A young brunette slowly closed one of her patient's doors as to not wake the child. She turned around and met her friend.
"Hey Sakura," the brunette said before stepping past the other doctor and heading to her office.
"Tenten, come on, it's late," Sakura said as she glanced at the clock whose hand neared two a.m. "Let's go home." Sakura followed Tenten into her office.
Tenten sat behind her desk and opened one of the many folders of paperwork assigned to her by the government for her strenuous job.
"You go on. I've got to finish this up first," Tenten insisted.
"You can finish that tomorrow…or later today, whichever way you think about it," Sakura said stubbornly. "You've got yourself wound too tightly."
"I'm fine, but I have to get this handed back in or I'll lose my job," Tenten said without lifting her pen from the paper as she fervently wrote.
"It's not due for three weeks! It can wait," Sakura wasn't giving up. "How about we go get the boys and go to that new club on the other side of town."
Tenten looked up at the prospect of going out. She hadn't been able to spend a lot of time with her boyfriend in weeks.
"Alright, you go get the guys and come back and get me." Tenten compromised. "Then, I'll leave, deal?"
Sakura realized she would get nowhere with the stubborn woman and nodded. "I'll go and the second we get back, we will drag you out of here if we have to." She turned and with a wave left the room. Tenten nodded absentmindedly, already absorbed in her work yet again.
About twenty minutes after Sakura's departure, Tenten heard a crash somewhere in the wing. She jumped up, yanked rudely from her work by the sound. She exited her office in search of the cause of the aggravating noise.
"Hello?" She called, but not too loudly so she wouldn't wake the sleeping patients. She was located in the extended recovery wing, and all of the patients were sleeping, so it was vacant of other employees for now.
Tenten took hesitant steps down the darkened hallway. She heard another rustle and discovered the room from which the ruckus was coming from. She pushed open the door into the large storage rooms. The spare mattresses were neatly stacked. Tall bookcases filled with various volumes and empty jars stood in neat rows.
She glanced down the rows and saw one of the bookshelves had toppled and was leaning forward against the wall, its contents carelessly strewn across the floor. She reached into her pocket and signaled for backup by pushing the alert button on her radio. The static from the walkie talkie echoed through the room, piercing the eerie silence.
"Hello?" her voice called out again. Something in her gut told her to turn back and wait for the backup to arrive, but her legs refused to listen and pressed forward. She gasped and jumped when her foot landed upon a piece of glass and further broke it with a crack that burrowed into her soul. Something was obviously wrong, very, very wrong.
Running past her legs, a rat scurried out of the room. Tenten held her hand against her mouth to muffle the scream that had started to flow from her voice box. She looked hesitantly towards where the rat had run from and followed the path to the toppled bookcase.
By now every step she took landed upon the broken glass from beakers and jars of various sorts and with each step, her heartbeat quickened. She swore that it was not only pounding in her head, but against every object in the room, screaming at her to stop, yet she pushed forward.
She reached the misplaced bookcase but still saw no source of disturbance. She bent down slowly to peer beneath the bookcase and expected to see some sort of horrible monster or intruder like in the horror movies but found nothing but dropped books and more broken glass.
"Now I know a rat didn't knock this huge thing over. It has to weigh a few hundred pounds!" she said to herself to keep her nerves calm. She stood up halfway but kept her eyes on the ground. She felt somebody watching her and looked up. This time her scream wasn't muffled by her mouth but let loose throughout the silent corridor as an burly intruder brought his massive sword down upon the helpless bookcase, breaking it in half and sending it toppling on top of Tenten.
Her scream suddenly ceased as her body collided with the glass covered floor knocking her unconscious.
Sakura re-entered the hospital and took off at a fast pace to Tenten's room, carrying a bag in her hand with clothes for Tenten to change into out of her scrubs. Two of the top ninja police of the village followed behind her: Uchiha Sasuke (Sakura's own boyfriend) and Hyuuga Neji (Tenten's boyfriend).
When Sakura arrived at Tenten's office, she burst through the door.
"Tenten! Time to-" but never finished her sentence because she found the room completely void. She left the room with a puzzled look upon her face, expecting Tenten to have been in the exact same position as when Sakura left. She stood in the hallway for a second before being forced to jump out of the way for the onslaught of medics with a rolling stretcher rushing past her. She only caught a glimpse of the unconscious and bloodied person lying on the stretcher, but immediately knew who it was.
Tenten.