"He literally showed up at the gates all beaten up and bloody, did a war cry and just fell out on the ground."
"I heard he was carrying two of his subordinates on his shoulders."
Hinata's eyes weakly moved around inside her head just before her eyelids struggled to flutter open. She was faced with the ceiling of what was unmistakably the on-call crash room. The lights were dimmed and she laid there in her regular working attire. She sat up slowly, wiping her eyes with one hand and feeling the gross, rigid material of the cot she slept on with the other.
She looked around her. The room was empty and somewhat quiet other than the chatter of two other nurses in the doorway. "What happened?" She murmured to herself as she stood up. She felt rested but drowsy. She smoothed out the skirt part of her uniform dress and ran her palm over her face in confusion.
Then she remembered. How could she not remember another fainting episode?
Hinata sighed. How typical of her to faint in a dire situation like that. Then she remembered even more disappointingly, the little boy she was supposed to treat. That poor guy. She got sidetracked in all of the drama and forgot all about him.
Not knowing how much time had passed since then, Hinata politely pushed past the two nurses and started down the hall where the boy's room was. She remembered he was in 171, well, because… just because.
She poked her head inside to find the room completely vacant with remnants of rapping dangling on the floor. She sighed in shame. Someone else had to do her job for her because she was too consumed with feeling as though she was the center of attention. The entire thing could have been avoided had she not assumed the doctor was asking for her to fetch the revival kit. Even though he was.
Hinata tapped the door post, feeling quite low of herself and made her way up to the front desk of the establishment where she could make it to the exit.
"There's Hinata, let's ask her!"
Hinata turned around to find Sakura and Ino sprinting towards her in unbelievably haste. She automatically raised a brow. Why were Sakura and Ino at the clinic? They never came there. They didn't need to. They were both great ninjas. They had a purpose other than her insignificant workings.
They came up to her, nearly tackling her, and shook her with anticipation. "Where is he?" Sakura cried. "Do you know what happened? What room is he in? When can I visit?"
"Give her some air, dammit." Ino rolled her eyes, pulling Sakura from Hinata's shoulders.
Hinata couldn't be more confused. "What are you talking about?" She asked, literally scratching her head.
"Sasuke!" Sakura yelped, throwing herself onto the shoulders of Hinata once more in a hysterical fit.
Hinata's heart both leaped and sank. Sasuke? Was she insane? Sasuke was long gone and had been for quite some time.
"S-Sasuke?" Hinata questioned in great doubt and trepidation.
"Yes! Sasuke!" Sakura shrieked. "He's here isn't he?! He didn't die did he?!"
Suddenly she got the urge to vomit profusely on her whitewashed shoes.
"I… I don't know what you're saying." Hinata shook with fear.
"Everyone in town is saying Sasuke and his unit have come back." Ino reiterated. "Are you okay, Hina? You're acting kinda funny."
Ino knew Hinata was very close with Sasuke. Unlike the others, Ino didn't overlook the entire summer where the two were basically inseparable. There was no Hinata without Sasuke. She wasn't ignorant and she wouldn't be blinded by assumptions. It was undeniable that after Sasuke was pronounced missing Hinata was more depressed than ever. Of course, Ino would never speak of it openly. It was no one's business but Hinata's and that was that. Ino was a gossip but she wasn't fond of slandering people she knew and cared about – other than Sakura that is.
"I'm fine." Hinata replied promptly without clearly thinking.
"Yeah, they said he came through the gates almost dead and just passed out right there." Sakura mused. "But I heard he's alive and well and I want to see him!"
"That's not quite my jurisdiction." Hinata swallowed, staring at the wall behind Sakura's head just to keep her nervousness and anxiety at bay.
Ino could detect it from a mile away. "Well." She smiled. "That's enough of that. Come on, Sakura." Ino said, grabbing a hold of Sakura's bicep and pulling her away from Hinata.
"Ino!" Sakura shouted. "Let go of me, you hag!"
"Shhhh!" Ino hissed. "We're in a hospital!" She whispered, dragging Sakura away and past the glass, sliding doors of the entrance.
3… 2… 1…
They were out of earshot and it was now time for Hinata to completely abandon all rational thought and burst into tears and panic. She gritted her teeth as her eyes flickered around uncontrollably. The world seemed to race around her. Every thought possible was born, lived, and died in her head.
The man in the room with the tattered shirt and the doctors and the swarming and the defibrillator and the CPR. It was all coming together now. All of the thoughts were flying into each other and they were crashing and they were creating an impossible reality that was so very fleeting and beautiful that Hinata refused to believe it.
She rushed over to the front desk. There she knew she'd find a book with a list of names of all the checked in patients. The table was not her domain, she had no business searching through those files but she didn't care at the time. She disregarded all rules and restrictions. She found the book, clad in leather and lined with hemp paper. With no hesitation she opened it, swiftly flipping from page to page with hopes of finding a single name.
Pages flew by and her eyes grazed over each letter, each space, each point made by that godforsaken pen until she found it. She found it, 14th on the list for that morning, 4th to last on the whole page, written in fading black ink, a little loopy with undotted I's. There.
Sasuke Uchiha – October 10th – Room 428
She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe it was real. Now that she had the information, what was she to do? It was useless at the moment. Or was it? How brave was she?
"428. 428. 428. 428. 428. 428. 428." She repeated over and over to herself as she carefully and rapidly scaled each hall. She should have known where that room was but her mind was scattered. She couldn't think of anything really, nothing but seeing him.
It was on the second floor that she spotted the room to the far left. The ICU, how did she not know?
The halls were cleared out probably because she'd been sleeping for hours and the day had faded into night. A janitor walked up and down the hall and an older woman sat half-asleep at the nurse's station. The on-call crash room was crammed with sleepy residents dreading the chime of their beepers.
She wouldn't wait around for anyone to stop her. She floored it and headed straight for the door. Surprisingly, she even opened it without great caution. What was the worst that could happen?
No matter how prepared she was for this, nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.
The man on the bed wasn't Sasuke.
He slept like a vampire. His arms and legs were placed accordingly straight. He faced the ceiling. His body was completely motionless. His skin was white like paste or baking flour. He was tall and muscular but somehow free of any body fat. His hair had paled so that it was no longer a passionate and dismal blue black. It was faded like a black shirt washed one-too-many times, and it was long, so long that strands of it hung from the reclinable bed he slept in. He resembled a corpse prepared for its funeral. He was so still, so motionless that he may as well have been dead.
Hinata was petrified.
Okay, the man on the bed was Sasuke. He was alive to say the least and she could only figure that by the annoying chirp of the EKG in the corner.
"Oh my God." She whispered to herself in disbelief. "Where have you been?"
The air was becoming crisp and invitingly cold. Hinata appreciated every bit of nature's presents. She opened up the window of her bedroom to invite in the changing weather's graces. It blew her hair softly. She was at peace. For a moment, she was at peace.
It had been several days since she last saw the clinic. The sight of Sasuke wouldn't leave her mind. She couldn't go back. She feared the possibility that she'd come across him in his current state and break apart instantly. She didn't know why it pained her so much to be near him. It was probably because she knew there was nothing she could do for him. She was better off here, at her house with her family who was alive and didn't have to endure years of who knows what.
"You know he's awake right?" Ino said, rocking back and forth in Hinata's pink wooden rocking chair.
Hinata shook her head without even bothering to face the girl she spoke to.
Ino held a certain special concern for Hinata. She watched as her friend grew to be more and more fragile and reclaimed her place in the village as the quiet and reclusive princess. It hurt her as well. Hinata would never know but it hurt Ino very much.
"Do you want to see him?" Ino hinted. "I'll go with you."
Hinata knew that wasn't just a ploy for Ino to go see Sasuke. Ino no longer worshipped the Uchiha prodigy as she once did. She was married to Shikamaru and had a pleasant portion of two years perched under her tight, velvet belt. Hinata was glad she matured. Now it was only Sakura who went off on flights of Uchiha fancy.
"No." Hinata said weakly. "Thank you, Ino."
Ino shrugged. "Suit yourself." She said. "What time is it?"
"10:14." Hinata answered.
"Well, I gotta be at the shop by noon." Ino said getting up from her seat on the rocking chair. "I haven't even showered or anything." She chuckled. "I'll call you, okay?"
"Okay." Hinata responded drearily.
Ino watched her dazed figure hovering over the window. It was so hard to leave but she had to go. "Are you okay, Hina?"
"Yes, Ino. Thank you for your concern." Hinata turned around and pitched Ino another fabricated smile.
"Okay." Ino said after a few moments of question. "Bye."
"Bye."
Then there was only a moment, literally a moment for Hinata to exhale before Ino barged back into her room. Hinata furrowed her brows. She was so tired of Ino hanging around, more so than usual. Ino hadn't left her side in days. She was becoming a bit of a nuisance.
"Hey, Hina?" Ino squawked.
"Yes?" Hinata smiled on top of a cross glare.
"Are you on call?" Ino asked seeming somewhat confused.
"No." Hinata responded then thought about it, deciding to herself that she wasn't.
"Well your beeper is ringing." Ino said, turning around to the end table that stood in the hall, where Hinata had so gracefully discarded her beeper.
Sure enough, the device was beeping and flashing and vibrating in the same fashion she knew to be urgent. She didn't move; not because she was frozen in fear but because she had no intention nor desire to return to that clinic. Not with him there.
"Are you gonna go?" Ino asked redundantly after a few seconds of condensed silence, as if it was the obvious thing to do, as if it was that easy.
Hinata thought it over for a second before throwing out the notion that she had no right to be selfish at that moment. "Well, it probably isn't for me…"
"Hinata!" Ino huffed appalled at Hinata's carelessness. "You took an oath when you became a nurse that you would help those who need you whenever possible." Ino proclaimed with her hands gripping her hips.
Hinata frowned. Wow, she really needed Ino to tell her that. Ino of all people. Perhaps she was slipping.
"Listen, Hina. It's your beeper. It beeped. You're on call. Go." Ino spoke sternly, tossing Hinata her beeper and ejecting herself from the room. Hinata blushed, catching the beeper just barely. How could she be so foolish in front of her friend? She sighed, pressing the quiet button on her beeper and standing up. On the other side of her room her uniform was hanging, dry cleaned and pressed.
"Alright. Here goes nothing." She said to herself lowly, approaching the dreaded get-up.
16 minutes later she was in front of the clinic. She'd counted; it was a bit of a habit. Why was she even there? She couldn't help but question her purpose when she stood outside of the small, brick and mortar hospital. It didn't need her. It was full of skilled professionals who actually had a use other than wrapping little boys' booboos, and she could barely do that successfully.
"Hinata! Thank God." A fellow nurse came through the front sliding doors. Hinata was shocked, partly because the woman came out so abruptly and it startled her and partly because she had no idea why anyone would thank God for her presence. "We need you in here ASAP." The nurse panted then grabbed Hinata's wrist and began pulling her inside.
Hinata was confused about what was happening. One second she was outside contemplating her importance and the next she was getting pulled inside the hospital that didn't need her. This could only mean one thing: She'd been picked for a top secret, highly dangerous experiment. She was mentally preparing to be mutilated with small scissors.
"W-what's going on?" Hinata asked completely befuddled.
Before her question could be answered she was pulled into a random room that was quite large in size, much larger than the average room for patients there.
"Found her." The nurse said, patting Hinata's back quite hard in reference. As Hinata turned around to possibly scowl at the woman, she was off on her busy way down the hall. Hinata turned back to meet the face of another equally panicking and serious doctor.
"I'm glad you're here, Hinata. He seems to have injuries we can't detect. We're going to need your Byakugan to do a few good sweeps over his entire body." The doctor began rattling along.
Hinata blushed. A few good sweeps? Over whose body? No one was in the reclinable bed that was in the corner. The room was empty.
"Excuse me?" She flushed a deep crimson, pressing her palms to her cheeks in an effort to hide her embarrassment.
"Oh, here he is." The doctor turned as did Hinata.
He was preceded by the sound of bare feet patting against the linoleum floor. Hinata hadn't realized there was a bathroom adjacent to the room she stood in. That made sense as the Uchiha man slowly and nonchalantly stepped out of the doorway and into the room.
As she looked at him now, he seemed less 'near-death'. He was broad, his muscles were cut, and his back was straight like an army general. His skin was still whiter than a bed sheet and his hair was still losing color, although Hinata noticed he'd acquired a haircut in the last few days. His hair was now at shoulder length, thick and straight; similar to what she remembered it to be.
"Did you go?" The doctor asked Sasuke.
Hinata blushed once again. There was no getting around her mortification.
Sasuke seemed to glance up at the doctor, as his eyes were fixed on his feet, and sneer as he came in. Hinata watched him expectantly. She didn't know what she expected; maybe a hug, a welcome, eye contact, a wave, something, anything. But no, nothing, he said nothing. In no way did he acknowledge that she was even there. Maybe he was too ashamed of how he looked. Maybe he didn't see her.
"Hinata is going to scan over your body just a few times and figure out just where this pain is coming from." The doctor said, pulling out the clipboard from the holder on Sasuke's bed and reviewing over it for a few seconds.
"I told you, I don't have any pain." Sasuke hissed.
It had been so long since Hinata last heard his venomous tone. It scared her more than it did the doctor. Something in this was worse than what he used to say, much worse.
"Be that as it may," The doctor said, not taking his eyes away from whatever important information was on the board. "I'm going to leave you for now just to run a few tests. She'll get your scan ready and hopefully we'll know what's going on with you from what she sees." He patted Hinata's shoulder as he walked out; devoid of any obvious concern for the girl he was leaving inside a lion's den.
This was something Hinata was used to. Silence. Silence between her and Sasuke. Silence between them and the world. What was there to say? Should she try to "catch up" with him? Should she run up to him and throw herself into his arms? Somehow she doubted that he would catch her.
He just sat there blandly on the bed, his hair hanging over his face and his eyes permanently stuck to the floor. Hinata attempted to approach him but like a majestic bird, he somehow detected the movement of each muscle in her body. His eyes darted up and became fixed on her.
It was like he was draining her confidence in a half-second glance. His eyes were so piercing. They had turned; somehow they became even darker than before. His face was much more mature, older. His chin and upper lip were lightly dusted with prickles of hair. His mouth… well she'd never seen a frown so joy-less. Nothing was right with the world in his head. It was clear by the look on his face. This was unlike anything she'd ever seen from him. He was meaner, darker, crueler.
"I… I'm just going to take a look at you now… if that's okay." Hinata mumbled. Well, it started as words, it ended as a mumble.
Sasuke gave no motion to respond. He just continued staring as if Hinata was threatening his life somehow. She stood there, not knowing what to do.
"Okay." She said with a shaky voice and nervous hands, hoping she could manage not to faint. "Here goes." With that, she made the appropriate sign. Nowadays, she no longer needed any out-loud proclamation to activate her blood trait. It had become natural in her profession.
The second she'd activated it and began to adjust her now ultrasensitive vision she was somehow blinded and forced to shut her eyes. It wasn't like staring at the sun for a second too long. This was a quick, sharp pain in both of her eyes. She saw a flash of light for barely a second before she felt needles being inserted directly through her corneas. When she was finally able to open her eyes she noticed Sasuke's gross, territorial and brooding expression. How did he do that? He somehow deflected her Byakugan back into her eyes on purpose. But why? She was only trying to help him.
"I don't want your help." He finally said under a deep and hard breath of air.
"You have a herniated intervertebral disc." Hinata said then immediately regretted it. She had no idea where that came from. In the time that she saw his insides, she managed to collect that bit of information. She just didn't know why she blurted it out in that way.
His expression didn't change. He continued glaring. How did she recover that much so fast? She'd grown so much.
"Your back probably hurts." She added. She figured she may as well. He said nothing in response. This was her way of getting his attention, or at least getting it away from murdering her. "The good thing is, it's not degenerative. It's a stress injury. If you're light on your back for a month or two, and with sufficient anti-inflammatory medications you'll be fine."
Still, he was unmoved.
So she just kept talking.
"If worse comes to worse, we'll need to do a cortisone injection into your spine." She said, eyes beginning to tear up just a bit. It hurt her. It really did. It was hard to see him so stoic and unmoved by anything she said, after so long of being apart. It was hard to know he was in such pain yet too afraid and too proud to reveal it. "You'll probably go through rehabilitation…" Things were long gone from there. Her tears had escaped and now she was just embarrassing herself… once again, always.
He sat at the edge of his bed, staring into her very soul while she fought to control tears that came down like a waterfall.
"What are you crying about?" He asked disgustedly. It sounded like more of a statement. Something along the lines of, you're an idiot for crying right now.
Hinata wiped her eyes. She wanted to respond. She wanted to tell him everything, everything she'd been through in the last six years, how she never gave up, how she missed him more than she ever thought she would. The words just wouldn't come out.
"Nothing?" Sasuke cracked. "Why am I not surprised?"
Hinata stood in awe. Why was he being so cruel to her?
"Believe it or not, princess. Your cleverness is limited. Really limited. You think you can walk in here and throw your nurse knowledge at me and I'll just smile and jump for joy, don't you?" He scoffed bitterly. "I don't care. Nothing you could say will make me care."
"I… I just w-wanted t-to help you." She cried softly into her bare arm, only now realizing that she'd neglected to bring her coat along with her. She was exposed. That just added one thing to all the reasons today was an awful day to be alive. It didn't take very much silence for her to realize what was happening here. Either he'd turned into a horrible monster in his leave or he was "teasing" her once again. She prayed it was the latter. Let it be like before, just like before. "I'll go." She said, slowly making her way to the door, expecting some violent and angry command for her to remain.
"Go." He said.