A/N: It's a ficling that I simply felt inspired to write. I guess I can take a lot of the ideas in this story and place them on situations that occurred in my life over the past year. The contents of this story is something I feel really passionate about and Sakura and Ino seemed to just fit the bill for the characters I was aiming to write. Soo um. . enjoy? Sakura's Pov.

Rating: T for angst.

Disclaimer: The characters belong to the Kishi-meister! But I don't think he owns ballet. . ?

I hate hospitals. Actually I despise hospitals with a hearty passion, from the clinical smell that attacks the nostrils on entering the building, to the utter grief that such a place contains.

I truly admire the work that the medical staff do, for the simple fact that each day, without fail, they go to those disease-ridden houses of despair and save lives. Or at least attempt to.

So when I say I spent some of the worst days of my life in hospitals are you really surprised? There is one moment, when I was sixteen, that I thought broke my heart.

I gripped tightly onto my best friends' bony veinous hand. "I'm fine" she reassured me quietly.

Stepping away from her bedside slightly, I waved my arm vastly around the blank walls of the hospital room, a scowl on my face. "Yeah, sure you are." I drawl sarcastically.

She flinched at the venom my tone was dripping with and cast her eyes downward toward the sheets that covered her tiny, skeletal figure.

When her eyes returned to mine there was a huge grin, stretching from ear to ear, plastered on her face. I thought, at the time it was possibly the saddest thing I had ever seen; fake, yet so convincing. She was clearly practiced in the art of deception.

How many of her alleged friends knew of her condition? How many knew that she had consumed thirty laxative tablets in just under an hour? But I suppose sometimes a smile works wonders at masking the pain; or the hunger.

I almost fell apart there and then, as a wave of guilt crashed over me. I had no right to be so cruel and angry What she needed was support, a warm caring family and her best friend: or so the doctor said. I kept my composure.

Turning to her once again, a question spilled from my lips that I couldn't fathom the answer to. A question that had been fighting to burst out of me the minute the principal informed me that Ion had been discovered sprawled on the floor of a toilet cubicle.

Why?

I came as no more than a whisper but I remember the thundering silence afterwards. She finally told me after what seemed an aeon.

A year or so beforehand, when we were 14 she had been offered the lead of a ballet being produced by a budding, renowned dancer. Being a keen ballerina, Ino had jumped at "her big chance" or so she called it.

Despite always being able to move delicately and fluidly, Ino had always been slightly dumpy, "A heavy bone structure" my mother used to call it. Thats when the trouble began.

The male lead was unable to lift her properly and the director told Ino she would be cast aside if she was not willing to take her role more seriously.

So Ino worked. She ran and ran, tried everything to lose weight. And the fitter she got the less she ate. Pounds seem to evaporate as my happy companion faded away also, encouraged endlessly by the envious sneers of her fellow dancers.

She became grim, snapping at her parents and I, pushing her friends when we told her to slow down. The only smile that ever graced her lips was the haunting look of utter glee that crossed her face when she stood atop the weighing scales.

The show came and went with a beautiful performance but Ino found herself trapped; The female fatale in the menacing drama called anorexia.

So she played her role impeccably. Donning a mask of the girl I once knew she pretended that she was happy, healthy. Perhaps the worst part of the story for me was the fact that I hadn't noticed any of this. To me, Ino was back to normal, if a little more subdued; or so I thought.

She never left the hospital.

A few days after she told me this tragic tale her liver collapsed and her vital organs failed. We didn't bury Ino, but a shadow of what my closest friend once was. Needless to say, this ordeal greatly changed my life.

I hate hospitals; the smell, the sadness and the occasional bone-chilling sight. Yet each day, i sit at my desk, Psychotherapist, specializing in Eating Disorders, without fail, in my determined attempt to bring happiness, hope and relief to those putting their well-being in my hands. To me every person to walk through that door is my best friend, my sister, my Ino and I will aid them through the smothering darkness that is anorexia.

-Fin-

A/N: Anorexia is a devastating, devastating thing if it happens to a loved one. I guess this is who this story is dedicated for. Them and Ceara. I love you so much.

So um... R&R maybe? Tell me what you thought?