162 CH_5.19 (162)

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In a hospital staff room, Ai worked on a report that needed to be submitted the next day. Her day had started at seven in the morning, and she was in the hospital for her classes by eight. She looked up at the clock, which was about to turn eleven. She sighed, knowing it would already be midnight by the time she tucked herself in bed.

It had been a couple of months since she had joined the Medical Corp after passing her exams and had started her training under Taro's father, Dr. Oishi. Her days began with classes from eight until one in the afternoon, after which she would get a half an hour's worth of break before she had to volunteer in the public clinic until three— she couldn't do much, but Dr. Oishi had told her to volunteer a set number of hours every week, so she did whatever the clinic had for her.

Then, her apprenticeship under Dr. Oishi started, and she tried to heal fish for three hours before Dr. Oishi left at six in the evening. After that, Ai would practice for another hour before going home—but today, she was feeling tired and knew that if she returned home, she would fall asleep, but that wasn't an option as she had a report to turn in first thing in the morning. So, here she was, working on her report in the hospital.

Her only reprieve was that tomorrow was a Saturday, and she only had her morning classes, leaving the rest of her day free. She completed her report and packed up to leave, but as she walked through a hallway, the double doors on the end pushed open, and a stretcher unit with nurses and night-shift doctors rushed.

She immediately hugged the wall to clear the way for them.

The person on the stretcher was wet from head to toe with so many wounds that he looked like he had been bathed in blood. The sight was so horrifying that Ai couldn't move her eyes away from it despite the sheer discomfort and shock, and dreadfulness she felt

As they rushed past her, Ai wondered what sort of incident the person had been to be in such a condition because, from the direction the nurses and doctors were heading towards, they were going for an emergency surgery.

Even though she was now stationed in a hospital that dealt with many shinobi cases and had been a shinobi for a few years, Ai wasn't used to the amount of blood and gore she had just seen, so the scene remained in her mind.

Ai stopped in the middle of the hallway.

It would be too busy during the morning, but at night, it was completely opposite. So, Ai was alone in the hallway with her thoughts—which were suddenly focused on the second of time when her eyes followed the patient's face.

It couldn't be, she thought.

Ai turned back to the double doorways on the other end of the hallway. Hesitantly at the start, she walked towards them. She reached the part of the hospital that had the surgical suites, and the electronic board showed that only one of them was in use.

More people rushed past her towards the surgery suite.

Her heart began to beat faster as she followed after them with a brisk walk, stopping herself from breaking into a run.

She must've made a mistake, Ai told herself. Her mind was playing tricks.

Nenro and Masaaki, her roommates, had told her much about their mission with him. She was horrified when she found out they had faced an experienced chunin and infinitely relieved that they had survived the ordeal without any deaths.

Ai reached the surgical suite, and the iryo-nin and nurses were already in surgery, and she could only peek through the glass of the door. Four iryo-nin sat in the designated places around the large fuinjutsu inscribed on the floor, which focused their iryojutsu on the patient in the middle who was currently being prepared.

She couldn't see the patient's door from the glass, but the worry in her heart made it so she had to resolve the knot. Ai then remembered that the patient's belongings, which would contaminate the sterile room, be dumped outside

Ai quietly walked into a side preparation room where a set of bloody clothes, ruined chain mail, scuffed shinobi boots, and weapons pouches sat on a table. Just seeing the gear only a shinobi would wear made Ai hurry up.

She dug through the belongings and found a soiled Police Force armband, which made her sift through the stuff with panic until she found a wallet. She almost ripped it apart as she opened it to find what she feared.

In her hands was a shinobi identity card with Takuma's face on it.

The horribly injured patient was her close friend.

What had happened? Who had done this to him? A hundred questions passed through her mind.

She rubbed a drop of blood over Takuma's picture and ended up smearing a blood stain over his face. She clutched the card and wallet in her tightening grip. Her feet absolutely took her to the surgery suite's door, and she stared through the glass. In the room, Takuma's body was covered in a translucent glowing green as his unconscious body lay limp on the ground.

She couldn't hear what the iryo-nin and nurses were saying, but words were being exchanged, and everyone had tense expressions on their faces. And four iryo-nin charging the fuinjutsu seal itself showed how critical the situation was. The fuinjutsu seal was only used in most critical situations when the patient was in immediate danger of death—and even then, in most cases, only two iryo-nin joined to operate the seal—but Takuma's condition demanded four iryo-nin.

And all she could do was stand on the outside and do nothing.

'I have to do something,' she thought as she stepped away from the door and ran to a reception area on the floor to make some calls.

The first call she made was to her teacher.

"Hello. Mrs. Oichi? It's Ai speaking. Yes, sorry to call you so late. Can I talk to Dr. Oichi? Please, it's urgent," Ai said, anxiousness dripping in her voice. "Yes, Dr. Oichi. I-It's Takuma—I-I was in the hospital when they brought him in. He has horrible injuries all over his body. They took him into surgery as soon as they brought him in. They're using the fuinjutsu seal with four iryo-nin. I-If you could come in, please."

On the other side of the call, Taro's dad tried to calm her down.

"No, no, I don't know what happened to him. I don't know if he was on a mission, but he could've been on a raid for the Police Force. B-But he wasn't wearing his shinobi uniform. I-I…" Ai paused before nodding, "Yes, please come soon. Thank you…."

Ai ended the call, and after taking a deep breath, she dialed one more number.

The phone rang four times before the other side picked.

"Ms. Kano? Ai this side, Takuma's friend. We met once last year; Takuma introduced us. I wanted to talk to a kunoichi iryo-nin—yes, that was me…. Takuma just came to the hospital, extremely injured as though he had been in a fight," Ai told Uchiha Kano, Takuma's supervising officer in the Police Force, what she had said to Taro's dad.

Takuma had introduced them last year when Ai wanted to talk to a kunoichi iryo-nin to know what it was like to be a female iryo-nin. They had met for lunch and had a discussion, which had cleared up a lot of things for Ai.

"No, he was brought in alone," said Ai. "Yes, I will be waiting for you."

Ai set the receiver down and leaned against the counter. Her eyes were squinted close, and her brows joined together. There was another kunoichi iryo-nin Takuma had talked about, but that went nowhere. Ai tried to recall if Takuma had told her anything but realized she knew nothing about Takuma's other iryo-nin friend, whom he considered to be his personal doctor.

"Shit!"

She was new in iryojutsu training, but she knew that the iryo-nin operating the fuinjutsu seal would eventually tire and could potentially need other iryo-nin to replace them. It was night, and the hospital wasn't operating at full capacity, but she also knew that the hospital would arrange another iryo-nin and that she didn't need to do anything—but the patient was her close friend, and she would do anything in her power to help.

So she called the two chunin iryo-nin she knew who would come to the hospital in the middle of the night. Taro was close to Takuma as she was, so his dad would come—and Ai knew Kano would come if she told the Uchiha that there was no one with Takuma, meaning he wasn't on a mission—and from the picture Nenro had painted for her, Takuma was in an important position in the Police Force.

Finally, Ai picked up and called home. Nenro picked up, and Ai told him everything about Takuma. Nenro then told her and Masaaki were coming to the hospital.

Even though it had been less than fifteen minutes since she had seen Takuma being pushed past her, Ai felt it had been hours. She felt absolutely exhausted and wanted to sit down, but her anxiousness made her pace along a hallway.

Barely ten minutes had passed when the doors on the other side of the hallway (opposite the doors to the surgical suites) opened. Ai looked up, hoping it was someone she had called, only to see an old man enter the hallway.

Ai sighed and leaned against a wall.

The old man stopped in front of her. "Young lady, is your name Ai?" he asked.

Ai looked at the old man in surprise. He wore a navy blue samue (Japanese loungewear) and wore geta sandals that clicked loudly against the marble floor.

"Who is asking?" asked Ai, suspicious.

"My apologies. My name is Maruboshi Kosuke. Your friend Nenro called me a few minutes ago to tell me that my student Takuma was admitted to this hospital. I came as soon as possible. May I ask how he is," said Maruboshi.

"I… I don't know, he is in surgery," said Ai and told him the same she had told everyone else.

She had called Nenro at last, who in turn called Maruboshi, but the old man was the first to arrive. Ai knew of Maruboshi. Takuma talked a lot about him, and his words were always full of praise. She could tell that Takuma held Maruboshi in high esteem.

"I see," Maruboshi looked towards the doors that led to the surgical suite. "You looked tired, young lady. Would you like to go home and rest? I will be here in case anything needs to be done."

"No, it's okay, I will stay," said Ai.

"Very well. Then let me go make some calls," Maruboshi said with a comforting smile.

———

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The surgery lasted a full thirteen hours, during which Takuma came close to death multiple times as teams of iryo-nin worked hard to keep his broken body stable through extensive iryojutsu. As Takuma's friends came to know about it later, Takuma's heart had stopped by the time he was brought into the hospital, and it was a miracle that he was resuscitated.

He had lost too much blood, his body was in a horrible state, and his chakra reserves were low, which crashed his body's natural ability to keep itself alive.

The iryo-nin who had started operating on Takuma could not improve his condition and could barely keep him alive in his fragile state. When Dr. Oishi and Uchiha Kano showed up, they couldn't immediately help due to Takuma's fragile state and had to get familiar with Takuma's condition. Dr. Oishi was added to the second team when the first team couldn't continue, but Uchiha Kano was refused outright as her expertise lay in fieldwork and her inexperience with the fuinjutsu seals used in the complicated operations.

Takuma's condition didn't improve for the first two hours; instead, it began to deteriorate. For a moment, it seemed that Takuma wouldn't make it out of the surgery alive.

It was then two jonin iryo-nin came into the picture, especially invited by Maruboshi, who then took over Takuma's operation at the three-hour mark. Dr. Oishi joined them, marking a turning point in the operation.

While Takuma's condition remained unstable for the next several hours, the highly experienced and skilled jonin began to piece his body together one piece at a time. The problem lay within the organs which were "butchered" during the fight.

Sometime during the night, Takuma's friends were told that an assassination attempt was the reason behind Takuma's condition. Kano reassured them that the entire Police Force's resources would be devoted to finding who targeted Takuma as the Police Force didn't take aggressions against their officers lightly.

However, by the time Takuma's thirteen-hour operation ended with Takuma finally stabilized enough to survive without the constant treatment by iryo-nin—the situation outside had changed drastically without anyone knowing.

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