It's a bit harder to write this story this time around because the wounds aren't as fresh anymore...

For those who don't know because they haven't bothered to check out The ER, one of my best friends was taken by the Lord due to cancer a few months ago. So this is based off a real life experience.

Yeah, I'd seen the guy around the ER before. God knows I was there often enough, what with stopping the barfights and all that. However, he'd never actually had the chance to operate on me, and so I'd never actually had the chance to be in close proximity with him. The only contact we made was when our eyes made contact that one time. He was walking through the hallway, sipping a paper cup of water, and our eyes met. Then his turned away. As if he was embarrassed.

The first time we actually talked, the first time we actually met each other, was because of...wait for it...you guessed it. Another barfight. Except this time I had been stabbed in the chest with a knife. It wasn't serious. It was just bleeding a lot. It hadn't punctured anything major, because, well, I could still breathe, I could still walk, and I could still talk. Of course, I was a little dizzy what with the blood loss and everything, but you know how it is.

Anyway, the brawl had started because one man had gotten too drunk and another one had made a racist comment or something. I got in the middle, stopped it, and consequently got stabbed. Ichigo practically screamed, grabbed me, and rushed me to the ER. Now, mind you, Ichigo doesn't like the sight of blood. So he's running through the streets with me, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans and a thong. Yeah...we got quite a few stares as we ran down the block toward the hospital....

Ichigo had been booted out of the operating room because he was bawling his lungs out. And...well, this was exactly what I had been waiting for. To be in close proximity with this one man. Ulquiorra Schiffer.

He injected me with this drug, I think it was called Emmalax or something like that, and it made my body numb so that I didn't feel anything when his needle went through my skin to sew up the gaping wound in my chest. And I initiated the conversation, simply because it looked like he wasn't the type to start a conversation.

"So, then, is it bad?" I asked him, raising an eyebrow.
"No. You'll live." His voice was quiet, soft, and with a little hint of a husky rasp that just made it all the more endearing and sexy. I just wanted to gather him up in my arms and cuddle him like a teddy bear. Now, you gotta understand, people, I didn't love Ichigo the way he loved me. I was just in this relationship with him to humor him. And yeah, maybe that would have been mean. But he was threatening to jump off a cliff if I refused him. So, really, what was I gonna do?

"What's with all the rush then?"
"First, there are other patients BESIDES you. You just got priority because you were stabbed. Second, I'm going to stitch you up so that you don't lose too much blood."

"Ah. I see."

I guess there were supposed to be nurses helping him stitch me up or something. One of them walked by the door. Probably to get a refill on coffee or to shake the vending machine in the hopes of getting a free soda. But then, just as the click clack of her heels passed the room, she popped her head in and said, "You don't get that very often. A drunk who can talk straight, eh, Schiffer? Not like his lover out in the waiting room." At the word 'lover,' I think I saw a flash of jealousy pass across his eyes. I'm pretty good at reading people. You have to be when you're a bartender.

After she passed, he rolled his eyes (god, that was hot) and calmly started to stitch up the cut on my chest. I watched him.

"This what you do all day?" I asked.
"Not all day. Just from now until 11." He said it like it didn't matter. Like it didn't matter that he sacrificed many of his nightly hours to be sewing up people.
"Wow...that's like, almost twelve hours right there. How the fuck do you manage to do that?"
He appeared to be thinking about it, his hands moving as though he didn't really have to think what to do. "I don't know. I just do it."

"I'd probably go freaking insane if I worked here." It was the truth. I'm used to vibes and the smell of vodka; not silence and the smell of lemon floor polisher.

"It's not too bad. You get used to it after a while, I suppose. Please stay still."

He leaned closer. I smiled, and then laughed. He was getting embarrassed, I could tell. God, he was just so adorable. And sensitive, too. You don't get very many sensitive guys that also happen to be adorable, like he was. I guess he was just one of a kind. You know how it is. Basically, if you're not in a relationship right now, let me sum it up to you in terms of food: There is the chocolate that you have a lot of, but it's not very tasty. And then you get that one piece of chocolate that is just incredibly amazing and delicious. That's what Ulquiorra was. The piece of good chocolate in a pile of crappy ones.

"You know," I said, as indifferently as I could make it, so that it didn't seem as though I really cared about what I was saying, "I'd get into more barfights if I knew I'd be in this position every time I came here." I looked at him then. Straight in his eyes. And it seemed as though I could see into his very soul. Ulquiorra's rather an open person once you get close to him. You can't see him from far away, but up close...man, the view is breathtaking.

"You're actually pretty fine for someone who works in the ER. I mean, seriously. You don't look like those people who have some serious mental issues that work here, ya know? The ones who laugh at nothing and then talk to themselves while they're stitching someone up and look like they have major cases of bedhead. I'd tap ya."

That was the truth. Seriously. And I meant it. Sure, I've told a bunch of people that 'I'd tap them' for extra money or a tip, but that was different. This time, I meant it both physically and mentally. I would love to make love with him, but, at the same token, I would love to get deeper into that soul of his, would love to see what he's like on the inside. And I guess I knew that he was different. That he was special. That he was something worth living for.

He looked flustered at that. "That will be a hundred dollars; please wait here while I go get your paperwork." Heck, everything about him was adorable! Even his stutter, even his blush, even the way his shoes squeaked slightly on the floor. I was in love. Madly. Not lust, which I had been in plenty of times, not like, which was like lust, but seriously in love. It was like getting high without the weed.

He came back after a few minutes, and said, "Well, Mr..." I get that problem a lot. You know. Where people can't pronounce your last name. So I decided to help him out a little bit.

"Jeagerjacques. As in Gee-Grr-Jacks."
"Right. Well, Mr. Jeagerjacques, you will need to come back next week to have your stitches removed."

Ichigo entered at that precise point. Just when the atmosphere was starting to lighten up a little. He had been out in the waiting room for all of fifteen minutes, and God, it looked like he'd cried out his heart and soul into an armrest or something.

"Thanks," he said to Ulquiorra, smiling coldly.

I followed him, pushing the clipboard gently back into his chest, and my hand brushed ever so slightly against his elbow (PHYSICAL CONTACT!! Grimmjow: 1. Ulquiorra: 0.) as I sidled around him and out the door. "Well, then, Mr. Schiffer, I sincerely hope that we meet again," I said, grinning once again as emerald eyes clashed against neon blues.

Of course, karma was a bitch to me. When wasn't it? Even as I uttered those words, I knew that something bad was going to happen.

Yeah. I'll admit it, okay? If I had never seen him again, but if he had lived a happy life, a life without heartbreak, I'd have traded it all for that. I'd have given up my one chance at true love, just to see him live a good life without heartbreak. A good life without all the tears that I'd brought into it. A good life where there were no devastating occurrences.

I'd have been glad to forego my one chance at love, if only it would have spared him a broken heart.