AAAAand here's the third update! I'm really enjoying the nice comments, getting good reviews never gets old.
Three more patients slipped through their fingers during the night. Yuki was the first to go, followed by two people who had been attacked with a poisoned Kunai.
The atmosphere among the hospital staff was gloomy. Everyone was bone deep tired, most of them due to the long nights. Those who worked with Sakura were suffering from rock bottom chakra levels.
Four people had died right before her eyes over night. Four people that she'd invested so much chakra into keeping alive. Every time she tried to take a nap, just for 10 minutes, someone would rush in demanding her attention.
Her only comfort was that Takemi had finally stabilised. Now she just had to hope that all the patients would remain stable enough for her to sleep for an hour, she'd set Oto the task of organising those with minor injuries, ensuring that none of them were suffering from shock or hidden injuries. She really hoped he could handle it by himself for now, because she couldn't handle any more, if she didn't sleep she would start making mistakes.
She plunked her face down on the pillow in the room she'd commandeered and let out a weak sob.
Four people.
She'd never had so many people die on her watch. The scenes played over and over in her head as she tried to figure out what she could have done differently to save them. Tsunade had always been there before, to erase her self-doubt, or even to tell her where she'd gone wrong. Now she was in it alone, she couldn't look objectively at her method.
Four people.
She closed her eyes and willed herself into unconsciousness, ignoring the names burned into her mind.
Five hours and thirty seven minutes after his head hit the pillow, Gaara was awake, groggy and trembling slightly, but awake. He shook off the lingering fear from his nightmare and pulled himself out of bed.
He would visit the hospital first, and then start doing what he could to make sure everyone in the village had somewhere to sleep at night. Despite what the elders said, the finances could wait, the people came first.
He pulled on his russet brown shinobi garb (like Naruto he only wore the official Kage robes when on official Kage business) and set out for the hospital, moving quickly along the path, grinding broken glass with sand as he went; children often played here so he wanted it to be safe.
He walked purposefully into the hospital and approached the front desk where a bedraggled was filing some paper work. He realised that he hadn't quite decided who to ask for by the time she turned her bleary eyes on him.
"Kazekage-Sama, what can I do to help you?" She pursed her lips. "You're not injured are you?"
He allowed a small noise that passed for a chuckle. "No." Who to see? The head of the hospital wasn't exactly a brilliant doctor, and mostly hid in his office all day, handling the finances. "I'm looking for Sakura Haruno; the medic from Konoha." She would be able to give him all the information he needed.
"Ah." The nurse seemed a little nervous. "It might not be a good idea to wake her. She's had an even longer night than the rest of us." Sakura clearly had a fan in this woman; she spoke with a sliver of reverence in her voice. "She drained all her chakra to stabilise Takemi Moshimo. I'd speak to Oto for now; he's been working alongside her all night."
"Do you know where I might find him Nurse Katsuki?" He asked, noting her name for future reference.
She smiled as his polite manner. "See that tall blonde one over there?" Said pointing to the group of medics not ten feet away. "Yeah, Oto is the short one talking to him."
Gaara thanked her for her time before she grabbed some files and rushed away. He approached Oto and came to a stop beside him. Both men gaped at him for a moment before he spoke.
"Fill me in."
Oto blinked at his abruptness. "Of course Kazekage-Sama. We've managed to get most of the worst patients stabilised, thanks to Saku- Haruno-San and nearly all of the minor patients have been dealt with and sent home, or to the shelter for now." He sighed, energy seeming to sap from his body. "But we lost four patients during the night."
Four. It could have been worse. But one was bad enough.
"How?" Gaara prompted.
The man deflated even more and started rifling through the patient dossiers in his arms.
"Uh, the first to go was Jana Hiruka; she'd been in critical condition from the start and, uhm, in the end her body just sort of, uh, gave up." Gaara felt his eyes narrowing. "And uhm, the next was uh."
Gaara raised his hand to stop him. Clearly the man was too stressed, or distressed, to be of much use to him.
"I'll speak to Haruno-San, if you worked with her throughout the night you also need rest."
"Thank you Kazekage-sama, she's in room 18, no one has dared to go near her yet." A small smile formed on his lips. "We've all heard about her ability to punch people through walls."
Gaara nodded, turning in the direction the man had gestured. It was easy enough to find, the doors were well numbered and signs pointed him in the right direction. Reaching the door he considered for a moment before knocking. He didn't particularly want to wake her, but in his opinion she was the most senior medic in the hospital and he needed an update.
No response.
He pushed to door open smoothly and walked inside. As he had already known, she was completely unconscious, although she too looked like she was suffering from restless sleep. Her lips were turned down and she was frowning slightly; a small crease appearing between her eyebrows.
She stirred, agitated by something. Then her eyes dragged open and fell on his.
"Gaara-Sama?" She asked dazedly.
"I came for an update." He answered, pretending to be unfazed by her dishevelled state.
Her expression suddenly became alert, and sad.
"Four patients died under my care last night..." She trailed off; clearly she was deeply affected by the loss of a patient. "Two of them presented with minor injuries, just small cuts, but they had been attacked using a kunai imbued with a poison that lies dormant in the system for several days before it kills the victim."
"Antidote?"
Sakura shook her head. "I've sent a message to Lady Tsunade, she developed a method of inoculating people, but it won't work after the poison has entered the system." Gaara nodded his approval at her initiative. "The first fatality suffered extreme damage to the chest and head from shrapnel, she was having seizures, and had nerve damage thanks to the head trauma, and the chest cavity damage caused both her lungs to collapse." She sighed. "The other suffered from massive internal bleeding due to a vital artery being ruptured. It wasn't caught early enough for me to save them."
She bit her lip.
"I..." she trailed off again.
"What about the others?" She frowned up at him, confused. "That only accounts for one of the critical patients and three minor patients. What about the other three critical patients, the thirty one serious and the other one hundred and twenty four minor cases?"
Was he... trying to comfort her?
"Uhm." She gathered her thoughts. "The others have stabilised, but most of them still need constant care to keep them that way." She had never heard him make such a long speech before.
"You have gained the respect of many people tonight Sakura-Chan, including me." She was looking dejectedly at the floor so he awkwardly placed a hand on her shoulder before he continued. "You can't save everyone and if you hadn't arrived when you did more would have died." He kept his hand on her shoulder until she looked up.
Many people believed that Gaara didn't have emotions or that he felt them but knew little about them. And the truth was Gaara let people think this, but the people closest to him knew that he felt things just as keenly as everyone else; he just stayed poker faced out of habit.
Sakura's eyes met his, they looked a little wet, and they were slightly bloodshot; probably partly due to lack of sleep.
"I expect you to leave the hospital tonight, and eat a proper meal." He told her. "You won't save anyone if you don't rest enough." He dropped his hand and turned away, walking calmly from the room. Now was the time for him to help his own people.
Sakura watched him leave, surprised by his words. Naruto had always insisted that Gaara was a softie at heart, and while Sakura would never describe Gaara that way she could see what he was getting at, he'd gone out of his way to make sure she was ok.
She dragged herself off the bed; feeling a sudden need to eat her body weight in hospital food.
Out in the street, in front of the hospital, Gaara turned his attention to the flattened expanse of sandy earth. Unlike the previous Kazekage, his father, he would take a more hands on approach to helping his people.
Reaching the edge of the standing part of the village, Gaara began forming hand seals; glad he could finally make some houses for people to stay in. Placing both hands on the sandy earth he directed the sand rise up, forming structures based on the previous layout of the area.
He heard Temari sigh behind him. "Show off, you could have done it in sections you know."
He ignored her, gritting his teeth in concentration as he compacted the sand and shifted more evening out walls, pushing large lumps of rock to the side.
He sighed and sagged just a little as he finished, Temari was probably right. "Tell the stone masons to get to work replacing these buildings as soon as they can; the sand structures won't last forever."
He turned to look at Temari. "And then head down to the shelter and let people know they can move into the houses they were assigned to yesterday."
"Didn't sleep well last night, huh?" She asked, ignoring his instructions and pressing her lips into a concerned line. Gaara's expression didn't change.
"What makes you say that?"
"I'm your big sister, I can always tell." She cocked her head to the side. "Maybe you should have another check up, see if they can do any more for you at the hospital."
Gaara crossed his arms and said nothing, staring his sister down. After all, the hospital was busy; they could do without him complaining about a little insomnia. Temari sighed again.
"Stubborn as ever." She muttered as she turned and ran down the street to carry out his orders. He watched her go with the barest hint of a smile on his lips. He didn't really mind when she nagged him about his health; it was her way of showing that she cared.
His outlook dimmed as he thought about the mountain of paper work and finances he had to deal with.
After finally snatching a few hours sleep, Sakura was finally back on her feet. All the patients had been stabilised, and, thanks to Sakura's healing techniques, they were on the mend.
This meant all that there was to be done was sorting out the mess of patient files, discharging any and all patients that could be discharged and teaching as many medics as many techniques to keep things under control.
Sakura chose to delegate all the paper work to the head medic, who had spent the entire crisis locked in his office. And she took four medics around with her as she searched for patients to discharge, demonstrating and teaching as she went. She even found a shower, Sakura had almost cried with relief when she climbed into the stream of piping hot water.
Things seemed less hectic with sunlight streaming through the windows. Even if it wasn't the gentle sunlight of Konoha.
And so the day passed; the calm after the storm. Or maybe it's the eye of it, Sakura thought idly to herself, only one of the rogue ninja had been defeated after all. Would the village survive another attack like that? Would she be able to train the Suna Medics so that they could cope with the next catastrophe?
The questions swirled thickly through her mind as she trudged around the hospital, checking in on the critical patients, and sneaking by the children's ward as a guilty pleasure.
Of course she was quite surprised when the turned a corner and walked straight into Temari.
"Time to leave, Sakura." She proclaimed with a bright smile on her face. "I won't take no for an answer!" she added before Sakura could even think of protesting. "How will you ever read your mail if you never leave the hospital?" She asked slyly, pulling a scroll from behind her back waving it at Sakura.
"I'm not above clobbering people who withhold my mail you know." Sakura pointed out an ominous look appearing on her face. In Konoha seeing that expression usually led to people backing away slowly.
Temari grinned again. "I'm not withholding, I'm just saying that if you never leave the hospital you won't get your mail." Turning on her heal she gestured for Sakura to follow; bringing the letter from Konoha as bait had been a stroke of genius. Too bad it had been Kankuro's idea.
"I have to let someone know I'm leaving."
"Already done, they've been told not to let you near patients for the next 12 hours. Unless it's an emergency of course." That of course had been Temari's idea.
Sakura followed Temari from the hospital reluctantly. She had to admit though; from a medical stand point she would have dismissed anyone else a long time ago. As soon as they were out of the building Temari handed her the letter; it was from Naruto; babbling about the fact that her stuff was on its way, and that he missed her.
She fell into step beside the blonde woman deciding that she was going to make their walk as uncomfortable as possible.
"So... heard from Shikamaru lately?" Temari laughed.
"That man is far too lazy to send me love letters, although he did stop by on his way back from a mission..." Surprised that Temari had been so forthcoming Sakura pressed for details about the relationship. There had been rumours about them since the day she had rescued him from one of Orochimaru's sound ninja.
They had just walked past a group of children, playing in the sand when Temari stepped in front of Sakura wearing a serious expression.
"I wanted to ask you a favour Sakura." After blinking in surprise Sakura nodded, frowning a little. Temari was seldom this serious. "It's about Gaara actually, he can't sleep properly, and the hospital gave him these horrible sleeping pills that don't really help him rest."
"So you want me to see if I can find something else for him?"
"Exactly; he's just too stubborn to go get it sorted for himself."
So as Sakura followed Temari into the Kazekage mansion, she considered the issue. It was no surprise that Gaara, the former Shukaku Jinchūriki, had trouble sleeping; considering the first 16 years of his life had been spent sleepless. The medics in the Suna hospital had gone for the easy fix, sleep inducing drugs, rather than looking at the deeper cause. Treating the symptom, not the sickness.
By the time she'd started her meal she'd already come up with a few treatment methods to attempt. She just had to figure out how to broach the subject with him. A plan popped into her head, simple, yet brilliant. She smiled.
Gaara placed his pen on the desk and moved the last file to the side. As usual he'd eaten his evening meal in his office, so he could plough through the last of the paperwork.
This was the worst part of being Kazekage; it left him feeling weary and a little irritated. But it had to be done.
He stared at the wall for a minute, tiredness dragging at the edges of his brain even though he didn't feel sleepy. He glanced down at the innocent looking bottle of pills in his desk drawer and then back at the wall.
He sighed and poured a glass of water.
Three quick raps on the door grabbed his attention.
The door swung open and Gaara's eyes met green.
Whoop, so not too much really happened in this chapter but it was a necessary filler.
I'm not really sure how long this is going to be; I have a general plan in mind but I tend to just let things roll out by themselves so let me know if I start waffling.
The fourth chapter is underway already =]