This is just a shot-gun story for a shot-gun idea I had poking around in my head. May just be a one-shot if it isn't well-received; may turn into a real series if it is. I'll wait and see.

You might have heard the expression, "You don't have to be crazy to work here; they'll train you" before. Well, when you have the job I do, that's just a big hypocrisy. You won't be hired after the first interview unless they see that you are a bit loopy, and they'll poke fun at you later for being, "a few sandwiches short of a picnic", "a few sodas short of a six pack", and lately, I've picked up that I'm also apparently "a few chickens short of a farm". Personally, I'd never heard that one before, but it sounds to me like a I just need a comfortable sheet or blanket and a park that isn't contaminated with litter and dog droppings and I could have myself a nice lunch. You see, I was just a little more loopy than most at my job.

These kinds of things happened all the time. I was referring to the ever-constant memos from the psychiatric ward downtown, but yeah, the whole name-calling, gossiping when they thought I wasn't around when I was really around the corner or ducking behind the water cooler happened pretty frequently, too. Sometimes, the ward gets a patient that is admitted, whether voluntarily or not, that they simply can't handle. Most of the time, the patients have dementia, but they just as often have sociological issues, which generally explains why the doctors there have problems. The first time a patient snaps and attacks a doctor, or triesto attack them, that's where people like me step in. We go in and try to pick apart said patient, slow enough as to not upset their already fractured minds, but quickly enough to help solve the problem. One young doctor, whom had recently flown in from America, had been assaulted by a woman in her room while trying to bring her out the the recreation area. She hadn't so much as made eye contact with anyone, including doctors and other patients, but the moment he tried to talk to her and bring her outside, he made the mistake of cupping her chin and making her look him in the eyes. It had been a harmless and intentionally friendly gesture, but in the woman's mind, it was like a switch had been flipped, and she mauled him. Their screams eventually caught the attention of the other doctors, and pulled her off of him. He was so flustered, his feathers were still ruffled by the incident when I arrived there two days later.

"Hurry up and fix that broad," He had pleaded, his voice shaking, his bright hazel eyes studying me warily as if judging whether or not I could finish the job he had started.

I didn't bother to mask the frown that etched onto my cracked lips, because I really didn't like his tone. "Fix" her? What was she, a common household appliance? It was as if he had expected me to go into her room, wrench in hand, and whack her into sense. His next words, however, turned my frown upside down, to say the least, simply out of the ignorance of the statement.

"I'm already tired of this job... I wish not everyone around here were psychos."

He had shaken his head and walked away, apparently not realizing that he had just contradicted his entire line of work. I would have pointed that fact out, and reminded him he was in a psychiatric hospital, had he not made such a hasty escape.

I had read the file sent on the patient he had failed to doctor, an Ino Yamanaka. According to the young doctor, Richard Finnigan, all that had transpired during his short time in her room was that he had called out to her from the doorway. When she was unresponsive, he approached her, and she had whimpered in protest to his advances, bolting into the corner of the room farthest from him. Even if you don't know what you would do, if you were to think about it for just a moment, you'd at least know what not to do in this situation. Crude as it may be, think of the patients as animals. I know, it sounded inhumane when my professor first suggested it, but there is truth to those words. All humans were at one point in time animals anyway, at least according to Darwin. Anyways, if you came across a dog you knew nothing about, you weren't sure if it had rabies of some other disease, and when you tried to pet it and it ran into an alley, what would you do there? Most would say "Leave it the hell alone", and that's actually the smart thing to do. But say it's a neighbor's dog. It's run away and now you're trying to recapture it. Let's say you're a good person trying to do the right thing, or at the very least a not-so good person, but just trying to get on the good side of the dog's attractive owner so maybe you can chase more than just pets further down the road. So, leaving the dog alone isn't an option. You can either calmly coax it to you from a safe distance enticing it with bait, coax it out while slowly inching towards it with said bait, or you can simply walk right up to it and grab the mutt. If you have half a brain at all, you'll know that one of those options just doesn't belong. Unfortunately, not everyone has as much sense as you and I, and just let their eight-year education go to waste, which is a real shame.

Naturally, the doctor lacking sense was my good friend Richie. He not only made the big no-no of striding towards Ino and grabbing her, but he also looked into her eyes. Which brings me back to the dog. The chaser grabs the dog by its scruff, risking the dog biting his arm off and having a quick and easy lunch, and pulls its head up. The dog is already scared and intimidated; that's why it ran in the first place. When someone does that to a dog, it conveys to the dog, "I am better than you; I am your master." Most dogs don't like that, and humans like it even less. Humans, by nature, have a superiority complex exceeding any other mammal, reptile or otherwise. This is when you get mauled by the dog, and it's the end of the line; you're not catching the dog, you're not the good guy, and you're certainly not getting any dates anytime soon. In Richie's case, he was mauled by the woman, and lost his credibility.

I had tied my unmanageable brown hair into a tight bun for the occasion, and, standing outside of Ino's room, I went through a mental checklist that I always accounted to before I approached any patients.

Hair, check.

I had had my fair share of patients spazing on me over a conversation gone awry, grasping ahold of my scalp and yanking on it. It was the most common form of aggression that most patients went for; that and clawing out the eyes, but luckily, my doctor gave me some ointment for that and said it would heal on its own. Through experience and trial-and-error, I have found that if I tie my hair back and give them a handle to jerk on, it makes it not only more convenient for them (not saying I want them to yank on my hair, but really, it can happen), but also for me, seeing how I won't still be brushing out the knots and tangles a week later.

Checklist... check.

This one is self-explanatory. On each and every visit to the ward, I carried with me a blank checklist of symptoms so I could jot them down as I observed them.

White clothing, check.

Just like the hair, patients had also torn at my clothes, if they were too colorful, or if I was wearing too much black. Apparently, wearing too much black signified the Angel of Death to those who had lost a few loved ones as well as a few screws along the line, which didn't sit too well with many. Wearing white was the neutral "color", and some that had attacked others because they didn't like the colors red, blue, yellow or any of the other colors in between, smiled at me before I'd even opened my mouth. White was the color of angels, not the ones seen in Death, but the ones seen in Life. I had come to the conclusion that patients liked that, and used it to my advantage. Even particularly shiny objects caused some patients to stir uneasily, so I had gotten into the habit of removing all jewelry as well. I rarely wore make-up to begin with, so the aspect of upsetting one of them with a glossy sheen over my pouty lips didn't pose an issue with me.

Having checked and double-checked everything on my list, I inhaled, and braced myself for impact as I entered Ino's door.

It was so perfectly as I'd pictured in my mind, I pinched myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming the scenario before me. Having felt the twinge of pain, I smiled to myself, and dropped to my knees.

"Hello there, Ino."

Her stringy, ice blond hair hung over her body like drapery as she sat on the floor against the wall, her arms wrapped around the legs so tightly pressed to her chest. She remained unresponsive, as I figured she would. Like most "cells", as I preferred to distastefully call them, there were two small barred rectangular windows, each above the two beds in the room. Whomever Ino's roommate was had been taken from the room for my arrival.

I pulled my legs under myself, sitting indian style as I laid the clipboard behind me and out of view.

"My name is Miyune. Nice weather we're having, huh?"

Ino slowly lifted her head, craning her neck to gaze out the window as if it was a task she had meant to bear witness to earlier, and had just forgotten. It had been cloudy that day, dreary, and I'm sure I still smelled of the musty outdoors that I had brought inside with me. The patient turned to me, eyeing me as if I was the one with greater mental issues between the two of us.

"It's been raining," She accentuated slowly, softly, in a crisp, clear voice.

"It's never pretty after the rain."

Smiling at her response, I silently checked off dementia in my mind. No dementia sufferer could have come to that conclusion on their own.

"What about rainbows?"

She seemed to consider my point for a moment, before shrugging her shoulder nonchalantly. She wasn't a talker. That was okay with me. Not many were, at first.

"I like chocolate. How about you?"

Ino seemed to do a double-take at my pockets, as if mentally checking to see if I had the mythical substance on me. The dietary staff around here frowned on giving their patients chocolate, placing the very word in the same bracket as "cocaine" and "methamphetamines". But I had done my homework, and one fun-size Snicker's bar didn't affect any patient in any way; it wasn't even enough to give them a modest sugar buzz. My boss left me to make the decsion, and I decided to cut them a break now and again. I fished into my pockets, retrieving two small candy bars.

"Do you like Reese's or Milky Way?"

Ino's eyes seemed to grow alight at the Milky Way, but hesitance still lingered in her light blue gaze. I peeled the wrapper off of the Reese's, crumbling the paper in my free hand as I bit into the circular chocolate-slathered peanut butter delicacy to show her I hadn't poisoned or otherwise altered the candy. Her skepticism vanished as she caught the candy bar with ease, mauling it as if I'd thrown raw meat to a starving lion. Pleased, she munched, sharing my company much more lightly now.

In a ten minute session, I learned that not only did Ino Yamanaka lack dementia, she also lacked any signs of aggression. She suffered from primarily post-traumatic stress. Nothing serious, but, as her file had claimed, she was self-admitted after the sudden deaths of her husband, three children and mother in a car accident. Most likely, she was afraid she might try and commit some self-harm after she sank into a severe depression in response to the unexpected deaths she'd been unfortunately dealt.

That was a month ago.

Today, I was on my way back to that same hospital to try and treat a patient there who, according to my co-worker Sakura Haruno, was from hell. You heard that from time to time, when a psychiatrist tried to talk to a patient, only to receive what those in my line of work had dubbed "getting the cold shoulder". In short, that line meant that a doctor had tried to speak to the patient, and said doctor had either been ignored completely and refused to talk at all, or had been attacked. Judging from Sakura's disheveled pink hair and curt, crude tongue, I assumed it had to have been the latter. After making a scene, she vowed never to see another patient without seeing a criminal history report on them first. Anger flashing in her pale green eyes, she had then proceeded to take the rest of the day off, and low and behold, the superintendent dropped Sakura's burden onto my all-too willing shoulders. Call it twisted, but I absolutely loved getting the patients that my co-workers had failed to rectify. It posed a challenge to me, and I welcomed a challenge like one would welcome their significant other into their home, as it gave me a greater sense of accomplishment when I succeeded where others had fallen. I would give the patient a day to settle down from their encounter with Sakura. When I came into work the following day, my superiors had advised against my acting so soon, as I was the eighth doctor that would approach this particular patient.

"Eighth!"

I remember reciting the word to myself in awe as if it had been foreign to me, excitement fluttering through my body like electricity. Seven before me had tried. Seven had failed. Seven was the number of wholeness; completeness. At least, that's the the Good Book told me. That should mean that seven was the number this patient would stop at, and the eighth would finally breech them, shedding light anew.

At least, that's what I had convinced myself.

Not wanting to rush things, I waited an entire week before I jumped into my 2008 Ford Fusion and put the key into the ignition. All the hastiness I had spent the past week restraining was emanating from me in waves now, and I think I might have breached the legal speed limit.

I'm not being arrogant to say that I'm the best those in my line of work have to offer. My co-workers and superintendent would all readily agree to this, although my gift comes with a "hefty price", as many would insist. I can attribute my knack for grounding myself to my patients' levels to my own insanity, and my unwillingness overall to socialize with anyone. My voice just didn't sound the same when I talked to those outside a protected, sanitized, sane-free environment. The voice wasn't even mine. I found myself at peace most often when speaking to a patient. That's what made me so good at what I do; I belonged in a psychiatric ward myself, therefore, I knew how most patients felt. Misunderstanding. Anger for said misunderstanding. Forcing oneself into isolation. Loneliness that you knew no one ever had a snowball's chance in hell in quenching because everyone around you misunderstood you, so you never made an attempt to ask anyone to talk to you, and simply accepted the fact that you were different. The loneliness proved not be an acquired taste, but a preferred one; or so, that's what I've been telling myself since high school.

Speaking of psychiatric hospitals, that's exactly where I would have landed had I had my own way back then, but my father had never been able to accept the fact that perhaps his only child was slowly slipping off her rocker. He was a plastic surgeon, therefore, as you might be able to put two and two together, obsessed with perfection. No daughter of his was going to be anything shy of perfection, anything shy of following in his perfect, medical footsteps. There were people who disliked me for my social inept attitude, and then there were those who simply tolerated me. I had no friends. Sometimes, when my father had started to grow suspicious about my lack of bringing friends home, going to friends' houses, slumber parties, shopping mall trips, violation of curfew and everything else females my age were apparently supposed to do, I grew smart enough to head out after school and stay for hours on end somewhere other than home. Sometimes I took a jog around town, listening to my walk-man. At other times, I climbed trees simply to see how high I could get before the branches started to give way under my weight. It kept him happy when I came in after curfew, thinking I had been out and about with "friends", and I endured the scolding that he had to give me by default since he was, after all, a parent.

Despite my anti-social tendencies, I was a very active child. I still am. I decided one day during my junior year of high school that I wanted to take martial arts classes. Though I was administered the lessons in a class full of other aspiring martial artists, I figured most of them would be there for the fighting aspect, and not to check out the local eye candy. Not that I considered myself much to look at, anyways. I had a straight yet unruly mop of brown hair possessing much of my scalp. My skin was definitely not what models were made of; a sickly, pasty white complexion contrasted by both my dark hair and dark, fern green eyes. Only my eyes were the slightest give-away that my father and I were even related. His skin was a beautiful, healthy olive shade, his wispy blond hair always seeming to be windswept, regardless if there was even a wind. Even as he aged, his flawless beauty that would never require anything like the art he himself crafted never faltered.

After he had made it perfectly clear in my junior high years that pursuing a career in any other field besides that of medicine was unacceptable, I had no trouble making my long-term goal to be a psychiatrist, specializing in social psychiatry. I figured that even if my options had been a little bit more open, I would have settled where I had anyways. Ever since my pre-teen years, I knew that something had always been wrong with me upstairs. I wanted to figure out what was wrong with me first and foremost; helping other people could wait until after I was "fixed". They say that acknowledging that you have a problem is the first step to solving your problem. That, my friends, is the biggest lie I've ever heard. Here I was, going on fifteen or so years of admitting that I was loony, and yet I was no closer to "fixing" myself than the day I started.

It was a clear, beautiful day today; the sun was shining, the wind was all but caressing my already flyaway hair, and the chocolate was already starting to melt in my pocket. I hoped that my new friend-to-be liked Kit-Kats and Almond Joys.

I was more than a little miffed that this particular patient was accompanied to-and-fro to their destinations by not one, but two "guards", and in shackles. It was enough to make me lose my lunch, and I hadn't even eaten lunch yet. I feared how that would work; losing one's lunch before one ate it.

One of the doctors had escorted me to the recreation room, though I hardly could see why. By now, I knew the entire layout of the place almost as well as I knew my own house.

The doctor instructed me to wait where I sat, pulling up a chair across from me and the table in which I was seated. Someone fidgeted next to me, and I gazed around the room, watching as the hired hands and doctors ushered the remaining patients out of the room. My skin began to crawl as I envisioned this ill-portrayed man, to have everyone else but me cleared from the room. The reason they hadn't allowed me to go to his room, I knew, was because his file had clearly depicted his aggression. The staff didn't want me cornered in a small room with him, alone, where he'd have time to do with me as he pleased before my muffled screams got loud enough to reach anyone who could help me.

While I waited, I pulled the patient's file out of my messenger bag to give it a last minute once-over.

"Gaara," I murmured, even the strange name falling awkwardly from my lips.

He had not been self-admitted. His doctors had insisted that he stay at the psychiatric ward after numerous "blackouts" which all resulted in a murder or cheery visit the victim would pay to the ICU. The dates of the victims' deaths and hospitalizations were listed. Several slips of paper clipped to the manila folder, all bearing the chicken-scratch signatures of variously listed doctors condoning his rehabilitation, all claimed that this Gaara character's "episodes" were linked to his anger, which was already on a short fuse anyway. Only his siblings' pleas of "insanity" had held this man from going straight to jail for murder.

The heavy creak of a none-too-well-oiled door echoed, piercing the silence. I shuffled the papers back into my bag, and swallowed back at the nervous lump in my throat, bracing myself for the man about to enter my line of sight. I envisioned a tall, hulking man, with holes from the piercings he'd had and had been forced to remove and tattoos covering every inch of visible skin; kinda like the raven haired "guards". Instead, I could feel my jaw slacken at the scrawny, pasty skinned male that ambled into my view. He only possessed one tattoo, and that was etched onto his forehead, the red-inked kanji for 'love'. It was sloppily done, which instantly led me to believe that the work was his own. His vibrant red hair was the reddest red I had ever seen in my life. Soft, teal eyes rimmed with black indicated at insomnia. He glared icily at me as the two guards pushed him down into the seat across from the table when he refused to sit on his own. A single, long shackle bound his wrists and ankles together, restraining his movement. I didn't plan on bothering to shake his hand in any case. By now, I'd learned that most patients wouldn't have accepted the gesture that any other person would consider one of "good faith" anyway.

"Hello, Gaara."

His cold stare remained trained on me, and I could tell that he was silently wishing me to fall over in my chair and croak. He had no idea how mutual the feeling was for me, too, at times.

"My name is Miyune."

I contemplated skipping the weather question, since it was obvious this man didn't have dementia; if he did, he wouldn't have so skillfully attacked every doctor that approached him. I knew how Sakura worked. She had a bad temper, but never, ever showed that side of herself with her patients. Since her forte was dementia patients, and seeing how she had crashed and burned with him, I doubted that this man had it. However, I asked in any case, for "development's" sake.

"Nice weather we're having, don't you think?"

I felt my palms begin to sweat as his eyes narrowed dangerously. I had infuriated him with my simple question. Those doctors weren't kidding when they said he had a short fuse. On second thought, did he even have a fuse at all?

"I know you didn't come here to talk about the weather," He growled angrily.

His voice was low and raspy; haunting, I'd even go as far to say.

"No," I admitted,

"But it was just a question."

"I don't like stupid questions," He seethed, baring his teeth at me menacingly.

I think I was already starting to get the hang of how he worked. There were those patients ruled mainly by sadness and depression. Patients like Ino Yamanaka. And then, there were those who lived their lives consumed in a blinding rage, a fire that simply could not be doused.

"You don't seem to like a lot of things."

His glare wavered, and I caught a glimpse of amusement from those stone-carved eyes. Seeing as how he didn't answer, it seemed the ball was back in my court again. I reached into my pocket, lying the two candy bars on the table.

"Which do you prefer?" I offered.

Gaara's jaw slackened, staring at the chocolate, his face still the same blank mask it had been, but his eyes were slowly taking turns unwrapping both treats simultaneously. I slid both across the table towards him, in range of what little his chained arms could reach. The guards looked as if they might argue, but I waved them off.

"They won't spike his heart rate, or send him into cardiac arrest," I assured them dully.

He attacked the Kit-Kat first, devouring it in three quick bites, barely salvaging the wrapper. I decided to voice my honest surprise to him.

"You know, most tend to think I poison the candy. I'm astounded you took it so easily."

"Death would be preferable," He confided morbidly.

"I'm sorry to hear that. Why are you so troubled?"

The harsh glare returned to his eyes, directed once again at me. I rose my hands in my defense, waving them lightly in surrender.

"Hey, that wasn't a stupid question. Don't give me that look, I just fed you the food of the Gods."

Gaara's gaze dropped, and his tongue flicked across his paper-thin lips.

"You really want to know?"

"Yeah," I replied, leaning forward.

"I want to help you. There are other ways for you to live. Other ways to influence how others live, without taking their lives."

Gaara seemed to resign himself silently to my request. He jerked his head slightly, signaling for me to come closer. I obeyed, though still out of his reach. His evil-eye turned to the guards on either side of him that inched closer to him to mirror me. I caught his drift, and waved them to step back. Their mouths opened and closed like fish out of water, casting one another skeptical glances.

"Go on," I instructed, waving them off again.

They took a good four steps back, but remained poised to pounce Gaara if he made any sudden movements.

"That better?"

He glanced over his shoulder at them, offering them a smug grin. It was a twisted look, a sinister contrast to his otherwise porcelain face.

"Gaara... Tell me what causes you pain. I promise I can help. There's a reason I'm the best there is."

I didn't feel comfortable voicing my superiority, but I wanted to sway him into talking to me. If informing him that I was good at what I did pushed him closer to speaking to me, then I was all for it.

He slowly peeled the wrapper from the Almond Joy. I watched him analyze me, analyze him. Usually, patients of the ward eyed me with suspicion, fear, skepticism, but never the rebellious intelligence reflected in Gaara's eyes. I was beginning to wonder who was keener mind here. I leaned further forward, on the edge of my seat now.

It was the most noobish mistake I'd made in at least two years, perhaps in my entire career.

In the blink of an eye, he had the top of my scalp in his grasp, yanking me even closer to him. I heard myself cry aloud as he pulled me across the surface of the table, watching in horror as a satisfied smirk crossed his lips at my pained voice. I hadn't realized how close I'd been to him until it was too late. He pulled me to him, and I was able to catch his scent with ease, and it sure as hell wasn't sugar, spice or anything nice. His strength was also far from being powderpuff, having hauled my ass across the table and nearly onto his lap before the two guards behind him had a chance of moving in to save the day.

"My problem... are self-righteous bastards like you!!"

Suddenly, I heard his taunting laughter in my left ear, followed by something wet tickling at my jawline. His tongue trailed to my cheekbone before the two men pried him from me with little difficulty. He had resigned himself before they'd even reached us, having already made his point. I propped myself up on my elbows, watching the raven haired men haul off my patient back to his forsaken "cell". The last glimpse I caught of Gaara was him shoveling what remained of the Almond Joy into his mouth before anyone else thought of taking it from him. His sadistic grin remained plastered on his lips, but his cold eyes sent the message clearly.

Don't come back.

Unfortunately for him, it had always took me a long time to fully learn any lesson I'd tried to benefit from, and this would be no exception. I smiled to myself as I slid off of the table, re-doing my casual bun, already wondering if his expression when he saw me tomorrow would be one of mortified shock, or constrained anger.

I let the tangled mop atop my head hang awkwardly askew, and turned the the bug-eyed, flustered doctor behind me as I slid off of the table.

"Mark me down for two p.m. tomorrow afternoon," I told him breathlessly.

My heart was thundering in my chest, but the slack jawed doctor was still staring at the seat where Gaara had been sitting in mortified wonder, and I even doubted he'd heard me. So I rescheduled with the receptionist by the exit. She stared at me like I'd grown another head, but it was probably because of my whack-job hair. Just for effect, I moved to bounce the bun on the back of my head, laughing inwardly when it wasn't there. It was sagging off the left side of my head, and it wasn't a bun anymore. It was just a mess that would take a week to brush out. So much for the Number One precaution on my mental checklist. I may have to re-write a new list, just for my new patient, Gaara. What a fun name to say...