Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Soup's On	By : OfFansAndFlames Category: Naruto AU/AR > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1793 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of the characters mentioned. I make no money on this fiction.

Chapter List
- 27
- 28
- 29
"Dr. Hutchinson, report to the ER. Dr. Hutchinson, to the ER."
A calm voice echoed through the hospital's main waiting room over the PA system. The seats were tolerable, thin padding separating Sasuke's tailbone from the hard wood seats. Regardless, his spine and neck had begun to ache, sensitized by his illness. The walls were a stark white, which bore into Sasuke's fever-plagued brain and caused him to knead at the bridge of his nose. The room was laden with the scent of hospital-grade disinfectant, which had begun to sting Sasuke's nostrils as the hours passed. The door was closed, but the window to the hallway showed nurses pacing briskly from time to time.
Prior to this, Sasuke had sat in the ER waiting room, rigid and with perfect posture, for nearly three hours. At times, it was difficult to comprehend how three hours could last so long. Other times, the minute hand seemed to leap without warning. As dawn approached, the soft glow of the concealed sun dimly wafted through the windows. His face was expressionless, and for all the room's other occupants knew, he could've been there for a sprain.
He had recently returned to the hospital's main waiting room. He had yet to get a clear answer regarding his brother's prospects from anyone. He remembered this place, this hospital... It had not been the fondest memory. His mind ran over the same questions incessantly, none of which he could answer. Therefore, he muted all thought, simply waiting. Just as he resisted Naruto's touch, he could not give into his anxieties now.
His chest felt tight, and his breathing threatened to quicken. His hands began to sweat, and he was tempted to fiddle with the sleeve of his jacket. He calmed himself, counting each nurse that walked by the window over the hours. There had been 212. He had been in the hospital for 234 minutes. That meant 14,040 seconds, give or take a few he'd just used to do the calculations in his head. That meant that, on average, he saw a nurse every 67 seconds. This next nurse, however, came in 42, and the one before that had come in 34. This must be a busy time for the hospital. Why? Sasuke found that his breathing had returned to normal, and his pulse had normalized.
Finally, a woman approached Sasuke, her long blond hair falling upon her noticeably large breasts, and...were those high heeled shoes? What kind of hospital employee wore high heels to work? As preoccupied as he was, he found himself wondering if those enormous flesh bags on the woman's chest were even real. What a bimbo...
A pronounced tap elicited as the soles of her shoes hit the tile with each step. It took all of Sasuke's discipline to stay in his seat. He did his best to keep his body posture calm, waiting until the woman was several feet in front of him to stand and take several comfortable steps towards her.
"You're Sasuke, right? Uchiha Itachi's brother?"
Sasuke nodded, his voice slightly impatient.
"Yes, I am. When can I speak with the doctor? I've been here for four hours and haven't gotten any news."
The woman crossed her arms and cast a steely glare down at Sasuke. She wouldn't have ordinarily surpassed him in height, but those shoes gave her an unfair advantage.
"You will refer to me as Doctor Sannin."
Sasuke stared at the doctor in disbelief for a couple seconds. This was the person who had been trusted with Itachi's life? God, it would be a miracle if he was still alive.
"Whatever. What's his status?"
Brown eyes flashed with annoyance, the woman obviously practicing self-restraint. She hesitated, staring Sasuke up and down. Yes, Sasuke looked young. But he could handle the truth, whether the doctor realized this or not.
"Are your parents here?"
When would this woman get to the punch? The suspense was excruciating. Why was she biting her tongue? His thoughts fixated on the worst case scenario. Was she waiting to gather the family? Sasuke paused.
"No, they're on vacation."
He didn't want hospital workers or social workers interfering when he tried to go home. He didn't want them trying to "place" him, should anything happen to Itachi. Though they were bound to figure it out eventually, he'd save himself the hassle for now. He'd had his fill after his parents died, when social workers had tried to wrestle him out of Itachi's possession. Of course, his brother was sharp. They didn't get very far.
The doctor smiled at Sasuke, sighing before continuing. Sasuke's heart jumped up his throat. He dreaded hearing what was to come, yet he wanted to be put out of his misery.
"You saved your brother's life, Sasuke."
The teen stared back mutely. Itachi was alive. Barely?
"He could've died?"
The doctor nodded.
"Sasuke, if you hadn't found him, he would've been dead by morning. Thanks to your vigilance, his prospects are much brighter."
Sasuke already knew that the situation had been very dire, but he had just been whacked over the head with the fact. For several seconds, Sasuke's brain had ceased function. He searched for words, shock temporarily paralyzing him. He couldn't process this. He had come so incredibly close. "He would've been dead by morning." It stuck between his ears, refusing to be erased.
"So...is he going to be okay?" Sasuke asked vulnerably and quietly, his voice hoarse.
At Sasuke's tone, Dr. Sannin's austere features began to soften. She nodded, continuing, "The worst is over now. He was acutely dehydrated, and the vomiting had irritated his tumor and tore through some of the stomach lining. That's why he was bleeding. The bleeding, the fever, and the dehydration combined are what caused him to pass out. Now that he's receiving fluids, and we've stopped the vomiting, his condition is stable."
Sasuke nodded silently, accepting what the woman said. He felt so little yet so much all at once. The words smarted, but they hadn't sunk in.
"What do we do from here?"
The doctor now established direct eye contact, sternly gazing at him.
"He needs to get that tumor removed. It was bad luck that your brother got such a horrible bug now. It's damaged the surrounding tissue, so the area's very swollen and inflamed."
Sasuke sighed, his eyes averting. If the staff hadn't been aware of their financial situation, he sure as hell didn't want to educate them. The woman seemed to read Sasuke's thoughts.
"We're aware that there's a billing issue, but given the urgency of the situation, we'll proceed regardless. Since most of Itachi's weakness is due to dehydration and his elevated body temperature rather than tumor growth, we're going to wait for him to strengthen before the surgery. We should be able to operate within the next one to two weeks."
Despite all of the stress, Sasuke was relieved. Finally, Itachi would get that surgery he'd been so desperately needing. Finally, the hospitals were taking it seriously. He never seemed to know Itachi's state. He kept it from Sasuke, and he wouldn't let him in the damned room when he was at his worst. But now that he was being monitored by the hospital... Hopefully something like this wouldn't happen again.
"What's his prognosis post-surgery?"
Sasuke was quickly coming into his own, shock subsiding. He was once again composed, or at least doing a damned good impression of such. He didn't know when he'd be able to speak to one of Itachi's doctors next, so he'd cover his questions now. Now was no time for stunned silence.
"Even with the extra damage to his organ, his prospects are pretty bright, as the tumor is benign and can be separated from his organs without much repair required. As with any surgery, there are risks. The surgery will thus lean towards the conservative end, so it will be relatively safe. However, it's almost certain that Itachi will need a follow up operation."
Sasuke nodded slowly.
"What are the risks? What's the probability?"
A frown.
"I'd say that the possibility of Itachi having no complications from the surgery are pretty high. But there are risks of permanent organ damage, hemorrhaging, or in a very unlikely scenario, death."
He knew this, he supposed. And as optimistic as the doctor sounded, hearing those words was painful.
"Can I have some numbers? You said it's likely that Itachi won't have any complications, but what percent would you put on that? What about... You know... Survival? How likely is that?"
Some compassion had worked its way onto the doctor's face, and she had slowly gone from stern to empathetic. Sasuke was scared. Perhaps she could tell.
"Sasuke, this is a complicated situation, and there are a lot of variables. It's difficult to put a number on this."
Ebony brows knit. What did "likely" mean? Sixty percent? Ninety percent? Likely, high possibility, bright prospects... These words were vague and substanceless, and they left far too much up to the imagination. Sasuke knew that his mind would gravitate towards the pessimistic. It was something he realized and attempted to correct, but persistence could only go so far. He needed to understand, to know exactly what he was dealing with.
"I know, but... Ballpark?"
He wouldn't beg. He'd never descend to that level, and he didn't sound overly troubled. However, those that knew Sasuke the best might have noticed the smallest hint of desperation in his voice.
"I suppose..." The woman sighed, sounding a little exasperated but still engaged. She continued, "I suppose, given the size of the tumor, the organs it's attached to, and Itachi's age... I'd give him a seventy percent chance of a surgery completely without complications. I'd give him a ninety percent chance of recovering."
There was no secret as to what the alternative to a recovery was. However, Sasuke remembered that when Itachi had first told Sasuke about the tumor, he had stated that the probability of surviving the surgeries was in the nineties. He was relieved at least to hear that these figures hadn't changed much.
The doctor extended him a business card, displaying a picture of her looking particularly proud. "Dr. Tsunade Sannin" the card read, in clear font and raised black ink. It was set upon a white background with the hospital's logo.
"Here, have my card. If you or your parents have any questions, call me."
Sasuke found that he had little else to say.
"He should be waking up now. Would you like to see him?"
Sasuke nodded before Tsunade had even finished her sentence, causing her to smile back warmly.
"They've moved him to room 427. Take those elevators. But be warned, he's a little..."
Sasuke turned towards the elevators, wasting no time. Finally, Itachi would be back in his sight. He worried that he might never get to see Itachi again, might never be able to speak a single word to him. He had to see him now, feeling as though his brother might vanish should he delay.
"You're welcome," Tsunade called after him, tsk'ing under her breath.
"Yeah, thanks," Sasuke answered obligatorily. If Tsunade was on Itachi's treatment team, Sasuke should probably keep things civil with her. Still, his mind was somewhere else.
On the way up, two wheelchairs and one elderly woman slowly entered and exited the elevator. After what seemed like forever, he reached his floor. He moved briskly down the halls, his mind returning to all the wrong places. Although his father had been kept on a different floor, the floor and the nurse's station had the exact same layout. All of the uniforms were the same, and they even used the same disinfectant. As pleased as he was that Itachi was on the mend, he couldn't stop the barrage of memories flooding his mind. He hadn't been to the hospital since that day, and unfortunately, it didn't look much different.
The hospital staff had warned him that he would not look like the father Sasuke once knew. His flesh would be burned, and his mind would be dulled by painkillers. They had tried to get Sasuke to sit down, to give him a glass of water before entering.
But Sasuke had known that time was precious. He would allow nothing to delay him from seeing his father. He promptly traversed the hospital halls alongside a sympathetic nurse. Just a couple months past fourteen, the boy believed that he could handle whatever waited in his father's hospital room. What he saw that day would be the subject of his nightmares for months, and probably for the rest of his life.
No one else, other than the hospital workers, saw his father before he died - not even Itachi. There was no one he could discuss it with, and he had never spoken of it, even with his therapist. The staff had told him that his father's health was on the brink, between life and death. The same had been true for Itachi. Sasuke supposed that these sorts of things could go either way. Today, he was serendipitously much luckier than he had been one year ago. His father had died, while Itachi had lived. But would he recover? That was another question entirely.
He heard the machines before he even entered. The floor was made of hardwood, and a drawn window sat directly above Itachi's head. Though the room smelled of hospitals and illness, Sasuke was pleased to see that Itachi looked much better than he had in the ambulance. His head was elevated slightly, leaning haphazardly to the right. It lifted ever so slightly when Itachi noticed Sasuke in the room.
Some color had returned to his cleaned face, though he was surrounded by a sea of beeping machines and winding tubes. His oxygen tubes snaked from his septum, across his lean chest, and up into the wall, twisting with several tubes connecting to Itachi's veins. Itachi's morphine pump hissed every several minutes as it mercifully dulled Itachi's pain with a few cc's of medicine. Itachi's eyes, half lidded, dragged over to Sasuke's face. A slight smile graced badly chapped lips.
"What's this I heard about my little brother saving my life?"
Sasuke was now able to smile for the first time tonight. It was wide and was born without Sasuke's permission. The sky was a bluish pink, the sun edging closer to the horizon by the minute.
"Good morning, asshole. You scared the shit out of me."
Itachi smiled as tears began to fall down his cheeks shamelessly.
"Sasuke, I'm so sorry..."
Sasuke shook his head quickly. Shit, he hadn't actually expected Itachi to take him seriously. Wasn't this their typical dynamic? Sasuke suspected that this was the effect of the morphine. He could tell from the instant Itachi opened his eyes that he was quite drugged. This was probably for the best.
"Relax, I'm teasing. I'm just glad you're okay."
But Itachi continued, "S'suke, you smell like...rotten pizza and cat piss. What's wrong with your shirt? How'd it get so dirty?"
Sasuke sighed, eyeing him sarcastically, "Yes, I wonder."
"But it was your favorite shirt..." Itachi slurred. "That day at the beach, when Dad wouldn't let you have a hamburger, so I bought you... I don't understand."
Sasuke blinked.
"What don't you understand?"
"I don't understand...I am certain, or reasonably certain that I heard Kesha today. Why I would hear Kesha while I'm in a room with white coats? That doesn't make sense to me. It's a very big problem."
Sasuke couldn't help but chuckle under his breath, regardless of today's calamity. His brother, always so dignified and intelligent... This must've been what Tsunade had tried to warn him about.
"Why is it such a big problem?"
"Because..." Tears began to flow from Itachi's eyes again as his lower lip quivered. "Cuz I don't like Kesha! Why would they do this to me? I don't understand!"
Sasuke snorted, muffling a laugh and striving to look reassuring. Why would they have Kesha playing in such a situation, anyway? It struck the younger Uchiha as awfully unprofessional. Unless, of course, Itachi had imagined it. Or maybe it was someone's ringtone... Anyhow, enough of that.
"Easy, easy. No more Kesha for you." He wiped several of Itachi's tears away with his thumbs, very gingerly. "I'll make sure of it."
Itachi smiled wide, his eyes barely able to contain their gratitude. He reached out for Sasuke, wincing from the pain as his IV caught on the rail of his bed. Sasuke lightly grabbed his arm and placed it back down.
"Thank you, Sasuke. Thank you so much. You are the best brother I've ever had."
Sasuke raised his brows, responding flatly, "Itachi, I'm the only brother you've ever had. And stay still, or you'll hurt yourself."
"No no, I may not always agree with you, S'suke. Not always. But ya know what? I agree with you now. Really, I do wholeheartedly. There are only one of you, which is why you're so great. Imagine if there was two of you! Like an identical twin, or maybe a clone? ...Oh no."
Sasuke glanced over at the morphine pump skeptically.
"Christ. How much morphine do they have you on?"
"Not enough," Itachi replied dryly.
Sasuke couldn't help but snicker.
"S'suke... Sasuke, I'm sorry."
Sasuke shook his head.
"There's nothing to apologize about."
"No... Sasuke, you dun understand... They told me... The hospital told me I could have the surgery 'bout a couple weeks ago."
Sasuke was motionless, staring at his brother for several seconds.
"What?"
Itachi frowned, looking down.
"But they said I got more time, cuz my tumor was slowin' and all, not growing as fast as it had been for the past..."
"Itachi?"
Itachi was staring off at the wall now, analyzing it closely.
"Itachi, finish your thought."
Itachi squinted his eyes at Sasuke.
"What was I talking about?"
"You were saying that the hospital had offered to perform the operation a couple weeks ago, but the growth of your tumor had slowed. So..." Sasuke sighed with frustration, staring down at his lap. "So you passed it up."
Itachi frowned, the insides of his eyebrows raising.
"Tutoring was paying good... And I had extra time, so I wanted to get some money to live on, and for both of us to get by. I just...didn't know I was gonna get such a bad bug and react like this. It woulda been fine, S'suke."
Sasuke tried to curb his frustration. He'd risked his entire future to make sure that this operation had happened as soon as possible, and here Itachi was intentionally delaying it? Of course, Itachi had no way of knowing what Sasuke was up to. He was working at St. Magdalene's, after all.
He understood Itachi's reasoning. Itachi wouldn't be able to work for a while after his surgery, and while they might get some other sort of aid, it would most likely not be much. What would they live on then? Itachi needed another surgery, and there were also Sasuke's expenses and psychiatric care to consider. Yes, maybe Sasuke could raise some change, but how much was he really capable of at his age? Apparently much more than Itachi was aware of.
Maybe it was true. Maybe Itachi could've gone on for months if he'd not gotten so horribly sick. But Itachi had been taking risks with his life. The fact that they sat in this hospital room was proof of that. Itachi could've died, and for what? Financial security? Yet Itachi was in no place to endure the full extent of Sasuke's aggravation right now.
"Itachi..." Sasuke sighed again, rubbing the space between his eyebrows. "For being such a genius, you can be really fucking stupid sometimes."
"Mn... 'M supposed to be the one telling you that."
Sasuke rolled his eyes, mildly frustrated that Itachi was able to zing him regardless of how much morphine was running through his veins. He was angered by what he had learned, because he feared for his brother's life. He was concerned, and it seemed like in his case, nothing could piss him off so adeptly as concern. Itachi had told Sasuke that he believed that the tumor's growth had slowed, which had relieved Sasuke somewhat. Still, especially given how ill he'd been lately, he believed that Itachi was sugarcoating the truth. It certainly wouldn't be the first time Itachi had shut him out. He wondered if he would've ever even known these things if Itachi hadn't been so drugged at the moment.
"You could've died. Your life is more important than our standard of living. You need to tell me these things."
"I know. What was I thinking?!" Itachi's eyes widened, and Sasuke couldn't help but admit that it was endearing.
But then, tears were again falling down Itachi's cheeks. These, however, hurt Sasuke much worse.
"I'm sorry, Sasuke... I'm sorry... I didn't want you to worry, but instead I put you through hell. Please forgive me." Itachi winced in pain as his heart rate increased, clutching his stomach lightly. "I'm sorry..."
"Hush, 'Tachi." Sasuke leaned over, petting his sweat-sheened forehead lightly and slowly. "It's okay. We're going to be fine."
"Sorry... I'm sorry..."
"You can make it up to me."
Itachi stared back at Sasuke, dumbfounded.
"How could I ever make up for this?"
"After you get better, you're going to take me to the beach… And you're going to buy me a new shirt."
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Soup's On