Chapter 16: Hospital Work

He awoke in a cold sweat as he panted heavily. He looked around to discover he was in a hospital room. His heart began to slow as he looked out the window to see a mountain with large faces on its side. "I'm…back?"

A door to his right opened as a blond woman in a hospital gown entered. She looked at him with a bit of surprise as she lowered her clipboard. "Well, looks like you've finally woken up. How do you feel?"

"Um, alright I guess. A little sore." Musket admitted as he stretched in bed. The woman raised an eyebrow at that as she looked down at her clipboard. "I see."

"How long was I out?" He asked.

"5 weeks." She replied. Musket couldn't believe it as he looked at her. "Your kidding right?"

"That's what I should be asking you." he was surprised to hear her say that. "What do you mean?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" She asked.

He thought for a moment. "Well, I remember being on a mission. And I think I remember we were trying to look for our target when I was hit by something, and then…" his memories went blank after that as he looked at her. "That's it. I…I can't remember anything else."

She seemed to give him a look of concern before her face went to one of business. "Well, your team was ambushed by your target." He looked mortified at that news. "They're all ok, don't worry. But you were ambushed and they all had to fight while you were taken down. At some point you seemed to wake up and stop the attacker, but not without sustaining serious injuries. Your team brought you back to Konoha where we've been trying to keep you alive since."

He didn't say anything for a few moments as he possessed the information. "How bad?"

"Left arm shattered in multiple places to the point of supposed unusability. Right Lung punctured in three separate locations, would you like me to go on?" Musket shook his head as he looked at his left hand. "We almost lost you at one point, lucky I got you stable again."

He nodded to her out of appreciation. "What was your name again?"

"Tsunade."

"Thank you."

She gave him another once over before going to leave. "My cousin kept coming to make sure you're ok. She told me she'd be back some time tomorrow so until then get some rest. I know they'd both be happy to see you ok." With that she closed the door as he wondered who it was she was talking about.

Looking up to the ceiling he could feel his head pounding as he played back down. "God, this sucks."

End of Chapter

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Author's Note: Welp it's been a whole year now. Can't really believe it. So I guess I'll just say thank you to everyone who's been reading these stories. Honestly I still don't get how any of them can be liked. So thanks to you all for a full year of doing this. You've all been great and I can never thank any of you enough.

Now then let's make another year's worth of these stories and beyond. I have many plans and I'm not stopping now!