A/N: Hi everyone! If some of the medical stuff seem implausible and whatnot, please ignore it. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a med student, and I don't know what the process of being a med student and becoming a doctor is. This is all fictional! xoxo
CHAPTER 4
"Did Hyuuga ever let you know what he thought of that contract?"
Naruto lazily looked up from flipping the newspaper. The bastard's not even reading it, Sasuke thought, irritated. But he'll definitely leave a heap of the crinkled papers on his chair before leaving.
Bastard.
"No. He's being delayed in –" Naruto suddenly broke off and paused ever so slightly before continuing, " – Suna."
To any other person, Sasuke's reaction to Naruto's words would have appeared to be nonexistent. Naruto saw, however, Sasuke's hand – which had been typing away at lightning speed on his laptop – stop for a split second when he said the word, "Suna."
"Hinata said his deal with the acquisition of that pharmaceutical company based in Suna's taking a couple of more days longer than expected," Naruto continued, knowing better than to say something about the reaction Sasuke just had. Even he knew not to talk about certain things with Sasuke.
Three years later, and Suna was still a taboo subject. As was a certain doctor who resided there.
Sasuke ran his fingers through his hair, and Naruto could see that his best friend was clearly frustrated by his news. "Fucking hell, Naruto," Sasuke growled. "You couldn't have told me that yesterday?"
"I had the settlement for the pro bono case that I've been working my ass off for yesterday," whined Naruto. "I'm telling you now, man, and it's only 11 AM; I think you'll live."
Sasuke sighed impatiently, but Naruto knew that he wasn't really mad.
Well, not that mad, at least.
Wanting to avoid eye contact with the exasperated CEO and bored with the newspaper that he had finished skimming, Naruto averted his gaze toward the giant flat screen TV on the office wall that had been on mute. It was turned on to the news channel.
Dry bastard, Naruto thought. Didn't Sasuke ever watch anything fun?
Having worn down Sasuke's patience thin and feeling pretty bored, this would have been the normal cue for Naruto to wander out of his best friend's office. As he was about to tear off his uninterested gaze from the TV, Naruto suddenly froze.
"Oy, where's the remote." Naruto's voice was quiet but had an urgency that even Sasuke did not ignore. Sasuke looked up.
"What? Why?"
Naruto seemed frozen in his chair, and he merely continued to face the television, his mouth slightly agape and eyes wide. Consequently, Sasuke turned his head and looked at the screen.
Breaking news, the screen read. Head of the Hyuuga Corporation, Hizashi Hyuuga, has been admitted to Suna National Hospital after suffering from a stroke earlier this morning. More details to come.
"Care for a bit of interesting news?"
Sasuke often wondered whether it was that Ayame let Hatake Kakashi into the office whenever the silver-haired man wanted or that he just always managed to slip by her unnoticed.
Knowing Kakashi, it was probably the latter.
"Does it have anything to do with Hyuuga?" Sasuke didn't even look up from his computer screen as he responded to the older man. All day, he had been plagued with emails and business calls regarding the Hyuuga Corporation. In the finance world, people did not take strokes or heart attacks lightly; when a CEO of a major firm, such as the Hyuuga Corporation, showed such a huge sign of physical weakness, stocks tended to drop, and millions, if not billions, of dollars could be lost in a day for the corporation. The wise thing to do, conventionalists would say, is to pull out of all impending deals with the Hyuugas.
Sasuke, on the other hand, had no intention of doing so. He knew the Hyuugas well, and knew that Neji Hyuuga, President and next-in-line to be CEO after Hizashi (and before Hinata, interestingly enough), would be able to pull through for the corporation, regardless of the outcome of the CEO's operation today. Perhaps it was true – in fact, inevitable – that the company would go through turbulence for the next few months, but Sasuke believed in his friend, Neji, enough to believe that it would be worth it for the Uchiha Group to stay involved with the Hyuugas.
"If you're here to tell me to pull out of that deal with the Hyuugas, don't waste your breath. I've been fielding those calls from the board all fucking day."
Kakashi cocked his head. "I'm an old man, Sasuke. I have no desire or strength to waste my breath on useless words like that. You forget that I know you and your stubbornness."
Sasuke closed his laptop with one hand while pushing his hair out of his face with the other. "Then what are you here for?"
"As your former mentor and old friend, I thought it may be of interest to you to know that Hizashi Hyuuga's left the operating table as of a few minutes ago." Kakashi paused, knowing that it would frustrated Sasuke that he finished the sentence at that point.
He wasn't disappointed.
"And?" Sasuke breathed out impatiently.
Kakashi chuckled. "That temper of yours. Hizashi made it through just fine." He saw Sasuke let out a small sigh of relief. Kakashi paused for a second, not quite a hundred percent sure that he wanted to deliver the news that he had originally come to give. The boy looked tired and worn out; perhaps this wasn't the time to plague him with the name that he knew Sasuke most wanted to avoid.
When the pause grew longer, Sasuke looked up at him. It was rare that Kakashi hung around after delivering news, as the man had a tendency to almost disappear instantaneously after saying whatever he had come to say. "What," Sasuke prompted.
A pause.
"You might have heard today," Kakashi finally began, "that the cause of Hizashi's stroke was… uncommon, at best. I don't follow medical or scientific news very much, but from what I gathered, it's quite a rare condition that he had."
"And?"
"And what do you know, Hizashi Hyuuga could actually have been the considered the luckiest person in the world. There are two places with the best neurosurgeons on this continent. One is here in our very own lovely city of Konoha in the form of one very scary blonde woman. The other," Kakashi met Sasuke's gaze full on, "happens to be a very scary old woman in Suna. The city in which Hizashi happened to have had the stroke, as you'll know."
"Kakashi, this really isn't as interesting as you might want to make it out to be," Sasuke interrupted, irritated at the talk of Suna and impatient at the lack of direction in Kakashi's narrative. "If that's all – "
"But the funny thing," Kakashi went on loudly as if Sasuke had never spoken, increasing Sasuke's irritation, "is that the Suna neurosurgeon also happened to have had a stroke very late last night. So when Hizashi rolled into the Suna hospital, it seemed that Hizashi was perhaps the unluckiest person in the world – if only he had been back at Konoha today, he might have had a better chance of pulling through his stroke."
Sasuke frowned slightly. "The hell?" He muttered, unsure where Kakashi was going with this.
"But wouldn't you know it, Sasuke-kun! Hizashi, with his rare brain malfunction and odds stacked against him, is actually reported to be expecting a full recovery in a few weeks' time because a certain no-name neurosurgeon stepped in for the very scary old woman at the hospital. It appears that the no-name neurosurgeon has been studying under the old bat for the past three years, though, and praised to be the best doctor in the hospital. Save for the old woman, of course. Now, who could that young lady neurosurgeon have been?"
Kakashi watched as the news sank into Sasuke for a second. Sasuke's onyx eyes grew even darker – was that possible? – as comprehension dawned on him.
"Tell Ayame to lock the door behind you." Without answering Kakashi's pointed question, Sasuke got up from his chair, snatched his jacket up, and walked out of his office. Kakashi watched as the boy – man now, I guess, Kakashi always had to remind himself – left, an ambivalent expression left on his face.
That night, Sasuke stepped out of his steaming bathroom, having finished a hot shower to clear his head. After drying himself somewhat, he tied the towel around his waist and sat himself on the edge of his king-sized bed, determined not to think too much.
He failed.
His thoughts kept wandering back to Kakashi's words from the hour before. Studying under the old bat for the past three years…
The past three years.
He had long since erased all traces of her in his life. When he moved out of the apartment that they had both shared, he had paid the landlord a ridiculous sum of money to get rid of everything that was left in the apartment. Furniture, plates, clothes, everything.
For the first two years, Sasuke had wondered – hoped – that she would be back to Konoha for certain special occasions. Any occasion. Ino's birthday, Naruto's engagement to Hinata, Shikamaru's promotion to being CEO of his family's company, Christmas, something, anything.
She never came back.
It was then that Sasuke realized that she had been lost forever. That he couldn't cling on to any hope anymore because the hope was what had been torturing him for those years. Having made it clear that he never wanted to discuss Sakura or Suna with Naruto or any of his friends, he hadn't heard her name being mentioned around him for quite a while.
No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn't stop thinking of her. It caught him off his guard whenever he did, and he hated it. He hated remembering that he once had someone whom he loved most in the world, only to lose her through his own fault. Through his self-loathing, he had often wondered whether she was happier now. Happier without him. Happier away from him.
The answer "yes" always came all too easily to Sasuke's mind.
Without fully comprehending what his body was doing, Sasuke found himself reaching for his cell phone. He tapped the screen to turn it on, and his finger found the "voicemail" button. On it, there was one voicemail from a number that hadn't been in service for three years.
"Hi Sasuke! I'm running late to work but I just wanted to say good luck on your first day! I love you and I know you'll be really great. See you at home later! I'm so proud of you."
Sasuke shut off his phone and put his face into his hands. He would not think about her anymore tonight.