Chapter Text
Sasuke’s pager goes off inside one of the pockets of his lab coat; the beeping it does absently gets to him while he’s fishing out his keys from somewhere inside any other pocket. He pats and checks himself, presses his hands against his pants for the key’s outline. “Damn,” he mutters, just as the pager emits another sound. He makes a face.
There’s only one person he knows would try to contact him via paging when he’s deliberately ignoring said character’s other methods of getting to him. The keys do appear, saved in the same place he uses for his stethoscope, and he unlocks the door, stepping inside his office. Inside awaits him a whole level of unkemptness (some downright disaster, Sakura says, that’s her wording anyway) that he doesn’t fully acknowledge because his pager chirps in a third time. Sasuke sighs, casting a glance over a specific stack of paper. A bulge protrudes a few sheets upwards. His phone, and the incoming call making the screen lit up is revealed after the sheets are set aside. At least this time he could remember where he put the thing.
“Oh, great timing,” a voice immediately says once he answers the call.
“Dr. Uzumaki, why are you calling me in my working hours?” Sasuke replies in lieu of a greeting.
Naruto scoffs. It’s been enough of a Monday to Sasuke that he feels it’s justified his grimace this early. “You need to stop calling me that, like it’s a joke.”
“Once it stops being a joke,” Sasuke says, putting the phone on speaker. He sets it on top of the papers it had been hiding under, while he takes care of everything that looks out of place over his desk, “It’s a good icebreaker for the new interns. It makes them laugh.”
“A trip to Sakura’s for you would make me laugh,” Naruto grumbles, then, but his voice doesn’t have a single drop of threat. “I’ve been calling you for ages, man. What if it was an emergency? ”
Sasuke collects the empty cardboard cups hoarding part of his desk, pilling them before throwing the small heap in a plastic bag. “Do you have a pen on you? Write down 9-1-1, I think they’ll answer you.”
That makes Naruto snort. “You’re my emergency number.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire—”
“Shut up. Anyway, don’t get me distracted, this is an important call, ” Naruto starts, “Did you eat breakfast yet? Sakura told me you just ended your forty-eight-hour shift.”
“I think I had a bag of gummies somewhere between my third and fourth coffee,” he says, smirking when he hears Naruto groan. He thinks idly about the cardboard cups. He doesn’t even know how many of those he actually had.
“Sugar and coffee, bravo,” Naruto says, clapping. Sasuke imagines him looking like a fool with his phone clutched between his shoulder and ear, for the sake of his sarcasm. “You’re a very reliable representation of health.”
“Thank God,” Sasuke says, “Can you imagine if I added ramen to that diet? It’d throw off the balance.”
“That’s your way of saying you don’t want ramen as breakfast? Man, my heart,” Naruto replies. There’s a telltale elevator ping on his side of the line that notifies Sasuke his friend wasn’t going to take any negatives from his part. It doesn’t leave to Sasuke a chance to flee, either, not that his stomach is interested in doing so.
“And your arteries. But, would you sacrifice ramen for me? Oh,” Sasuke fakes a gasp, the mirth behind his words belaying his surprise, “I don’t think I’m ready for those heights in commitment.”
Naruto’s snicker sounds crisp in the call, and Sasuke realizes just how close he is by the echo of his laughter floating to his office. Just as he’s brushing away a few crumbs (that will surely reappear because Naruto ate like he owned the table), Naruto opens the door, sparing any knock, like he always does.
“Believe it or not, we’re skipping ramen today,” his friend says right away entering, “I brought you some juice. I know, real, unprocessed juice? I think it’ll poison you.”
“That’s not a first,” Sasuke points out, getting a chair free from a few books piled over it. Naruto puts a groceries’ recyclable bag over the desk, taking the seat without giving it a once over, which says a lot about how much trust Naruto puts into the level of cleanness the chair had. That, or he remembered to bring a spare lab coat this time.
“It was one time,” Naruto winces, detangling the bag, “I didn’t know the soup was stale!”
“You were so far into a congestion you couldn’t smell a fire,” Sasuke tells him, “Let alone cook.”
He makes a gesture of grabbing something from the bag, but Naruto smacks his hand. Sasuke glares at him, and the blond retorts with a grin. “Makes me wonder how in earth you accepted my food.”
Sasuke crosses his arms, now sitting across Naruto. He glowers until Naruto caves, rolls his eyes and passes him a brown bakery bag. It’s warm where he touches it, not scalding. A corner of his mouth tugs upwards despite himself. “Exhaustion. A moment of weakness. Blindness, a fail in the olfactory system. Choose your favorite.”
“I’d say you were hungry and in need,” Naruto says, getting him a glass bottle next. Orange juice, Sasuke judges by the looks of it.
Sasuke uncaps the bottle and takes a sip, mockingly saying afterwards, “Thanks, Naruto, you’re a lifesaver.”
“No biggie,” Naruto plays along. He rolls the brown paper bag around his filled biscuit and takes a mouthful. He’s munching as he says, “But your people call me doctor. More fitting, yeah? And humble.”
Not even Sasuke’s frequent complaints, after all those years, could give Naruto good manners. “Swallow before you speak,” Sasuke drawls, grateful at least that the blond stopped showing him the inside of his mouth as retaliation. “And humility? Finally, something you learned from me.”
Naruto gets a fit of coughing in the midst of his laughing. Serves him right. He sing songs, “Hangin' on a telephone wire—”
———
Sasuke blatantly alienates himself from terms like humility, he’s been known as one of the best and he maintains it that way, even as lonely as it gets the top sometimes. But that is the outcome of filtering obstacles that weaver his grasp; this is a saying that goes deep in his family, one that stuck with him, too. It stood up like an incisive idiosyncrasy (he liked to call it benign), that an Uchiha would always disregard themselves from the idea of projecting an inaccurate, static figure. Sasuke early on raised a contrast from most type of hypothesis and beliefs that concerned him: he exceeded them or refused to be represented by them, showing an identity that lacked childishness, or a redundant attitude.
With time his interest in settling an impression, the one that makes you wonder what people think of you, slowed down. He always strives for showing people how it’s done, this much is true, but caring for what those people thought of his proceedings stopped being in the front of his mind, falling somewhere lesser in relevance. Sasuke has a voracious nerve, he’s an uninterrupted and almost striking vision, when he wears his intentions with an aggressiveness not quite invasive, yet odd— dauntless in his convictions and resolutely at peace with the reality that he always wants to be the best.
One to misinterpret things was Naruto. Right away, it made things with the blond just about a goddamn wreckage, and no one exactly knows how they are, now, the best of friends, and a duo of comrades, out of such a different context like their first encounters. One to comprehend things, too, was Naruto, which made Sasuke leave and turn back and be dragged back in a strange relationship of sorts with the blond that somehow keeps going through the years, not shining with some spectacular start or holding a lineal progressive evolution— God knows the first years at the faculty went a little backwards, kicking off, shutting down, staggering, but Naruto particularly never relented and ultimately, Sasuke thinks, he grew a spot the size of this annoying, unprofessional friend of his.
Sasuke knows it raises doubts and bets in equal parts, his younger, more weary around Naruto self, would bet against lasting a year calling this boy something along the lines of friend, or acquaintance. At that time it was laughable at best and disconcerting at worst, that two temperaments running at such lengths of opposition could manage and critically maintain a middle ground in where to fall, find companionship, to get back to. His younger self would bet for a lack of that within a year, but after that he couldn’t be as sure anymore. Now it’s laughable at best how Naruto seems to fit inside the picture Sasuke claimed he couldn’t have the right for space into. In the best case, it’s funny that he would contrast the Uchiha in the most maddeningly of ways, a startling difference that more than once put them on opposite poles with miles from each other, and nevertheless Naruto stood beside him like a parallel force where and when it mattered. After all, Naruto never cared exactly what people thought, too, not even what Sasuke did, until he got around the idea that they weren’t so much a walking discrepancy but just worked in sync— when it mattered.
It’s disconcerting at worst, being lonely at the top, yet finding haven in a person that fights for his goals with the likes of which so different at how Sasuke is used to fight. The similarities are there, their words are different but hold the same meaning, and they held the same goal, just casted different lights over it.
It makes Sasuke frown, it’s laughable at best, when Naruto smiles and looks triumphant. It’s disconcerting at worst, when Naruto thinks Sasuke is not watching him smile, but he does.
———
In Naruto’s office there’s a wall covered in a series of firsts, photographs framed and hanging in no specific order. Years after, they hang one in whatever space they fancy or find in where the photograph fits nicest, and the wall’s starting to look a little cluttered because Naruto cannot seem to stop putting pictures there of stuff that, according to him, were a first to happen. It makes the painting and cleaning a royal whole ordeal of bothersome work, but it holds a symbolic status since Naruto was given that office and Sasuke reluctantly admits that he, too, has grown used to the pictures. Everyone’s got their favorite, Sakura’s fond of the picture of Naruto’s first time holding the baby he helped delivering during his rotations at the Obstetrics and gynecology, the baby crying and Naruto, absorbed in such a emotional moment, crying too. There’s Hinata’s favorite, a proud Kiba walking from his first kneecap replacement surgery, having told his performance leveled about the specialist’s. A lot of people find themselves giggling like fools at one where Sasuke is wearing a Power Rangers pattern scrubs after losing a bet against Ino. And the one his gaze lingers each time, the picture of Naruto and him grinning broadly, cap and gown and all, holding their diplomas under the folding branches of a three known in their faculty for being as old as time.
Sasuke is staring at the wall once again, in a nondescript Tuesday that he finds he doesn’t actually have any recollection of before Naruto complained it was his turn to buy breakfast, waking him up from the nap he was busy taking and suddenly recalls: His day’s supposed to start in a few hours, he’s still in the hospital, having fallen asleep there, his shift ended after midnight, and he was so tired he didn’t even realize Monday, predictably, morphed to Tuesday.
He’s trying to say all of this to Naruto, as an explanation to why he can’t get up to grab breakfast despite being a thing they do almost religiously, but it comes out like a pitiful: “Aarrgggh.”
Somehow Naruto doesn’t understand. Sasuke wonders why he’s even bothering. “C’mon, teme, you’re not getting away with this,” he says, and Sasuke almost gets cross-eyed while looking at his friend, whose face inches close to his, “Did you went home before crashing here? No, stupid question. You’d be crashed in your own bed. Sasuke.”
Naruto’s berating tone access via one ear, and is out by the other one. He feels groggy and his brain is taking its sweet time falling again into its usual consciously functioning state. Sasuke blinks slowly, his body chasing away the numb feeling of sleep. This near, he can see how pale Naruto’s eyelashes are, long and curled, they’re just a pitch below transparency. “You have a woman’s eyelashes,” Sasuke manages, though it sounds not exactly like he wanted to.
Something passes through Naruto’s blue eyes, a thing almost physical; yet it cannot be a trick that the light pulled off. Not this close. Then shadows cast over the blond’s eyes as he closes them, stepping back. “You sure know how to talk your way inside a man’s heart,” Naruto raises a brow.
Sasuke rearranges himself in the sofa he’s currently lying over, by some miracle throw at him, his neck isn’t stiff. “Thought I got that covered years ago.”
“Yeah, sure,” Naruto dismisses, “How many hours have you been in here, Dr. Uchiha?”
Oh, it’s on. Sasuke knows too how this diplomatic, condescending little act needs to be play. “I ended my shift and deemed necessary that I stayed in the hospital, Dr. Uzumaki.”
A muscle tightens in Naruto’s right cheek, Sasuke knows he’s clenching his jaw, whether to hold a laugh or keep his face clear of annoyance, he can’t tell. “And why is that? ER got low tide once your time was up.”
“There were a few patients I needed to check myself,” he explains.
“Bullshit,” Naruto, unsurprisingly, is the first to crack. Sasuke smirks.
“Language, doctor,” Sasuke changes to a sitting position. He barely remembers having shrugged off his lab coat (he doesn't know why he needed to use it in the first place, if he rarely did it), which is unceremoniously throw over Naruto’s desk, along with his pager, his lintern, and his stethoscope.
“I care less and less about what you have to say to my language,” Naruto follows his line of vision, and walks towards his desk. He grabs Sasuke’s things messily. “You’re going to your house, you’ll close your curtains, and you’ll tuck yourself in bed. I won’t have you here until you actually need to be here. Are we clear?”
“Crystal, mom,” Sasuke stands and makes a move to get his things, but Naruto narrows his eyes and hugs the things closer to his body, out of Sasuke’s reach. “Naruto.”
“You need to rest. You’re taking all those shifts— when was the last time you spent less than half a day here?”
Sasuke pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s been busy, Naruto.”
“You’re not the only doctor in here,” the blond insists, “There’s a team that can work, too. You have them. And you have me.”
“I know, I know. Isn’t a bit too early to be having this chat? I thought we got it scheduled for noon,” Sasuke tries for a joke.
If anything, Naruto looks more serious. “I don’t want to repeat myself.”
That makes Sasuke pause. “So what? You’ll stop me from doing my job?”
“Maybe,” Naruto says at length, “Now go. And I expect to be treated to ramen for lunch, once you come back.”
“See if I care,” Sasuke mutters, taking what Naruto’s pushing into his arms. “Why are you here, anyway? I know your shift starts about an hour after mine.”
Naruto shrugs, taking a chart from his desk. “I had a hunch that you were playing at being part of the décor here, so I came to rescue you. Life-saving, remember?” he tilts his head, smiling.
That smile’s has been getting more difficult to resist to each day, but Sasuke doesn’t let himself be pulled. “Age’s making you less funny.”
“Hah, very ha.”
———
“Sasuke.”
He minimally flinches. Somehow, between his sandwich and his cup of jelly, he spaced out. Sakura’s chastising voice brings him back with a firm intone.
“I’m hearing, I swear,” he casually lies, driving another spoonful into his mouth. He swallows before adding: “Lying doesn’t make it better, right?”
“That much you’re right,” Sakura concedes, glaring. If looks could kill, he would be asking for a gurney as in right now. “What got you in the clouds? You at least care about when it’s a medical topic.”
Sasuke scrunches the cup in his hands. There has been an influx of brain-wreaking cases in Trauma. They’ve been tethering on code red for days, now, following the start of spring. Floor manages to stay more stuffed and without beds free more days than not. He’s been walking on blood-stained skechers for a day now, not finding the time to rush back to his house to get a spare pair. They’re not lies, but Sasuke doesn’t bother using any of them. “Itachi’s birthday is getting closer.”
Sakura crosses her arms. The movement gives the hello kitty pattern in her scrubs' top a funny face. She’s probably the only one that can put off a patterned scrubs and be a top surgeon. “Now I get why you were brooding at your jelly.”
“I wasn’t brooding,” Sasuke arches an eyebrow. Sakura mimics him. “He’s throwing another big reunion, and you can bet who’ll the center of the conversations be. Again.”
It makes Sakura laugh, at least. She tosses her hair, which was getting long enough to make a swinging flourish. “Little golden baby boy. Inching to his thirties, and not even a pretty girl in sight. It makes us all gasp.”
“I think they’re not going to buy it if I bring you again,” Sasuke muses, “Maybe Ino? Uh. No. Forget I said that.”
“That’ll make them think they got ‘Sasuke’s into blondes’ part right.” Sakura teases. She gathers the empty plates and puts Sasuke’s tray over hers, then she pushes it towards him. Sasuke absently takes it.
“Not funny, for the‒ you know what, I lost count,” he says, standing up.
“Gets less funny the more it gets true,” Sakura replies. She puts her water bottle in her front pocket, waits for Sasuke after he leaves the tray, and they exit the cafeteria together. “You can take Naruto.”
“And here I was, believing I had bad ideas,” Sasuke rolls his eyes, “But you just beat me.”
“Say all you want, but you’re running out of time,” she warns, and her green eyes lost a shred of their playfulness. “I’m just reminding you.”
Sasuke holds tight the urge to talk back. He lacks something smart to add, defeated by the concluding tone in his friend’s voice, allowing no further discussion. Sasuke knows he can fight back, but against Sakura’s assessing gaze, his odds were starting to reverse. He settles for a glare leveled to his friend’s calm stare.
“I need to do charts,” Sasuke says. It’s a dismissal if Sakura ever heard one.
“I’m having surgery just about now,” Sakura checks the clock attached to her wrist, “See you for lunch?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll get ramen. Naruto’s doing.”
———
The slap of his gloves snap the residents out of their reverie. The man is settled over the emergency stretcher and Sasuke looms over him, lowering to check his head. He barks: “He has his nasal hairs burned. That’s a sign for what?” The two residents look briefly to each other, but they can’t snatch their eyes off the gruesome sight of a burned body, the skin of the man thoroughly damaged. “I just made a question. It’s a sign for what?”
“Burned v-vocal cords,” the woman stutters. Sasuke frowns at her, and that makes her take a deep breath before repeating, firmer this time: “Burned nasal hairs can lead us to believe that his vocal cords are this damaged, too.”
“That’s right,” Sasuke confirms, “They can swell at any given moment and close his air ways,” he looks at the other resident, a man. A boy, Sasuke thinks. “You. Intubate immediately.”
The boy eases his way with the tube, clumsily managing the oropharyngeal airway, just as Sasuke holds the bag-valve, ready to use it, and continues, “Tell me an estimate of his burns.”
The woman answers, “35 percent? I’d—” but Sasuke cuts her off. “45 percent, Dr. Yashiro. Guess you cheated your way through basic math quizzes.”
She looks pissed off. Sakuke, albeit finding it laughable, doesn’t particularly care. He clenches the bag-valve. Yashiro was a short-fuse woman, drove by her hot blood. Sasuke knows the mistake in that. “Get the fluids ready and begin the replenishment. And check your notes, both of you.”
Later, he knows his words are back to bite him in the ass because both Sakura and Naruto encounter him, successfully cornering him while he’s, predictably, taking a 20 min shut eye. He should have been known using Naruto’s office instead of the couch in the resting room wasn’t the best of ideas. He rubs his face with a hand, trying to get off the exhaustion, when Naruto speaks:
“Dr. Uchiha, you are not nice,” he says.
“Was I ever,” Sasuke counters, looking bored. Sakura huffs.
“That poor girl. She was crying after stabilizing the patient. Kept saying she didn’t cheat, what if Dr. Uchiha thought she cheated in her faculty years, too?” Sakura tells him.
“You can’t speak to your residents that way, Sasuke. They expect motivation and knowledge, c’mon,” Naruto lectures him, his scowl deep between his brows. He’s speaking big words, the lesson he pulls out every time Sasuke ever so slightly gets a little rough on his residents. By all means, it goes right over his head.
“They’re mine, and since nobody expects me to treat them nice, I don’t have to,” he replies, closing his eyes again, “It’s my job to train them. They could be chasing anyone else’s tail, but they’re behind mine. Surely it isn’t because I’m known for patting backs.”
“They expect you to correct them and set them about the right path, not humiliate them,” Sakura retorts.
“Treat them nice,” Sasuke repeats, “That’s just a prettier way of saying it.”
Sasuke doesn’t feel the need to explain himself, but he interrupts his friends adding; “Look,” he starts, gesturing for them to let him talk, “If any of you thought that was harsh, they’re not passing this. The emergency is like that. You had your way up in surgery, Sakura. And you, Naruto, showed them the hard work that is internal medicine. But they were handled to me in ER, where I work, and I can’t have a girl getting the Wallace wrong because she’ll give the wrong amount of fluids to a patient that needs accuracy. If they can’t have speed and precision, their patients will be gone for good. They won’t get to internal and they won’t get to surgery. They’ll be dead.”
He raises to Sakura’s unimpressed stare, her stance open, not even her lips pursed or tightened. She looks exactly like when she’s performing. Concentrated emerald eyes, not a single tic, not tongue-peeking; her face remains as sternness as ever. He doesn’t look at Naruto.
“Let her cry if she needs to. But I expect her to dry her face, and come back to me to get her job done right.”
———
The rain is a light feeling over his shoulders before Naruto shelters him under his bright orange umbrella. “Hey, you didn’t wait for me,” the blond says.
Sasuke got the fight out of him after a full day, a burning building with several injured, two car accidents, one involving a bus full of children that were brought to his wing featuring different degrees of wailing their little pulmonary system out. “I guess I’m tired,” he shrugs, slowing his stride to match Naruto’s.
A gentle mantle of white noise embraces them during long minutes. The rain pours around them, the parking lot sizzles with the indistinct sounds of life hurrying away from the rain, the pitter-patter of the water as it splashes the cars. To his right, his periphery sight catches a woman and a kid running, and he recognizes the small boy as one from the bus accident. He didn’t need anything, just was scared beyond relief, and her mom kept pestering Sasuke until he double checked his son.
He doesn’t know why he feels like saying such, but he hears himself mentioning it to Naruto in a hushed tone, one he instinctively thinks it’s right for just two under an umbrella. Naruto glances at the pair and smiles when Sasuke yawns midway in his chatting. Strangely, he doesn’t add anything except from the occasional affirmative humming that lets his friend know he’s listening.
When they reach Naruto’s car, he waits for Sasuke to open the copilot door before rushing to the driver side. Inside, the air is dry and lukewarm, but growing cold as the temperature lowers outside. Naruto starts the car and drives them out of the parking lot, into the awakening nocturnal city.
He rests his head against the window, taking in nothing and all at once that happens in the streets, cars speeding past them, people walking, shops closing. The exhaustion that clings to his bones makes his consciousness float adrift between one avenue and the other; that, and the times he looks at Naruto’s profile while he’s driving (a gold, then red, then blue hue dancing in his skin, it’s a rinse and repeat when they pass each streetlight, hypnotizing notwithstanding) are enough distraction for him to belatedly notice they’ve reach his street, and the familiar silhouettes of the mass constructed houses pass before his vision. Naruto stops at one with the turf slightly out of control. Sasuke then remembers, for the umpteenth time, that he needs to call the gardener. He’s been telling that himself everytime he walks out of his door, and back again when he crosses that threshold at the end of a journey.
“—haven’t call the gardener,” Naruto is saying, and Sasuke shifts his weight until he’s more or less sitting properly, looking back at the blond. Naruto raises his brows in a silent inquiry.
“No, I haven’t,” Sasuke says, and in a spur of honesty, adds, “I keep forgetting it.”
“’Course you do,” Naruto mumbles, turning off the engine, “You got your head busy thinking of ways to torment residents.”
It’s a halfhearted joke, but Sasuke grimaces anyway. Naruto never says things he doesn’t quite mean. “About that, Naruto. You know that I‒”
“Call them names, see if I care, Sasuke,” Naruto talks over him, “But don’t think you’d get away saying you don’t mean each thing you say.”
He sighs. Something that makes Naruto especially difficult is his bluntness, with time he managed to stop throwing his commentary filled with emotions aimlessly, when it concerns Sasuke, particularly, he somehow knows what to say to strike in a sharp, full of accurate intent. It makes Sasuke remember the days he would scoff and shrug and barely sneer in the direction of Naruto’s general nonsense, but age gave him what was his to achieve, the right to put Sasuke in place. Maybe not a right per se, but he thinks it may be because of him that Naruto doesn’t ask, Naruto knows.
But Sasuke is too tired to deal with Naruto knowing why he says the things he says, knowing why he does the thing he does. He knows why he treats his residents like that and why he’s known among the other doctors for his cruel temperament, his small percentage of approbation. He knows why they call him a filter. Naruto knows why he pushes them and they better bend instead of break. He’s been having a killer headache pounding and rattling his brain for the ongoing six hours, not finding a single moment he could shoot himself a dose before a nurse would call for him. And he can’t deal with Naruto looking at him like he knows Sasuke from within, though he does.
Sasuke can’t afford letting him know that. You can take Naruto, Sakura had said. Fucking right I can, and then, what after that? He thinks. That’s why he didn’t dare to look at Naruto when his friends confronted him. He could have lost his footing there, his resolve, not too far to apologize, but enough to plant a seed of guilt. That’s the worst part of having a friend so assertive of him; Naruto’s words have a way to sneak past the foreground and crack at the back, where doubt and guilt rest inert, most times.
“They’re mine to take care of, Naruto,” Sasuke explains, “What’s a little push if not to make them learn how to walk.”
Naruto looks unimpressed. “You just want them to run away from you.”
“Yeah, that too,” Sasuke says, humorless. “I’ll leave the gardener a message, see if they can get around before I have to go back.”
The blond starts the car again. “What time you have to be back?”
“After breakfast,” Sasuke replies, stepping outside, “You?”
Naruto looks thoughtful for a moment. “Right after you. I’ll give you a ride.”
Sasuke closes the door, but Naruto rolls down the window, yelling: “Grow up, Sasuke! Tell them to improve instead of pulling at their pigtails.”
“You pulled mine, and look where it brought us,” Sasuke yells back.
“Bastard!”
“Come say it to my face, asshole!”
———
“There you go, Mr. Woods,” Sasuke says, cutting the end of the stitches, “Patched up, ready to mingle.”
“You got it right, kid,” Mr. Wood smiles, “You’ve been fixing me up more times than I like to remember.”
Sasuke rips a gauze strip and gently covers the cut, just as his glasses fall from his nose. Mr. Woods pushes them back up, and he nods his thanks. He’s sticking the gauze in place when he says, “That’s my job. And your job is leaving this dry and letting it heal on its own. No funny business.”
The man tilts his head. “You mean, can’t have fun with my girl tonight? That’s tough.”
The laugh makes Sasuke’s shoulders shake. “Tell her to get creative and not move you around, or you’ll get your second round here in my ER.”
“Now that’s something I wouldn’t like,” Mr. Woods makes a face, “Although, if that nurse of yours is involved—”
“Get a grip,” Sasuke lets the glasses fall to his chest. “Up you go, now. Before I sew your mouth shut.”
“I’ll spare that,” the man smiles easily. He jumps on a leg before carefully testing how much weight he can put on the injured one. “Thanks, Sasuke.”
He pats the man’s arm once. “Always. Get Hinata to give you a painkiller for the road, and don’t get in her nerves.”
Before Sasuke gets to his feet, though, Hinata comes to him, carrying charts. She switches her gaze between Sasuke and Mr. Woods. “These are for you, Dr. Uchiha.”
“So much a slow night they hand me from ESI-3? Jeez,” Sasuke huffs, “Where are my slaves?”
“Sasuke,” Hinata chides softly, “Dr. Yashiro is attending a patient with a cast, and Dr. Wakefield is over a CTA.”
“At least these aren’t stuck to the hip today,” he motions for Hinata to exchange the chart he has and the ones she’s holding. “Hinata, this is Mr. Woods, he’s ready to be discharged. Get to me to sign the forms off and give him something for the pain, meanwhile.”
“I’m Daniel Woods,” the man says, “Or anyone you want, really.”
Hinata blushes and mutters her own introduction, and Sasuke leaves them to it. That man could be a walking flirt but he was benign, if not a little weak for curves. He shakes his head, settling the charts over the nurses’ board. He’s flipping through them when Sakura crosses the open swing doors and brightens when her eyes find him. “Sasuke!”
He turns his head, looking over his eyeglasses. “Queen of the knife, why are you mingling with us peasants?”
She bows mockingly, granting a chuckle from Sasuke. “I’m searching for Konohamaru. He was supposed to assist me up there, but I closed up without him. Have you seen him?”
Sasuke feigns think it over. “Surgery resident, probably runs on redbull, little Naruto 2?” he widens his eyes, mimicking an innocent face, “Haven’t seen him up anyone’s ass today. Did you check yours?”
“For a peasant, you have a very disrespectful talk,” Sakura narrows her eyes, “His shift supposedly started twenty minutes ago, but he’s nowhere in sight.”
Sasuke returns to the sheet he was reading, replying absently: “Maybe Naruto knows. He was, I don’t know, going to eat with him? Or something like that.”
“He didn’t told me that,” then she sends Sasuke a knowing look. He sighs. “Oh, but he said it to you so you wouldn’t wait for him to get breakfast together. That’s a nice gesture.”
“You want me to read too closely into that, I won’t,” Sasuke says, closing the file, “If he passes by, I’ll let him know you were looking for him.”
“Better tell him to hide, I’m wasting my time on him.”
“Get back to your castle,” he says over his shoulder, walking towards one of the beds in the ingress’ wing, hid by a curtain. He folds it and announces, “Good morning. You must be Mr. and Mrs. Velarde, did I get it right?”
A man standing by the woman’s right side startles to his voice. “Yes, yes. That’s how it’s pronounced. And you are…?”
“Dr. Uchiha, glad to meet you,” he shakes the man’s hand, and surveys the woman, “I’m the one who’s going to be seeing you. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“This morning I threw up twice,” the woman says, “I’ve been dizzy and having nausea since then.”
“She’s been having stomach ache all week, too,” the man adds, sounding reproachful. “Told me a little rest was all she needed, but today she woke up feeling worse and—”
“It’s okay,” Sasuke reassures them, “We’ll find out what’s happening, Mrs. Velarde. Now, you’re going to be still for me for a moment, yeah?” He approaches, gloving his hands with a pair tucked inside his scrubs’ bottom pocket, as well as a tongue depressor from the higher one. Mrs. Velarde holds her breath. “Open your mouth and flatten your tongue as much as you can.”
He bends to look closer, and a beat passes before he discards the palette. He gingerly touches the woman’s face, no movements wasted, descends her right lower eyelid, searches for any innocuous-looking haematoma. “Do you feel shortness of breath? Did you had fatigue when coming here? In the week?” Sasuke questions.
Mrs. Velarde nods shortly. “Yeah, I get tired after doing chores, even if it’s just a couple of hours.”
“I see,” he says at least. He puts on his stethoscope and cruises through the woman’s chest and upper abdomen for a brief moment. Then he pushes the sheets over her out of the way, settling it lower, in her belly. “I’m going to touch your abdomen, you’ll tell me when or if it hurts, okay?”
She nods again and remains quiet until she takes a sharp intake of air, her face scrunching in the obvious sign of pain. “There, it hurts there.”
Sasuke steps back, taking the chart he brought with him and writing a few things down. “We’ll give you something for the nausea, and shortly there’ll be someone to draw blood for a few tests. I’ll ask for an ultrasound, just to see closer at the source of the pain. I’ll get back to you once I have the results, meanwhile you ought to rest.”
“Okay, Dr. Uchiha,” Mrs. Velarde accepts, “Thank you.”
He tilts his head. “My pleasure, ma’am,” Sasuke closes the curtain behind him, coming to a bleary-eyed Ino, who’s looking sightlessly at nothing, her head supported by her hand. He begins, “You look like shit.”
Ino chuckles, but her reaction lacks her usual energy. She looks brittle and slightly worn out. “Not even our personal Jesus can look good after a forty-eight-hour shift.”
Sasuke doesn’t raise to the bat. “Bed six needs ultrasound, hepatic profile and blood panel. She got yellowing in the sclera and has pain in right hypochondrium, if I were to guess, it’d be hepatitis,” he explains, giving Ino the chart, “She’s—”
“Dr. Uchiha!”
He turns around. Dr. Yashiro his gloving herself up, as is Dr. Wakefield. He instinctively reaches out for any gloves’ box near. “What’s up?”
“Ambulance’s on its way, car accident, only one with major injuries,” Dr. Wakefield, James, Sasuke remembers, says.
“ETA?” He asks, rounding the nurse’s station and rushing towards the entry of emergency.
“Any moment now, it happened near,” James says.
James’ words are out at the exact moment they’re through the bay doors and the ambulance arrives, its tires screeching. Its doors open and it reveals a body with its neck wrapped tightly in a collar, its forehead covered with a band attached to a head immobilizer. The rescuer pushes a table in Sasuke’s hands.
“Twenty-four year old, involved in car accident. Multiple neck lacerations, EBL 600cc, major impact in head, he’s out as in the last five minutes.”
“What’s his name?” Sasuke looks down at the table and his eyes fall on the boy. Immediately, he widens them. “Konohamaru—”
“Konohamaru Sarutobi,” the rescuer says, his tone grave.
Sasuke finds himself at a loss for an excruciating second. “C’mon. He’s one of us,” he commands, frowning. He gazes to his right, towards Dr. Yoshiro, “Page Sakura. Tell her we know where Konohamaru is.”
“Only one arriving?” Sasuke reverts his attention towards the rescuer, “Was he the only one?”
“Yes, only him.”
The only thought that slides in his mind before he focuses completely on Konohamaru, as they drag the gurney towards trauma center, is: Naruto, where are you?