In truth, I can't exactly remember what happened. It's like how when you're thirteen and you can't remember what happened when you were three and you're all, "Huh?" when another relative asks you about that one time when you did that one thing at that one place. Yeah. It was like that.

Ulquiorra must have been scared out of his mind. I had been admitted to the hospital a few days before the first major incident happened, and he worked at the ER, like normal. I had had to quit my bartending job, much to the chagrin of many a few bar frequenters, so I was pretty much alone during the night and half of the day. The few days I had in the hospital before the big thing happened, I had a fever, was on lots of medication that I can't even begin to count or try to pronounce, and we weren't really able to talk with each other. Or, at least, I wasn't able to really talk to him without babbling on about something not relevant to the subject or whatever. But I do remember him telling me that we would pull through this and that we would live long and happily together after all this was over. I appreciated the effort.

I got my scans daily, and most of the time, it didn't really matter to me what was on them. Maybe it was because I didn't really care, because I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that I was going to die anyway. I told the speicalists and oncologists that I didn't want them to call Ulquiorra because he was probably sleeping and needed his rest if he was going to save more lives that night, but that time, the first big thing that happened, I guess they did.

And, like I said, this is the part where things start to blank. I can't remember anything of the next few hours clearly. I remember seeing Stark hovering over me, a surgical mask on his face and knots of concentration between his eyebrows. I remember seeing tubes filled with reddish clear liquid and wondering, stupidly, if that was some kind of juice. I remember seeing Ulquiorra's face, eyebrows knit in worry, emerald eyes looking at me as though they would never be able to look at me again. I remember hearing my heart monitor blipping away beside my bed. I remember feeling Ulquiorra's ice-cold (it was probably a normal temperature) hand holding mine.

And when I woke up again, I was pretty damn sore, pretty medicated, and pretty sad that Ulquiorra had to suffer all of this for me. Sometimes I wonder whether it would have been better if we had never met, if it would have been better for him not to have gotten attached to me. Because if he hadn't, if he had never worked on me at the ER that one time, if Ichigo and I had never broken up, then Ulquiorra would never have had suffered heartbreak for me.

But anyway, after I woke up, he talked to me about starting a blog to monitor my condition and such. I readily agreed, because at that point, if anything could help Ulquiorra, such as sharing the burden with other people in our community, then I was willing to try it.

The blog attracted all kinds of visitors, from long-term survivors of cancer to people whose loved ones were suffering from cancer. Our community started events like 'Run Strong' fundraisers and people donated things like gas cards and money and food to us. They even sent hats for me (I'd had to shave off all my nice blue hair due to the cancer) and really good meals which were WAY better than that hospital crap they fed me. But it was good, because Ulquiorra - rather, Stark for suggesting it - was right. Between my liver incident and the months that followed, I realized that there was no way that I, or Ulquiorra, or even the two of us together, could have handled what happened on our own.

I, and Ulquiorra too, were grateful for the donations, for the gifts, for the prayers. My cancer probably wasn't, as my condition went up and down, up and down, like a roller coaster with lots of rises and drops. Sometimes I'd be well enough so that I could go home with Ulquiorra and spend a few weeks sleeping in my own bed, sleeping with him, eating in my own kitchen, etc. etc., and other times I'd be so damn sick that I'd have to stay in the hospital for months at a time, sharing a room with an unfamiliar person, watching people come and go, clicking channels and watching soap operas because there was nothing better on TV. Ulquiorra took a lot of work off then. I was grateful for it, because he filled my time, filled my day, made the days go faster.

Ulquiorra prayed for me. And I prayed for him. And the people of the community prayed for both of us. Prayed that I would live, get better, prayed that Ulquiorra wouldn't be scarred or heartbroken by the whole thing if it did come out for the worse. We must have spent days praying. But it was all something to do, something to make us feel better, something that made us believe that we would come out of this alive and happy.

I suppose the days of prayer weren't quite enough.

Or, in retrospect, perhaps God got so freaking annoyed of our praying that he just decided to put me out of my misery.

Or, in another option, perhaps God did answer our prayers. Just not in the way we'd expected.