Customer Service:The Slow Downfall of Happiness [Chapter Twenty-Two]

I joined the United States Army.
I was an American hero.
Blah blah blah.
Cut to me being stationed in South Korea, just in case North Korea decided to fire nukes at my homeland, I'd be right there--just down the street--ready to beat some ass.
But just as I planned, North Korea was all talk and no rock. So I pretty much was on vacation for six years.
I stopped talking to Bella after my fourth year in the service. She was pretty upset that I couldn't make it to her and Mathew's wedding, and I figured he used that as a way of convincing her I wasn't worth their time. That I was only a temporary best friend, like one from high school, that people grow out of.
I sent her letters quite often, and even made her videos [vlogs, if you will] but once she changed addresses [after moving in with Mathew] I never got a hold of her again. Her sisters wouldn't give me her new address, and so, little by little, the love for Bella was eclipsed by the wonder of the new country I was in.
Although I did hook up with quite a few Korean babes, I never opened my heart up to any of them [yes, I know...very cheezy, but the truth], I kept it reserved for someone who had shunned me long ago.
Cut to me ending my tour in South Korea.
Uncle Sam asked me to stay with him, fighting for America for another eight years. But I decided, it was time to go back home and start a life.
I moved back to California, Riverside even. That place, no matter how hard I try, always pulls me back to it. I bought a little house by where the CVC is at, and started going back to RCC...again. I thought of it more as something to do, than a footstep towards my future.
I just took a couple of classes and got a job at a cafe, serving pompous assholes coffee.
It was a job, you know? It kept me out of trouble. But working in customer service began to take it's toll on me, as it did all those years ago.
I fell terribly ill one winter, so ill that I broke an age old oath to myself, and went to the doctor's. The hospital to be more precise.
I went for a check-up first, in order for the nurses and doctors to asess my illness.
Cut to me in the waiting room reading "Forks and Spoons".
"...Ryan...Romero...?" A nurse who poked her head from behind a wooden door called out into the waiting room. I rose and marched over to her, my heart racing. As I followed her into the bowels of the hospital my irrational fear of needles began to take over, and I soon felt I was going to purge all over the walls. But I maintained my composure.
She lead me to a room with a chair covered in what looked to me like construction paper.
"Sit here, another nurse will be right with you." She said with a smile. She was gone before I could speak.
I waited for a long time, in that cold, stagnate room until an angel entered.
"I must be dead." I said with a smirk.
"Wow, it's been a while..." Bella said. And then I let her take my blood.

-Sir Jestro