Chapter 5

Her notebook was open on the table in front of her, her blue ink pen laying diagonal across the empty paper. Silence surrounded the little room she was sitting in, painting a dull picture for her. Her red haired patient sat across from her, arms crossed over his chest, eyes downcast and staring at the metal texture of the tabletop.

He had not spoken, moved, or given any indication that he even knew she was here. He had just sat and stared. It had been twenty minutes, and by now she had thought she would have known at least what had made him believe the dog reminded him of himself.

When she had first arrived in the room, she had asked all of three questions before she got the hint that no matter what she said, he wouldn't answer. So she had silenced herself, and sat back to study him.

He kept his hands balled into fists beneath his underarms, she noted. It looked like he was restraining himself. And his pale eyes looked distant, as if he wasn't really here but somewhere else.

Quietly she pulled the notebook into her lap, and jotted down a few notes. Maybe it could help her later on when she was at home. It was possible that the way he held his body gave an insight on his mental stability. If there was anything stable left, that is.

"You're waisting your time you know." he said in a bitter voice as he lifted his eyes to glare at the woman sitting across from him.

She stared blankly back at him. "And how is that?" she asked.

"I'm to far gone to be brought back." he replied as he rose from his chair and walked to the door.

"Possibly. But that isn't going to stop me from trying." she retorted as she rose from her chair also, dropping her pen and paper on the table.

He halted in his steps with his back facing her, his body stiff. After a moment of stillness he turned back around to face her across the room.

"Don't believe in personal space Haruno?"

"I don't think that applies to unstable patients." she snapped back at him, her temper rising.

Staring at her, a feral smile split across his face. With three quick strides, he placed himself directly in front of her, just like he had done the first time she saw him. With every exhale of oxygen, his warmth breath washed over the skin on her face, turning it slightly pink.

"You have no idea how unstable I am." he warned in a threatning voice. "Don't try to fix me. The pieces are to scattered."

With that, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room. Leaving a dazed pinkette standing alone with fifteen minutes left for an unfinished session. Her emerald eyes narrowed dangerously.

"I don't care." she whispered to herself. "I'm not here to fix you, i'm here to help you."

O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o.O.o

Three hours and a few coffee's later, found Sakura at home in her tiny apartment, sitting crosslegged on her bed in the fading sunlight. After her session with Gaara had ended, she had went to Tsunade's office to let her know how it went. Which had not been a very good five minutes.

Tsunade had spent the majority of the time lecturing the pinkette on how this was her responsibilty now, and she needed to crack down and get to work. Yeah, that was easier said than done considering that she had nothing concrete to work with. Thanks to the facility. She just had to wing it and begin from scratch.

Which was exactly what she was going to do. She had went through all the files on Gaara, including his eating habits, sleeping schedule, interactions with other people, and medical history. After printing copies of the information given, she labled a red binder 'Stats' and took it home for further study.

Now, on her bed, she had read through his eating habits and sleeping schedule, which both were below the norm, and was about to begin on Gaara's social skills. The binder she now posesed was small in comparison to the other patients'. If she did not know Gaara in person, she would have a hard time believing these documents belonged to an emitted person. There was hardly anything to work with.

Though she did have a good hold on how to start his rehabilitation. Sakura just prayed that, once she was able to get Gaara on the right path, Tsunade would have an open mind and hear her out. . .If she got Gaara on the right path. There was always that 'if'.

So far Sakura had discovered Gaara ate an average of four meals a week, and slept maybe once every two weeks. It was amazing to her that he was able to act the way he did, arrogant and superior. Much less stand on his own two feet.

His insomnia was due to continuous nightmares that not even the nembutal could cure. And his malnutrition was self-induced, as was his non-sleeping habit. It seemed he wouldn't eat anything he didn't watch being made or wasn't positive of where it arrived from. Odd. It gave no other explanation.

Stepping carefully off of her bed, Sakura went to her bookcase in the corner of her room and pulled down a thick volume of medicine and ailments. She flipped through the pages for a few minutes before she stopped at a page near the end of the book.

"Here it is." she muttered as she pointed her index finger to a paragraph in the middle of the printed page. "Benzodiazepines. Commonly known as benzos."

She smiled to herself as she sat back on her bed with the book in her lap, along with her notepad. Copying down the things listed, she thought over the speech she would present to Tsunade tomorrow when she came in with a request of medical change.

She was proud of herself, though. The injection of this would be more healthy for Gaara than what he was currently on. Instead of just acting as a sedative, this 'benzos' seemed to actually calm the nervous system. Relaxing the body and lulling it into sleep.

It was a class of psychoactive drugs with varying hypnotic, sedative, anxiolytic, anticonvulsant, muscle relaxant, and amnesic properties. If that didn't sound more helpful than a common anesthesia and sedative, then she would bow down to Gaara in a crowded place and declare him ruler over the world.

And for future use, she copied down the description of another drug she would like to use on Gaara once he was able to get some control over his health and as to not cause a physical dependence on benzodiaspines, called triazolam. It was just a derivative drug of the benzos that almost the same properties. Except, this one was only used to help with insomnia.

Once put on this medication, it would be the last stepping stone for his rehabilitation, and his ticket out of the facility. That is, if Tsunade allowed it. With a sigh, she copied down the last sentence for her medical offer, and put it away to continue her reading on Gaara's file.

The last thing for her to read up on was his social history. He seemed he was socially was the shortest of them all with only one page of information. It stated that the only family he had was an older brother and sister. Everyone else was deceased or unkown to the siblings.

His brother and sister were known as Kankurou and Temari Sabaku. They lived an hour from the facility and only visited on holidays. The last recoreded time they came, was last Christmas. They had not been back since then.

It went on to explain what they did when they visited, and it seemed they were the only people to get a positive reaction out of Gaara. Once even getting to have physical contact with him, a brief hug. Well, hug on their part, allowance of the touch on Gaara's.

They came on his birthday's though. Even if they had stopped coming on the holidays, they never missed his birthday. Which fell on the 19th of January. Two weeks away.

Sakura took this as another plus in her favor. Now she had the chance to meet siblings of Gaara's and try to find out why he was here in the first place. And she had the next few months planned out for his recovering. It irked her that not one person in that institiution had taken it on themselves to try and cure Gaara, when she had found solutions to his problems in one afternoon.

But then, maybe she was the only one to accept the job of him being her patient. Maybe he had had other doctors, but they had failed. Would she fail like them? Or could she fix this man? . . . No. She would not fail, and no, she would not fix him. She would help him, and turn his life around.

She would show Gaara what it was like to actually live. And not stay locked up in a prison untill the time to give into death was at hand. She would give him the chance to be free.