A/N: I don't pretend to know much about surgery or bones, or have any ocular knowledge but I tried my best to describe what I thought was going on. If you know better and can correct any biological inconsistencies I may have included, please feel free to correct me.

I don't own Naruto, I think that brings the Author's Notes to a conclusion…. Wait… maybe not; please review… now I'm really done.

Chapter 3 – The Healing Begins

Rin shuffled her way through the hospital trying to ignore all the people she passed on her way to the cafeteria. Usually she enjoyed stopping to chat with everyone in the building, knowing everyone in her path was one of her favorite pastimes. The nurses and technicians throughout the medical center all loved for her to stop in and share a minute or two of idle chatter, and Rin for her part, enjoyed it as well. She was always learning new things, regardless of who she spoke to or their importance in the hospital hierarchy, and they all fancied hearing about her own life. In fact, many of the older nurses even knew about her crush on Kakashi, half of them urged her to walk up and kiss him, demanding him to be her boyfriend, while the other half thought he wasn't good enough for their sweet little Rin and wanted her to find someone else. Today though, Rin didn't want to talk to any of them and the kind sympathetic looks they were all sending her made her want to crawl in a hole and hide. She just wanted to get to the cafeteria and the gift shop quickly so she could get back to her forgotten wheelchair and cry in private.

It just wasn't fair that Obito was the one in the hospital damaged so badly when it had been her that wasn't capable of defending herself. While sensei and Jiraiya had praised her for not giving away any mission information, Rin knew she shouldn't have been in the situation in the first place. She was supposed to be a chunin and she'd gotten herself caught almost instantly, worse than a genin fresh out of the ninja academy. She was an embarrassment to the team. Kakashi had lost his own eye, and Obito… poor Obito, Rin didn't think she would ever be able to get the vision of him crushed beneath that rock out of her mind. When she'd run the medical scan of his body it had been practically impossible to find any bones in the right side of his body that weren't smashed into a thousand pieces. As much as Jiraiya said he had faith that Tsunade-hime could fix him, Rin just didn't think it was possible. Jiraiya hadn't actually been able to see the damage, she had, and she didn't think anyone could fix that, not even Tsunade-hime. It just wasn't fair; Obito was in this awful condition when Rin was the one who had been worthless on the mission.

So busy wallowing in pity was Rin that she barely noticed she had reached the cafeteria. She got in line behind a younger boy, his brown hair was tied back loosely and a forehead protector, shining with newness proclaimed him a recent graduate of the ninja academy and a newly minted genin. Rin found herself wondering if he would have managed to do a better job on her mission then she did.

"I'll take a coffee, light and sweet, and a chocolate donut please," the boy shinobi requested.

"Sure thing sweetie," the lady clerk at the counter smiled at him. "We barely see you anymore Iruka, where have you been?"

"Haha… yeah, well since I became a genin I've been pretty busy with missions and training and stuff. I haven't really had time to visit my grandma much, but I still try to come whenever I have a minute."

"Well it's nice to see you again, tell your grandma I said Hi," the clerk handed him the coffee and donut. "Ravi will ring you down there sugar. See you around. Now what can I get for you little lady?"

"Oh, ummm… I'll have a coffee, light and sweet please," Rin answered.

"Well darling, he just got the last cup. You're going to have to wait a little bit while I brew up a new pot."

"Okay, sure," Rin said and turned to find a seat while she waited.

"Miss," Rin felt a soft touch on her arm and turned to see the young ninja from the concession line. "If you want you can take this cup. I can wait for the next one. My grandma won't mind, and if you don't mind me saying it, you look like you might need to get back a lot sooner than I do."

Rin felt herself wanting to smile at the youthful shinobi. His astute observation aside, his sincerity and kindness were touching. "No, it's okay; I really appreciate the offer…"

"Iruka, my name's Iruka," he said, offering his hand in greeting.

"Thanks, Iruka," she said shaking his hand. "I'm Rin."

"Nice to meet you Rin," he smiled warmly at her.

"You too. And like I said, thanks for the offer, but I think I'd actually like to wait here a little bit before I go back. It's a little intense up there."

"Well, I'll sit here with you and keep you company then. It's the least I can do for getting the last cup."

Rin laughed, "Its not like you did it on purpose. You don't have to stay."

Blushing, Iruka replied sheepishly, "Yeah, but I wouldn't mind."

Iruka stayed with her until the coffee was brewed, and Rin was grateful for the company. He told her about his grandmother being sick and his frequent visits to the hospital, and she told him about her training to be a medic nin and her desire to be great one day like Tsunade-hime. Then she shared the reason she was in the hospital currently and her worry for Obito during his surgery.

"I know what it's like to worry like that. My grandma has had so many surgeries I can't tell you how many anymore. It's hard. But here, take these," he said handing her a worn deck of cards. "These are my lucky cards. Every time my grandma has a surgery I use these cards to play solitaire to pass the time, and every time, she comes out just fine. I want you to take them, and play a few games, play even just one if you want, and I'm sure your friend will be just fine."

"Really?" Rin looked over at him. "Are you sure? They seem pretty special to you."

"Ehh… it's okay," he smiled lopsidedly and a faint blush appeared on his cheeks again. "You seem pretty special too. Just let me know how your friend does."

This time a slight tinge of pink tinted Rin's cheeks. "Thank you, you don't know how much this means to me. As soon as he's out of surgery I'll get them back to you."

"No problem. It was great meeting you Rin."

"You too," she said, and then she moved in to give him a warm hug. "Thanks for being the bright spot in my day."

Rin turned and walked the opposite way down the hallway, back to where Kakashi and Jiraiya, and maybe even sensei, were waiting for news of Obito, while Iruka stood in the hallway for a minute, a little dazed, for the rest of the day the ear to ear grin never left his face.

XoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoX

Tsunade paused and took a moment to catch her breath and push the hair back out of her eyes. Optical surgery was always difficult but this was even more so. Working on Obito's eye offered up precious insight into the workings of the sharingan and the Uchiha kekkei genkai, but not without its price, and Tsunade was beginning to feel the wear and tear on her chakra system. Repairing the macula and fovea was a tedious task on a normal patient, however with an Uchiha it was downright draining. Connecting the retina, macula, and fovea to the optic nerve while making sure to maintain the chakra passages that would allow the sharingan to work properly required her to keep a constant flow of threadlike chakra running through the pathways. The concentration needed to maintain the precise amount was immense. If she pushed too much chakra through the passage she could overload the receptors and fry his optic nerve in which case the poor boy would end up blind, however if she stopped the flow for even a second or didn't provide enough the tunnel would close up and scar. If that happened he would never be able to mold chakra through it again and though he'd be able to see, he would never have use of the sharingan.

Tsunade was almost finished with the surgery. She just needed to attach a few more of the macula to his optic nerve and he'd be in the clear, then she could record the little bit of knowledge she'd been able to obtain about the Uchiha blood line limit. Though it was only a minute amount she was surprised to have acquired any at all, the clans were usually very secretive when it concerned family jutsu or kekkei genkai. And earlier in the day the Sandaime had told her the Uchiha clan leader, Fugaku, had refused to donate any of the eyes from the recently deceased Uchiha. Konoha was at war and as such, there were many lost lives, Uchiha and otherwise. Fugaku had stated that Obito had already betrayed the clan by giving his own sharingan away to a lesser shinobi, and didn't deserve someone else's. After all, he'd placed such little value on his own. Tsunade had wanted to march right down to the police station and punch the arrogant man through a wall; she refrained knowing it would only add fuel to his self righteous rants about the subjugation of the Uchiha clan at the hands of the Senju clan. Hiruzen had been upset as well, but there had been nothing either one of them could do; a non-Uchiha eye would have to be used for the transplant. Then, just as she was prepping for surgery, 5 year old Uchiha Itachi, son of Fugaku, had arrived with an Uchiha eye in a bento box. With the health of poor Obito in doubt, Tsunade had no time to question the mode of transport for the eye, or why the bastard had relented and changed his mind, but now that the critical part was over she began to mull it over in her mind.

"Tsunade-sensei," Tsunade's apprentice cut through her concentration. "I've finished reconstruction of the fibula and tibia, as well as the ribs and arms, and while those were all almost completely shattered, the femur was mostly intact. I've begun mending the fractures sustained in the lower region but I don't think I have enough chakra left to properly repair his knee. The articular cartilage has been damaged which will require more chakra precision then I'm capable of at this moment. I'm sorry sensei."

"No need to apologize Shizune," Tsunade smiled at the young girl. "You've done a great job; I doubt there is anyone else in the hospital that could have done better."

"Thank you, Tsunade-sensei," Shizune's cheeks blushed at the praise. "I am sure you could have done it, and still been able to finish his knee."

Tsunade chuckled lightly shaking her head, the girl never gave herself enough credit and constantly gave Tsunade more then she deserved. She ran her hands over the boy's legs, scanning with her chakra while Shizune completed healing the fractures in Obito's upper thigh. Her apprentice had been extremely thorough in the reconstruction and Tsunade was unable to find even one bone chip or fragment tout of place. Shizune was going to make a fantastic medic-jounin one day. In her own opinion, Tsunade thought the girl was probably already better than most of the medic jounin in the field, but when the last jounin exam had come up Shizune had insisted she wasn't yet prepared enough. Tsunade had pushed but her assistant was steadfast in the belief that she had way more to learn and in the end she had relented. If the girl had doubts she might not be confident during the exam and that could lead to failure on the test, it was better to wait and be sure.

Tsunade waited for Shizune to finish mending the femur, allowing her chakra as much rest as she could between use and once again started thinking about Obito's new sharingan's arrival in a bento box, delivered in the hands of a small child. What could have changed Fugaku's mind? Why didn't they have someone with a medical background come down to remove it? Whoever had cut out the eye from its previous owner had done so rudimentarily. The macula had been rough at the edges and had needed to be recut and shaped with a scalpel, which could have been avoided if they had just let a professional do it to begin with, it almost looked like they'd originally been cut with a barely sharpened kunai. And on top of that, why did he send it with a five year old delivery boy? What was going on at that Uchiha –?

"I'm finished Tsunade-sensei," Shizune interrupted her thoughts again. "Should I prep the knee for you?"

"No, Shizune, thank you, that's not necessary. I've got it. Why don't you get out of here? Go home and spend some time with your family. We're leaving here in less than a week."

"Hai," she nodded and began to remove her surgical gear. "Should I let them know that he's going to be okay?"

"Yeah, go ahead. The surgery's done; he should have no problems with his eyes when he gets out of here. I however am going to need a lot of sake."