The Girl in the Hospital Bed
Teriyaki Princes
Yamanaka Ino slipped into the sterile room where her once best friend lay. Her face was the only part of her battered body one could see, as the rest of her frame was covered in bandages. Pink hair splayed out around the girl.
"Hey, Sakura. I-I just wanted to come by with some news..." The blonde gulped and heaved a deep sigh. There was no response from the girl in the hospital bed.
"I tried checking up on your parents, to-to tell them about your... condition. Bu-but... Your house, it was destroyed in the attack. And- God, Sakura! It was horrible! I- I hoped they were out on a mission or something, I prayed it was true, but..." Tears were spilling from her sea foam eyes, staining the white sheets. She touched the short locks of cotton-candy hair.
"I got someone to help me go through the wreckage... I'm sorry, Sakura. Kizashi and Mebuki Haruno were already dead when we found them."
Ino didn't notice the slender tear trace a path down the side of the patient's face as she left the room.
It had been a day since the Sound-Sand Invasion. Haruno Sakura was now an orphan at thirteen years of age.
The nurse handed the list of urgent care patients' profiles to the busty blonde. Senju Tsunade flipped through the file, and started walking down the corridor to the first patient's room. She would operate on the genin first, before moving on to the next in line. She checked the name once again before handing the clipboard to Shizune.
Rock Lee.
It had been a month and some weeks since the Third Hokage was murdered. Haruno Sakura would have to wait a long time, as she was looked over for the nth time in her life. She wandered the path in her mind, lonely and starving for her friends.
The Godaime Hokage peered down at the teenager in the hospital bed at the end of the hall of the northern wing of the hospital. She looked to the bedside table to see a fresh bouquet of red, yellow, and white camellias. Perishing with grace, longing, waiting.
It broke her heart.
A single daffodil was lying near the vase. She recalled it meant respect.
It had taken a whole year for her to get to this particular lonely case. She stretched her glowing hand over the form of the girl as a figure looked on from the doorway with hopeful baby blue eyes.
Tsunade gasped, and retracted her hand. She snapped her neck to the doorway, and yelled at the girl to get Shizune. The girl- her name slipped her mind- raced away, a scared expression on her face.
The Hokage looked closely at the heart monitor hooked up to the pink haired girl. It was an old model, something you'd see thirty years in the past. It seemed they didn't want to waste resources on a young orphan genin in a catatonic state. Her honey eyes saddened.
Shizune appeared at the doorway, followed by the Yamanaka girl.
"Tsunade-sama?! What is it?!"
"THIS HOSPITAL IS IT! This hospital tucked away a young girl for a YEAR, without any routine check-ups other than having a monthly look into the room to see that the IV was working, that she had oxygen pumped into her lungs- THAT SHE WASN'T FLAT-LINING. This HOSPITAL-" She screeched, took a deep breath, and looked at her apprentice.
"Ready an operation room. She needs emergency treatment ASAP. Full blood transfusion, and we'll need to remove her appendix. Her lungs need to be cleared of fluid as well. Her body is shutting down on us, we need to move now."
It had been a year and three months since Haruno Sakura had received extreme damage to her body after a disastrous fight with Sabaku no Gaara. She was eternally grateful as she lay in the mind plane her subconscious had created for her that she felt none of the pain her physical body was in.
The Slug Sannin leaned her elbows on the soft mattress of Haruno Sakura's bed.
"Lady Tsunade, how did this happen?"
"I'm guessing her doctor didn't heal her properly, and she was never checked again."
The dark haired woman averted her eyes to look at the girl in the hospital bed.
"That's horrible."
"Ha! That's not even the worst part! Here, take a look at her visitor's list."
Shizune looked over it, flipping the pages, and was sad to see she could practically count the names on one hand. The main visitors were always Yamanaka Ino and Rock Lee- the others were Hyuuga Hinata, Nara Shikamaru, and Akimichi Choji. Ino and Lee seemed to take turns looking in on her.
"That's... sad."
"It's pathetic! And, to top it off, not one of her teammates have ever come to see her since the first day she was admitted!"
"Tsunade-sama... what can we do about it? It's just too sad to leave her like this, no family, barely any friends..."
"We can take care of her, Shizune. We can be her new family." A sigh escaped the powerful woman's mouth, and she put her face in her hands. Shizune nodded resolutely, and walked out to leave the Hokage with her self-appointed charge.
It had been a year, three months, and a day since Sakura had lost her parents to the Sound-Sand Invasion, and 18 hours since she had been operated on and saved by the best medic-nin in the shinobi villages. It was one minute since she had found herself a new family. She wept tears of joy that no one could see.
Ino peeked into her best friend's room and heard the gentle voice of her Hokage as she sat at the side of the bed.
"...and that is the basic theory of the chakra-scalpel technique."
"Lady Hokage, I- I wanted to say thank you, for taking care of and saving Sakura's life." She bowed to the young-looking woman.
Said woman chuckled and waved hr hand at the girl. "Maa, you've thanked me enough over the past year! I did it because I needed to, and because I wanted to. No need to thank me anymore!"
"I'm sure that now that she has us all, she'll wake up soon! And Naruto is sure to come back any week now, right? That'll wake her up for sure! He'll probably annoy her so much she wakes up to slap him!" Ino and Tsunade both laughed at the image.
Once The young Yamanaka had left, Tsunade once more sat down in the purple room, decorated with large paper sakura blossoms, of the Hokage Mansion she had arranged for Sakura to be moved into once everything was settled. She sighed and took the long locks of rosy hair between her fingers, tugging gently.
"Maa, Sakura. You really need to wake up, gaki. Everyone's waiting, you know. Hell, I haven't even met you really! All the info I've got on you is second-hand and from documents." A gentle smile reserved only for her closest people spread on her face.
"Please, wake up, dear daughter."
It had been two years, two months, and one week since Haruno Sakura was put into a self- induced coma to cope with the trauma her body and mind were put through. It had also been almost one year since Haruno Sakura's file was tucked into a cabinet, only to be seen again for review purposes, and a new manila folder was tucked into the Hokage's desk- titled 'Senju Sakura'.
On a gray morning in the middle of June, a loud beeping noise was heard throughout the Hokage Mansion. Senju Tsunade was already in action, wrapping a loose robe around her body as she bounded to the room of her daughter. She slid open the door with little caution, and ran to the pink-haired teenager's bedside.
Green clashed against amber. And then, a warmth enveloped the skinny slip of a girl. She clasped the back of the blonde woman, and they cried on each others shoulders.
It had been three years since Senju Sakura had fallen into a comatose state, and one year, nine months, and twenty-nine days since she had found a new family.
It would be another year before Senju Sakura finished her apprenticeship to Senju Tsunade.
Another two before she won the Fourth Great Shinobi War by putting a fist through Uchiha Obito's scarred and pale face and stomach as he gloated over the bodies of Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke, thinking he had achieved his goal.
She would lose an arm and half a lung before the fight was over, but when she lay in her hospital bed, Senju Sakura would never be alone again.
The girl in the hospital bed would be redeemed.