The Hospital He Sleeps At
Kakashi wakes.
No, he jolts into a sitting position. Tried to. But a pair of strong, sure hands presses him down, and he feels his entire body catch up to what it is feeling all throughout. Soreness. Indescribable tiredness. He sinks back, and his body tries to resist.
Paranoia; he registers the feeling as someone coaxes him to calm down. But he doesn't really hear it. He doesn't hear anything. There's ringing inside his head, and the sounds distort around him, but the comfort exudes somewhere, somewhere. And so the comfort allows him to hear whosever voice it was.
"Sir, please don't try to get up. We need to calm down. You're safe here, no one's out to harm you. We need you to rest, okay?," he shifts into lucidity; the dreamlike voice vaguely familiar and all-consuming. "There. See? It's not so hard." The voice is starting to haunt him in all its comfort and familiarity. No, I am being paranoid. Why am I here? What happened? Where is the girl with the green ey—
A barely felt pat on his left shoulder. And then, a massive headache.
Kakashi screams.
And screams.
And screams.
The hands become heavier, no longer comforting. More voices. Kakashi screeches and pants, blind to everything. He's frantic, trying to search for the voice again. Somehow, that's the only thing he knows can calm him. Where is it? Why— why am I here? The comforting voice appears amidst the others; consoling, gentle, and so so familiar. But the damage has been done. There is now a sharp ringing in his ears like everything is out of place. Like he is not supposed to be here. Why is he here? Kakashi scrambles, searches inside his brain, flings around; his whole being trying to make sense of everything. But he's in a vortex he has no knowledge of.
He only remembers two instances. His name. And the memory of unmistakable Viridian eyes.
Kakashi succumbs to the darkness again.
The ID clip lifelessly flings around at the sound of her footsteps echoing through the empty hallways of the stark white hospital. She touches her face and fixes her glasses high up her nose and rearranges her hair into a slightly messy ponytail, her now long bangs hanging sideways, framing her face and making her forehead more prominent— she learned not to care a long time ago. But certain habits persist; she fixes what need not be fixed.
"Dr. Haruno? Do we have a name for your patient yet?" , A junior doctor catches up to her. She checks his ID, she has a tendency to forget names easily.
"No, I'm afraid not," Sakura sighed, contemplating how to solve the man's identity. "He has no identification with him. He didn't carry anything. No wallet, no phone, even his clothes were a bit...eccentric."
"He's so interesting, no? Probably the most interesting patient we have in our midst since that crazy man who claimed he was a Shinobi. Huh. Whatever is with this hospital, it sure does attract some weird weird patients inside."
"Careful what you say, Dr. Kabuto. The next time some weird patient arrives, I might be looking at you." She winks and turns another way- towards the room of the unidentified male patient refusing to wake up.
"Well, I should go. See you around, Doctor."
"Yes, see you around Doctor Haruno."
The door swings open, and it has been the only sound heard in this particular room since, well, since yesterday. Where the door swung open as well. And the day before that. But the man persists to sleep peacefully amidst the mystery laid heavy inside the room.
Sakura walks up to two steps before the bed. She purses her lips in thought— the same thoughts nagging her for quite some time now. This man, and the man she runs her eyes over in her patient records, and the man she met in a storm a month ago, she's almost convinced they're one and the same.
She wonders what happened to him.
The records say that he has been found by an old lady bleeding profusely in her backyard. Concussion, a deep gash on the forehead, back injury, lacerations all over the body, Sakura could go on and on. It's almost as though the man was trying to be a fine example for anyone interested to see just how many injuries there are possible to get acquainted with.
So far, the police had been back twice. But the man persists on his right to remain silent. He should be waking up soon. Sakura looks at the clock on the wall, and then checks her own watch, and then phone. Everything is timed correctly. He should be awake soon.
Why Sakura cares as much as she is intrigued, she has no idea. It is natural for her to worry for her patients; it isn't natural to constantly waste one's own time at work flinging around theories inside her head while staring at the man all those theories are based upon. She's becoming a freak. She should be freaking.
But the storm that happened a month ago is still so intricately carved inside her mind, she still scrambles sometimes to get herself out of the gutter and stop making weird connections between that guy and this, this man over here.
She couldn't help herself though.
The book of life goes over the new lines and slightly feels guilty for Kakashi's disorientation and paranoia as he calls it.
Well, he'll live. Right now, that's what's important.