The following week passed pretty quickly, nothing exciting happened. She had finally located Naruto at Ichiraku's. He'd been overjoyed and had riddled her with apologies, that he'd just been ... tied up, When he'd said that she decided to not even consider that there was a double meaning to that statement. After she'd gotten Hinata to get him to shut up, she learned that their sensei was away on a mission and was supposed to be back any day now.
She still hadn't met Nanahara because the woman hadn't been at work lately. Apparently she was taking a vacation. She was the only person Sakura hadn't met yet, and she had been working there for two weeks.
Today was Friday, it was a beautiful spring day, and frankly, she couldn't wait for the weekend.
She shuffled through the doors of the hospital and grabbed her mail. With a yawn, she turned to Yumi.
"Tired?" Yumi teased. Knowing that Genma had been over to Sakura's house again for the third time this week, she'd made her own assumptions.
"Oh shut up." Sakura said, throwing a pen from her pocket at her. "You know it's not like that"
"But you want it to be." She laughed, ducking as another couple of pens came flying her way. "What the hell? Do you have like a box of those things or something?"
"Maybe..." Sakura smirked. "All right I'll be in my office" She stumbled forward and added "Not sleeping..."
"Wait, Sakura."
"What?" She asked, expecting a smartass comment.
"Nanahara is back. I advise you to keep the Genma topic on the down low while she's around." Yumi warned, biting her bottom lip.
"Why?" Sakura asked, confused.
"Let's just say that..." She trailed off and her eyes rose to the woman standing behind Sakura. " Good morning Haruka! This is Haruno Sakura. Sakura, this is Nanahara Haruka." She introduced them, talking extremely fast as her cheeks steadily deepened into a shade of maroon.
Sakura turned to see a tall woman of about twenty-two years standing about six feet away from her. Her long brunette hair was almost as long as Sakura's, and she had striking blue eyes.
"Nice to meet you Nanahara." Sakura said, extending her hand.
"Pleasure. Please, call me Haruka." She said as she turned away from her and grabbed a stack off Yumi's desk, completely ignoring Sakura's outstretched hand. "Yumi? You really should start doing your job and bring my papers into me when you get them."
Sakura scowled as the woman returned to her office.
Bitch.
"So anyway..., as you can see, she thinks she's God's gift to man. For some reason, she took up a liking to Genma and he well...kind of ... shrugged her off. I can understand why though. She was acting like she was his wife or something. So now, when she sees a woman around him or 'with' him, she gets all jealous. She already didn't like you to begin with because she knows you're more adept than her in medic skills, and if she sees you with Genma, well lets just say that she will make your life a living hell. " Yumi explained.
"Well, he said he would be stopping by to bother me today. Doesn't he know she's back? Wouldn't he have said something?"
"Maybe he thinks you shouldn't be bothered by it, I mean, since you're not dating or anything..." Yumi offered.
"I'm not. I don't care." Sakura scowled. "It's not like we are dating or anything." Sakura snorted. She HATED people like that. "I'll be in my office." Sakura said, shutting the door behind her.
Sighing to herself, she took a seat at her desk but jumped as Yumi's voice trailed out from the speaker on her desk.
"Hey Sakura?"
"What?"
"Your first appointment is in ten minutes. Two male jounins coming in from a mission. Tsunade called them in right before you showed up. Can you handle them both?"
"Yeah. Just send them on in when they get here." Sakura sighed as she laid her head on her desk. Today was just going to be one huge headache.
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The two jounin tapped lightly on the door and stepped inside. They saw a woman asleep on her papers, the bright pink roots of her hair contrasting radiantly with the rest of her fading ebony hair.
A deep voice laughed softly, "Do you want me to do it Hatake?"
"Be my guest." The other said, remembering how close she'd come to hitting him with a kunai when he'd tried to wake her up during a mission. There was no way he'd risk that again.
"Ahem..."
"That won't work. She's a heavy sleeper Asuma." Kakashi smirked. He was enjoying seeing his comrade so uncomfortable. Not to mention that it was just fun to piss him off.
"Ok... Fine. "Asuma scowled. "AHEM... Sakura!"
The medic sat up quickly wielding a kunai.
"Relax kunoichi. It's just us." Asuma laughed in his low gravelly voice.
"I believe you were expecting us to begin with..." The copy-nin smirked beneath his mask as he stepped forward so she could see him better.
"Kaka-sensei...?" Sakura said, squinting her eyes trying to adjust them to the light.
"Kaka-sensei...?" Asuma repeated as if he was making a mental note. "Interesting..." He decided that he would be saving that for blackmail later.
"Wow... You've really grown up..." Kakashi said, seeing her clearly as she stood.
"Yeah, and you know what that means Hatake? You've grown older." Asuma smirked, and then it faded, " ... And so have I..." Asuma said, intending it to be an insult only to realize it related to himself as well.
"Sorry about that. Please, have a seat, and fill out these papers." She said, handing them each two sheets of paper, as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.
"I hate these things." Asuma scowled. "Why do we have to fill them out every time we come here, shouldn't they be on file or something?" He grumbled.
"So how have you been Sakura?" Kakashi asked, ignoring, and speaking over his friend.
"Oh... I've been good. Busy ... and tired, but good." She smiled "And you?"
"Pretty much the same." He replied, his pen rapidly scratching over the paper as he spoke. Sakura wondered how many times he must have been in this medic center if he knew all the paperwork practically by heart.
"Ok. Umm... So do either of you have any injuries that need to be treated right away?" She asked, standing up.
Kakashi looked to Asuma.
With a sigh, Asuma stood and lifted up the side of his shirt to reveal a nasty gash that had been clumsily bandaged. It was about six inches long and was bleeding through the wrappings.
Sakura flew out of her chair and inspected the wrappings, her delicate fingers removing them slowly. "Did Tsunade-sama know about this?" She asked even though she already knew the answer. If the Hokage had known of this she would have healed it on the spot, for he was losing a lot of blood.
"No."
"And you sat through a whole meeting with her?" The worried nin asked, furrowing her brow. "Kakashi, you don't have any, correct?"
"No. Just him." He said, knowing the extent of the kunoichi's anger, because he knew that she couldn't fathom how a grown, intelligent jounin like Asuma could be so ignorant.
He watched as her hand began to glow a light blue, and her eyes closed. He knew from what she'd explained to him in her younger days that she was searching the wound for any foreign objects such as poison, bacteria, ect. In a flash her hand was on his wound. Her brow furrowed and her eyes flashed open as she pulled her hand from his side and a maroon substance followed.
"Dammit. Asuma, whatever weapon hit you was poisoned. It's a very rare kind, and normally medics will just skip over it, because it's color is so close to the color of blood. If you had waited an hour longer, you could have been paralyzed." She scowled. "I didn't get it all, but I've gotten the majority of it. You need to take..." She stood and walked over to a large wooden cabinet. When she opened it, they saw rows upon rows of medical treatments. She chose a container of blue-ish liquid on the top shelf, and carried it over to her desk. "I'm going to give you fifteen mil. You need to take..." She grabbed a small plastic cup and demonstrated how much he was to take." Once a day. Can you handle that? It's only a little bit."
"Yeah." He said, taking the little plastic vial and stuffing it into a pocket of his vest.
"Ok. Now let's get this over with, I have little patience left, so while I'm ready for it, tell me if you were hit any where else with these weapons."
"No."
"Ok. Then lets get your checkup over with." She said, referring to the standard checkup that every shinobi got after missions.
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After she'd finished looking both of the jounin over, Asuma left, a bit angry ay the lecture he had gotten from the young woman. Kakashi chose to stay behind.
"Did you make all of those medicines?" Kakashi asked, pointing to the cabinet that he knew contained all of her medicines that he'd seen earlier.
"Yeah. I made a lot of them while I was on that mission, I had a lot of free time. Believe it or not, a few of them are my own creations."
"That's amazing."
"Thanks." Sakura said blushing. She knew what a complement it was to receive praise from the copy-nin, because she hadn't gotten very many meaningful ones as a genin.
"We all missed you, it wasn't the same without you here."
"I needed to get away anyway... There were too many people badmouthing..." She paused, and took a deep breath. "...Sasuke... I was pretty pissed at him myself, but after someone dies you're supposed to show them respect."
Kakashi nodded. "You really did love him, didn't you?"
"I did ... in a way. But not in the kind of way I thought I did." She whispered, her voice becoming raspy. "Sorry..." She said, wiping away the tears falling down her pale cheeks. "It's just, you're only the second person I've really talked to this about."
"Sakura..." The speaker crackled. "You have a visitor, I'm sending him right in." Yumi sounded panicked, so she knew it was Genma.
"Ok. Thanks Yumi" She said into the speaker.
"Do you want me to...? " Kakashi offered only to be interrupted.
"No- no of course not. It's only Genma." She whispered as the said person stepped through her office door grinning from ear to ear.
"Hatake! You're home. I'm not interrupting one of your doctor things am I?" Genma asked, his hand still on the door knob, and ready to turn it if the need arose.
"No. Sit down, we're just talking about old times." Sakura said, smiling.
"I can always come back." Genma offered.
"Shut up and sit down Genma." Kakashi ordered.
I promise you, Itachi-kun will show himself soon. Actually, it's going to start moving faster... Maybe too fast... well, if I don't like it, I guess I could always revise it... Even though I'm between this and Untitled and It's taken me forever to get a new chapter of that out... but it REALLy needs revising. So anyway... there will be a bit of a longer stretch between chapters because I need to finish revising Untitled.
Heh...
Please read and review... And you know what...? Why do I keep saying "read" at the bottom? If your at the bottom of the page, you usually have already read it... Well, unless you just like to read the A/N's, but I don't know anyone like that... So.. to each his own... or hers.
Ok, so review.
Puh-leeease?
