose from where she had it tucked in; her matching skirt still hugged at her thighs but had been pulled up an inch or two since she sat down. She still graced her favorite pair of purple heels, which now were kind of half dangling off her ankles. Despite their absence, he could still see the purple teardrops that had marked her cheeks years before; for a moment, he caught himself regretting the chance to trace them. "I'm not entirely sure what there is to say about you, Cirucci. You… you clearly flaunt your physical appearance and take pride in how you look; you're the type to care about your looks but that doesn't mean you won't hesitate to get down and dirty in a fight. You're the kind of girl who can entertain herself but still enjoys the company of others. You're persistent and you won't stop till you get what you want and because of this, you have an outgoing, flared kind of personality; you're quick to attack or defend should someone push your limit." he paused for a moment as he tried to recollect his thoughts. "You're incredibly intelligent and a master strategist; you back up your wide range of knowledge with your quick reflexes and sharp strikes. Despite how relaxed and calm you are… you never put your guard down. Or maybe I'm just distracted by your former self."

"Maybe you liked my former self better." she offered with a tease.

"No, I'm pretty sure that was the last thing on my list." he replied with a light chuckle.

"Is that all you have to say about what kind of woman I am? Or is that all you're going to tell me."

"For now… that's all I'll tell you."

She chuckled quietly. "That's what I thought." she glanced at her watch for a moment before she started to push herself back up. "It's getting late and I should head home before the cat chews through the furniture again. Are you going to stay here?"

"Probably for another hour or so." he nodded. "I have a few reports I've been putting off for awhile now, so I should get around to actually finishing them before the deadlines."

"Alright, well don't work yourself to death yet." she advised as she pushed herself free from the cabinet behind her. She leaned over to where he was seated and settled her hands into the empty spaces beside his waist. She didn't want to give him the chance to reject the motion and gave way to brush her lips against his own for a brief moment. "Goodnight Quincy."

For once, he didn't try to fight her.

He didn't even pull away.

"Goodnight Cirucci."