You'll also find this fic on tumblr under tulpinchen2 :)

Like always, enjoy!

CHAPTER 1: WORST DAY

She sighed and closed the door of her locker gently with a quiet thud. Today was one of those days where everything you lay hands on just goes terribly wrong. When you wake up after the worst sleep you've ever had in your entire life, just to look into a mirror and see the disaster that is called your face and you think 'Where, God, where has puberty gone wrong?' It was one of those days where your shower just don't want to heat up and your hair seems to be a rat nest and you don't realize you wear your shirt wrong until you walk into work and people begin to look at you strangely. Another sigh left her lips and she pressed her palms into her eye sockets to try and sooth the burning of definitely not enough sleep, mixed with too much stress and hunger. Today everything had gone wrong for her. In every possible way she could think of, it had gone wrong. From the expired milk she'd drank, to her car not turning on, to the too cold coffee, to the pregnant wife who has died on her table. She tried not to think about it anymore as she put her coat on and walked out the changing room straight to the elevators. But she couldn't stop herself. The death of little kids always hit her the most in the worst way possible. And this time it had been an unborn child. And its mother. Don't forget the mother Sakura, she thought. It had been a car accident. Apparently the woman wanted to cross a street when a Minivan hit her. The car hadn't been over speed limit but it had been fast enough to tear the placenta of the woman. It just wouldn't stop bleeding and the foetus was too young to survive.

The quiet ping of the elevator arriving on her wished floor brought her back from her thoughts. She glanced at the watch on her wrist. Almost three in the morning, just a few minutes and then she would drive home to a much needed shower and a hot chocolate with whipped cream.

"Done for tonight?"

Startled Sakura turned around and looked straight in the amazing blue eyes of Yamanka Ino. "Fuck Ino! Do you always have to fucking sneak your fucking way up to me? For fucks sake, get a goddamn hobby!" She let out a shaky breath and pressed her hand on her crazy beating heart.

Ino pulled an eyebrow up. "Well, that was many curses in just one simple sentence. Rough day?"

With one hand Sakura went through her long, light pink hair, brushing it behind her ears, and let out a sigh when she walked over to Ino, who sat behind a counter full of papers and some patient files.

"Yeah, I'm sorry. I've been trying to stop cursing too much but it's harder than you'd think." Sakura furrowed her brows. "I thought you had the day shift?"

This time Ino sighed and an annoyed look crossed over her pretty face. "That new nurse asked me if I'd switch with her 'cause she has a date tonight with some sexy guy at a fancy place and awesome sex afterwards. I'm jealous."

"You have a sexy guy at home. Sai. Your boyfriend, remember?"

"But I want the date and the fancy place and awesome sex. Do you actually know when the last time was I had actual sex?", the blond whined and pouted her lips in a way that Sakura couldn't even think about doing that herself. Ino always has been the girly one of them both. Sakura has liked dresses and shoes and make up as well, but Ino seemed to be just so much worse and could do things with her body Sakura didn't even know one could do, and that in spite of the fact that she was the one who'd studied medicine for years. Ino was a beautiful woman with a perfect body who just knew how to present herself.

"I don't really want to know," Sakura answered.

"Last week," Ino still elaborated for her.

"How terrible."

"I know, right?"

Sakura rolled her eyes at her best friend. "Stop being so full of yourself Ino. At least you have a sex life. I got just the life. The only penis I get to see at home is the one of Aki-chan. That is sad."

Ino chuckled. "I didn't say I was jealous of you. How is he anyway? I miss him."

"He's with my parents for the week. And he misses you, too."

"I'd miss me too if the only face I got to see was yours."

"Shut up pig."

"Haruno-sensei! Could you do me a favor?" Sakura turned around to watch a new intern running to her. She lifted one of her eyebrows and waited patiently for the girl, who was hardly younger than herself, to reach her.

"What is it?"

The girl sighed and began to fumble with the clipboard in her hands. " Well I got that patient a few minutes ago with a head wound and bruises and grazes. And he refuses to let anyone take care of him who isn't at least an attending."

"And you didn't tell him that there's no one available?"

"I've tried! But he wouldn't listen."

Sakura sighed and turned back to Ino to pick up where they stopped talking a minute ago. "Would you call him? He's in a phase where he's afraid I'll die when I'm not with him. Might be good for him when he hears from someone other than me that I'm currently not lying in a pool of blood or being hit by a car and will leave him forever."

Concern placed itself on Ino's face and Sakura could see that her brain was beginning to work. "That sounds serious Sakura."

The rosette nodded slowly. "Yeah I know. Call him, will you?" And with that she turned around and began to follow the intern into the ER, her thoughts by Aki and the shower she wanted to take and the cocoa she wanted to drink and how that all would have to wait a little while longer. The intern, she was called Momoko she remembered now, led her to a bed that was shielded from sight by room dividers. Sakura snatched clean gloves from a nearby table and walked behind the dividers with Momoko just two steps behind her and was greeted by the most brooding face she's ever seen. On the bed sat a man in his late twenties maybe. Blood spread all over his face from a cut on his forehead and his hands bruised and grazed. His eyebrows were furrowed and his look was so gloomy. He glared at her as he noticed her walking in.

"I said I wanted a real doctor," he growled. His eyes fixed on Momoko as if she were too stupid to follow his orders. She noticed how the girl flinched.

Sakura took the stool beside the bed, letting herself fall onto it while she gestured to Momoko to handle over the clipboard. Quickly she flew over the hastily, not quite decipherable, words written on it.

Sakura's eyes went up to watch him with a calm gaze. "I am a real doctor Uchiha-san," she said and picked her badge from her pocket to show him. His eyes travelled from the badge to her face and back again for a moment, then his eyes settled on her and narrowed.

"How old are you?" he demanded. "Eighteen?"

Sakura scoffed and rolled her eyes at him. "Twenty-five. It's impolite to ask a lady how old she is," she raised a brow and sent a scrutinizing look his way. "It's not quite polite to terrorize my interns either by not letting them work properly."

This time it was his turn to scoff but he still had the decency to look a tad ashamed. Okay, maybe ashamed was the wrong word, with him sitting there brooding like a sulking child that was caught eating all the cookies.

"Well, I do want to keep my face," he scoffed quietly and she couldn't stop the laugh that built in her chest.

She grabbed a small torchlight and turned it on, smiling at him. "So, am I allowed to save that cute face of yours before it's too late and you get a real nasty infection, which will spread all over your head and will leave it looking like the back of the Hunchback of Notre Dame?"

He rolled his eyes a little and nodded once. Sakura pointed the light straight to his eyes and watched his pupils. As they got smaller and responded just how they should she turned the light off and asked him to follow her pencil.

"Except for the cut, is your head hurting in a weird way?"

He shook his head.

"Dizzy or blurred vision?" Again he shook his head. She put the pencil away and grabbed some wads and disinfectant. He let out a soft hiss as soon as she started to clean the wound.

"I hope you know that you are keeping me from my shower and my hot chocolate at home, and more important the bed that is waiting for me for thirty-eight hours. Alone." Sakura glanced at him, motioning to him to tilt his head a bit.

"I know now and apparently I don't care," he answered.

"I think you should, considering that I am the one with the needle and the scissors working closely to your face."

"Is that a threat?"

She gave him an amused smile. Completely ignoring his question she pointed to his now cleaned wound. "The good news is, that I don't have to stich it up. I'm going to tape it. But you have to keep it clean and neat. I highly recommend using an ointment."

She watched how he slightly tilted his head and gazed at her. And now that his face was cleared from the blood and grime she couldn't help but notice how handsome he was. Like, sex material handsome.

"And the bad news?" he demanded.

Sakura grinned at him, again fixating the cut on his forehead and for a brief moment she asked herself how exactly he got it. There were to kinds of patients in her daily life. The ones with the severe wounds who barely lived when they were brought in and couldn't speak one sentence that actually made sense. They were the real hard cases and she would spend hours to save their lives. These ones she liked the most –no offense. Not that she liked people being hurt and in so much pain that they screamed themselves into unconsciousness, but still. The second type of patients was the ones with minor injuries. People, that happened to stand nearby an accident or something. Those patients had this odd tendency to mistake her for their local hairdresser and tell her every single detail of how it all happened. She hated it. But that Uchiha guy didn't say anything. And somehow she was curious.

"No bad news," she laughed and began to close the cut. "It may take longer to heal without stitches but the chances that you won't get a scar are pretty good. I'm no plastic surgeon though." It was quiet after that for a couple of minutes until she finished the taping and slapped off her gloves. Brushing her hair back she stood up and turned to Momoko who still stood behind her.

"Clean the scrapes on his hands and give him a prescription for the ointment and some painkillers. And Momoko when you write off the forms and the report for the file, use your pretty handwriting. I don't want to spend hours wracking my brain on what the hell you've meant. Understood?" She didn't wait for an answer. Gazing back at Uchiha Sasuke she took her bag and smiled a last time at him. "Keep it slow Uchiha-san and use the ointment at least three times a day. Good night." And with that she headed to her shower. The first in two days.