I don't own Naruto, but it means a lot to me.
For the most part, Sakura's mandatory checkups includes only graduates of Iruka's class in the ninja academy. No one could have imagined that thirteen students all within a few years of each other would become some of the strongest ninja on earth, but it did make the class reunions easy to coordinate.
"Sakura!" Naruto's voice calls, and Sakura groans, reaching for her coffee and taking a deep chug as she hears him booming down the outside hallway.
"Naruto," she calls back, her voice, hopefully, impressing through her visitor's thick skull that she is very busy today running his hospitals and doesn't have time for visitors.
"I am not taking walk ins.."
With, at least, the pretense of shame, Naruto chuckles and scratches the back of his neck as he enters the office.
"Ah, I know, I know." He offers, rounding into the room and leaning against the nearby bookshelf. "And I normally wouldn't just barge in like this..."
Sakura snorts, raising a single eye in mocking amusement.
"Normally wouldn't? Is that so?"
Naruto frowns, but brushes past the insinuation.
"I wouldn't have come if it wasn't important!" He assures her, and his tone is earnest enough that Sakura actually believes him. Sitting up in her chair, she tilts her head and waits.
"Alright, then." The pinkette acquiesces. "What's the problem?"
"I've got a foreign dignitary I need you to please examine."
Sakura blinks.
The declaration is shocking on two fronts. First and foremost, there is no amount of time that will lessen the mild shock it is to hear Naruto speak like a mature adult, using words like "dignitary" or "please". Like he was a real adult and not a loudmouth street urchin somehow masquerading as a mature human being.
The second shock, less interesting but probably more pressing, being that a foreign dignitary was requesting aide.
"A dignitary?" Sakura replies, not bothering to hide her mild shock. "In need of Konoha medical services?"
Naruto shakes his head and reaches across the table, taking her hand in his and meeting her eyes gravely.
"No, no." he says. "Not Konoha's aide. Your aide.
Sakura blinks in shock, a recurring theme to this meeting. "Me?" She balks, "As in me, particularly? What kind of foreign dignitary asks a for the head of a foreign nation's medical service for a personal..."
"It's a friend."
Sakura blinks again, and finds she's becoming increasingly frustrated by the continuing plot twists in this conversation.
"A friend?" She shoots back. "Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down with you and your..."
There was a rumble, but the only real sound Sakura hears is the rush of a million grains of sand as her door is physically ripped from its hinges and blown against her floor. A tidal wave of desert sweeps into the room, pushing aside papers and furniture and anything not tied down. As the sand expands, Sakura notices the outer tendrils of particles move and shake frantically, almost sentient. They whip and thrash in the area, like a caged animal swiping at an assailant. From the doorway, the ripples into a part, and two figures appear. A woman and a man, one red haired and menacing, the other brunette and…scared.
"Kazekage-sama?" She manages, before the woman rushes forward, arms extended. When she's almost run over, Sakura realizes the woman is cradling a child. "Shijima-san?"
The woman, Shijima, meets Sakura's eyes in a desperation that claws away in her soul. Her eyes are puffy and red, and there's a tremble in her voice.
"Sakura-san." She pleads. "It's Chiyo. My baby. She's in pain."
Sakura's eyes widen, and her attention snaps to the swaddled bundle in the woman's arms.
"She won't stop crying." Comes Gaara's voice from behind. It's dark and heavy and reminds her of the first time they had met the Ichibi vessel. Fear and fury, all held back from the world by a thin wall of sand.
The bundle, an infant, squirms and moans in discomfort. With the urgency of a mother and the finesse of a surgeon, Sakura takes hold of the child, whisking her to her desk and laying her blanket across the cold oak. Sakura can feel the trio behind her eyeing her like hawks, their anxiety palpable from behind.
"How long has she been ill?" Sakura demands, rushing to her cabinet and stretching gloves over her hands.
"Just a few days." Shijima answers, her voice trembling. "I noticed her coughing and crying, but we thought she only had a cold. The Konoha climate is so different from home."
"She was quiet the entire train ride to Konoha." Gaara adds, and Sakura gives a dire nod. Donning her stethoscope, she caresses the distressed child's cheek. The baby squirms and continues to wail, the discomfort etched across her face wrench inside Sakura's stomach.
"Shhhh, little one." She coos. "It's all gonna be alright."
"Well?" The Kazekage's voice is hesitant, nervous in a way that Sakura finds completely disorienting.
"Anything you need from us." Naruto offers, "supplies, personnel. You say the word, and Garaa and I will make it happen."
"I just need quiet, right now." She answers quickly, but follows with a brief "but, thank you." because Gaara and Shijima and Naruto are scared and reassuring the family is a part of patient care even when those family are two of the most dangerous men on the planet.
"What symptoms have you noticed?" She orders.
"Crying, won't eat." Shijima responds. "She's just so distressed." Gaara's eyes darken.
"And then the marks…" he adds, a chill in his voice.
"Marks?"
"Look at her chest."
Sakura frowns, the sense of urgency growing by the second. Turning her gaze to the child, she pulls back the wrap and begins to unfasten the child from it's swaddle. The Kazekage and his wife's anxiety is like a physical ocean, waiting to burst behind her - they're lucky she's so far beyond professional. She wouldn't have been shocked if some of her newer pupils would have feinted under the pressure emanating from the two.
The wrap withdrawn; Sakura's eyes pour over the child. Immediately, she lets out a deep and resonating sigh of relief.
"It's chicken pox."
The answer is met with complete silence. Naruto, naturally, speaks first.
"...Chicken pox?"
Sakura nods as the tension erases from her posture. Her gaze softens as she pulls the infant against her breast and gives a small bounce. The dull green glow of medical chakra emanates from her palm, and the child slowly stops her wailing.
"Oh, you poor, poor thing." she coos, walking softly back towards Shijima and resting the child near her mother's embrace.
"Chicken...pox?" The woman whispers, reaching for her child but her eyes glistening with a fear and anxiety. Sakura realizes the woman is on the brink of tears.
"Then she will..." Shijima all but whispers, clinging the child against her breast and meeting the medic's eyes. "She will be okay?"
"What? Okay?" Sakura whispers. Her eyes widen as realization slams into her faster than a wall of sand, hands surging forward to caress the woman's arm.
"Yes, oh my, yes!" She can't say the words fast enough as realization crashes over her that Shijima has no idea what the words she's saying even mean. "Chicken pox is...is...extraordinarily common. Especially in children! She's going to be just fine."
"Chicken...pox?" Sakura turns as Gaara repeats the word, rolling off his tongue with a cautious relief.
"I have never heard of this illness."
"The chicken pox?" her eyes widen and now she's the one confused and worried. "You've never heard of the chicken pox before?"
Gaara's reply is as immediate and rigid as his posture.
"I did not take ill as a child." He answers. "I am not familiar."
"Didn't...didn't get sick?" She balks. "What do you mean didn't get sick?"
"Not much room for germs when big, bad demons are inside you, Sakura-chan."
Sakura opens her mouth to respond, but the comment steals her thought.
"Oh." She says, because that's all she can think to say. There's a part of her that hates how easy it is to forget the dark and brutal history of abuse and mistreatment that haunted jinjuriki. Naruto smiles so big, sometimes, it was just easy to forget that there was so much to unpack. Sakura is relieved when Shijima speaks next, pulling her from her spiral.
"The climate in Suna," Shijima continues. "There were many diseases that we did not face in the desert. Others, faced by only us."
Sakura hears this explanation with a mild disbelief at the odds of such an occurrence but chooses to stroke her glowing palm against Chiyo's forehead. The baby, once crying, is now almost asleep in her mother's arms.
"It's going to be a few days, but she's going to be fine." Sakura reassures. Gaara, Shijima, and Naruto all visibly deflate, exhausted from the worry. "I'll give you a guide and some medicine, but her body just needs to work it out on her own. You may wish to quarantine her in Konoha until it passes, but, again, she'll make a full recovery."
Naruto beams, wrapping an arm around a barely relaxing Kazekage and gives a booming laugh.
"Told ya she was the best, Gaara!"
It's so bizarre, seeing Gaara be engaged in something like 'hugging'. Then again, she can see his eyes glued to the child. She doubted he was even aware of anything else.
"Sakura-san." Shijima's voice trembles, the tinges of relief bringing color back to her cheeks.
"Are there...other illnesses that we should be aware of like this...pox?"
Sakura thinks for a moment, a contemplative nod.
"Let me go get you some pamphlets if you're intending to travel, again."
This wrote like a crack fic, but I put it in, anyway.
- Free Drinks
