Now turn away,
'Cause I'm awful just to see.
Baby, I'm just soggy from the chemo,
But counting down the days to goĦ
It just ain't living,
And I just hope you know:
That if you say (if you say)
Goodbye today (goodbye today)
I'd ask you to be true
('cuz I asked you to be true)
-
Cancer ran in the family; Sasuke remembered when his older brother had gotten it, remembered cutting off most of his hair and offering it to Itachi when all of Itachi's hair had fallen out. Their mother- Father had died of cancer long ago- had scolded him and sent him to his room. Itachi had snuck in and given him a hug. The next day, Itachi was too sick to get out of bed, and Sasuke wasn't allowed to go to the hospital with him.
Itachi was dead before Sasuke ever got to see him again, and Sasuke resented that. He'd spent his whole childhood trying to be strong, to be smart, to be healthy, so Itachi would be happy for him, but stupid fucking cancer had taken that all away. It hadn't been long before Mother had been diagnosed and sent through the same medley of cures and Itachi and Father. Not long after, she, too, departed. And Sasuke was left with a quickly depleting savings account and a room reserved in the hospital downtown.
The theory was that the family had gotten their genius from a great, great ancestor of Sasuke's who had been one of the first scientists to discover nuclear power and had helped build and test the first nuclear bomb. Said theory also explained away the family's seemingly hereditary cancer with a hereditary cell mutation caused by the great, great ancestor's work with uranium.
Sasuke was sixteen when a pain in his lower back finally got too bad for him to tolerate any longer, and he drug his sorry ass to the hospital where a room was still reserved for him. A few tests ascertained that it was indeed cancer and he would have to stay at the hospital in that stupid room that had been conveniently saved. Mocking him for the entirety of his life. The doctors drug him, cursing and hissing, to receive his chemo treatments. They stuffed him full of morphine until he was too sedated to fight them any more.
A year of chemo and dripping IVs passed in a blur for the last surviving Uchiha.
-
"Uchiha Sasuke," a resident with a flock of interns entered Sasuke's room. He rolled his head to glare at them. The resident flashed him a false smile before turning to his interns. "Cancer patient. He's been receiving chemo for the last year and recently signed on to be a tester for a new drug."
"Do you mean-" the resident nodded in response to the intern's unfinished question. The intern looked like she'd been strangled, or perhaps slapped. "But in the trials that drug-"
"His whole family has died from cancer," the resident explained, coming forward and clipping a new bag to the many hanging on the rack by Sasuke's bed. The interns watched as he found what must have been the last unoccupied vein in Sasuke's pale arm. The pale orange liquid tinted the vein brown and it became easily visible all the way up to where it disappeared into his shoulder. "He's the last one. I suppose he's desperate for a cure."
Funny, Sasuke thought, returning to staring at the shadows on the ceiling. I don't remember signing up for a new drug. The resident ushered his interns out the door. The one intern girl with the big, innocent foamy-green eyes spared Sasuke one last mournful look. He would have snarled at her, but decided it wasn't worth it.
"Oi!" a voice cut through the silence of his room, "Oi, sleepyhead! Pay attention to me!"
"What?" Sasuke croaked, voice hoarse from lack of use. He turned in bed to the extent of his abilities, peering around his room. "Who's there?"
"Me, teme!" the voice answered, "Here."
Sasuke turned to face the other side of the bed. There, leaning on the rails that lined his bed (to prevent him from falling out), was a grinning blonde in a flamboyant orange jump suit that reminded Sasuke of the nasty ones he'd had to wear that month he'd spent in juvie hall for something he hadn't done.
His eyes narrowed. "What do you want?" he rasped.
"To talk," the blonde laughed, "You're so dumb, Sasuke!"
"Am not!" Sasuke coughed, wishing he had the energy to punch the kid in the nose. The annoyance just laughed at him. Sasuke snarled, or rather, attempted to snarl. "Who the hell are you?"
"Uzumaki Naruto!" he chirped, sitting down in a chair that Sasuke really didn't remember being there before. "I came to visit you, 'cuz you seemed lonely."
"I'm not lonely," Sasuke hissed, glaring at Naruto as if expecting him to disappear at any moment, "And I never get visitors." Naruto flashed that toothy grin again.
"Now you do!" he informed the sickly teen. Sasuke rolled his eyes and groaned, missing his peace and quiet already.
His needled arm was starting to itch.
-
Weeks passed. One Uzumaki Naruto became a constant in one Uchiha Sasuke's life, appearing with the resident and his interns and leaving just before the night nurse came to tuck him in. Naruto was loud and annoying, and often Sasuke wanted to cover his ears and ignore him. Naruto was mysterious and intense, often having to be asked the same question multiple times before he gave a straight answer. He was a puzzle for Sasuke to solve. He was a ray of sunlight in Sasuke's fluorescent-light room on the fifth floor of the hospital downtown.
He was Sasuke's connection to the real world. He brought stories about all his friends from school, about the crazy things they did. Sasuke thought his teacher, Kakashi, was the most interesting and that Neji needed to get the stick in his ass surgically removed. He wondered at Kiba's audacity and the antisocial Shino that Kiba was always with. He hoped the anomaly Lee would never visit him and snickered at shy Hinata and her crush on oblivious Naruto, secretly happy that Naruto didn't notice.
Because Naruto was his. Only his. His to tease, his to question. His to look at and his to touch. He wanted to be the only person Naruto smiled for. It was greedy and selfish to feel that way, Sasuke knew, but he didn't care. He was dying, so what did it matter?
"Huh? What's this?" Naruto had managed to dig out a mini-planner from under the flimsy mattress of Sasuke's bed. He began flipping through it.
"Hey, give me that!" Sasuke demanded, attempting to snatch it away, but he was too slow, and what was once his dominant arm hurt like a bitch. Naruto stuck his tongue out Sasuke and continued examining the booklet.
Sasuke remembered Itachi had had a calendar hanging in his room, before the cancer got bad enough for him to be hospitalized. Sasuke had always wondered why Itachi was so deliberate about crossing off each day as it passed. He would mark it just after dinner, before he would tell Sasuke he was too tired to play or help him with homework. After Itachi went to the hospital, Sasuke continued to cross of days for his brother, hoping that Itachi would be thankful when he returned.
He'd stopped marking when he got to the month that was circled and Itachi died.
"Hey, how come this day's circled?" Naruto asked, showing Sasuke the page. Sasuke took it and squinted at the tiny numbers circled in red ink. He couldn't make out what they said. So he shrugged and tucked the thing behind his pillow.
"No clue," he sighed, "Stop being so nosy, dobe."
"Hey, I thought we agreed that you wouldn't call me that!" Naruto exclaimed, easily distracted. Sasuke smirked.
"I recall no such agreement," he stated. Naruto's jaw dropped.
"T-teme!" he screamed, "You liar!"
"Am not," Sasuke countered, "You're just imagining things."
Naruto calmed down, folding his arms and fixing Sasuke with a dirty look. "Or maybe the chemo's finally gotten to you."
Sasuke stiffened. Naruto stared him down until, eventually, he managed to croak out a "Leave, dobe," and he did. Moments later, as Sasuke was just relaxing, a nurse burst in. Sasuke looked at her while she checked all his vitals and pressed a button on a machine. An annoying noise that Sasuke hadn't noticed before turned off.
"What happened, Uchiha-san?" she asked, checking the bags of liquid hanging by his bed, making sure none of the tubes were tangled, "Your heart rate spiked all of a sudden."
"Nothing," Sasuke muttered, looking away, "Just the dobe."
"Dobe?" she parroted, finished checking. She looked like she wanted to pester Sasuke with more questions, but he turned away. It was that annoying doe-eyed intern from before. Her heels clicked on the tile flooring as she left.
-
Naruto exuberated warmth. No matter how annoying he was. No matter how prying or how loud. He was infectious. No matter how pissed off Sasuke got at the blonde, he was always happy to see him again the next day.
Great; just what Sasuke needed. Another disease. This one, however, was called love. It was what made him sick at night when he crossed off another day on his planner and his arm hurt to hell and back, reminding him that he was dying, not living. Because he wanted to live, because Naruto wouldn't follow him to heaven, or hell, or wherever the fuck he went when he died. It was what made him scream when the chemo finally started taking his hair from him.
Naruto brought him an orange hat and he hated the color, but wore it religiously, anyways.
The nurse brought him a black and blue bandanna for his bald head, and he really liked the colors better than the orange thing he was wearing, but he declined.
"I already have a hat," he told her.
"What?" she asked, confused, "Uchiha-san, I think you're mistaken-"
"No, this orange thing on my head is supposed to be a hat," he said, "Naruto got it for me, and I'm not going to wear anything else."
"Uchiha-san," she began.
"No," he reminded her sternly, "I won't wear that bandanna."
Giving him a look like he was crazy, she nodded yes and left. Slightly unnerved, Sasuke reached up to feel the orange hat. He found the worn-down bill of it and ran his fingers over it. Of course it was really there. The nurse was just stupid, or perhaps stupefied by the sheer color of it.
She was the crazy one.
-
"Ino," Sakura whispered, peering at her patient through the glass. Ino made a sound of acknowledgement. Sakura drew her scrubs closer around her slim frame. "I think my patient has gone insane."
"Figures," Ino snorted, "I always knew you would drive someone crazy someday."
"No, Ino," Sakura pleaded, "I'm serious-"
"What?" Ino huffed, slapping down the scalpel she had been cleaning. She fixed Sakura with a look. "Did he forget poor widle Sakuwa-chan's name? Get over it. You can't save everyone, and not everyone is gunna care that you tried."
"Ino," Sakura insisted, drawing her wits closer than her scrubs. "I'm being serious. Look at him."
"Tch," Ino ignored her, picking up the scalpel again. Clean instruments were a necessity. Sakura was just being her usual, obnoxious, self.
"Ino, please- I'm not kidding!"
"Fine!" the blonde conceded at last. She turned to glare into Sakura's patient's room, scrutinizing the prone form on the bed. "Looks like a normal, bald, dieing cancer patient to me."
"He thinks he's wearing a hat!" Sakura told her, "I offered him a nice bandana I thought he would like, and he declined, claiming he already had an orange hat."
"It's just the morphine, then," Ino shrugged, "You should know that much morphine can make a person disillusioned."
"But this started long after he'd been on morphine! Really. It started a while after he was put on the tester drug. He started talking about some 'dobe' and a 'Naruto'. I think we need to take him off of the new drug, and soon!"
"Oh please, Sakura!" Ino rolled her eyes, moving on to the bloodied clamps with her antiseptic and rag. "If it's such a big deal, go whine about it to the resident. Stop wasting my time and go get us some coffee."
Sakura sighed, slumping in defeat. "All right, Ino. Do you want yours black or with sugar and cream?"
"Sugar but no cream," Ino replied, making a sound of annoyance at how difficult it was to clean inside the clamp. Sakura nodded and headed for the door. Before she had even turned the handle halfway, Sasuke moaned, shifting slightly. Both Ino's and Sakura's pagers went off. They looked at each other, then at Sasuke, who appeared to be on the edge of a seizure.
"Damnit, Sakura!" Ino exclaimed as they both bolted for the door to his room. Ino got to the door first and flung it open, but Sakura got to his bedside first. She checked all the wires and the bags for leakage. Ino was upon the monitors in a literal heartbeat.
"BP is dropping!" she announced, "He needs more liquids." She glanced at the pale boy. "God, he's sweating like crazy- I'll go get some ice to cool him off."
"Get the resident while you're at it!" Sakura shouted after her, fumbling around for a new bag of fluids to hang on the already-full rack. Difficulties arose when she searched for a vein, however. Every single fucking one was filled with something or other. A few even looked like they might have been infected. "What should I do?" she worried. If she pulled out the wrong one, she could kill him. If she didn't do anything, he would probably die, anyways.
Sasuke groaned and began convulsing. With no more time left to think, Sakura ripped out a random needle and held him still as she attempted to insert the new one. Ino flew in, followed by the resident and one of the other interns.
"Thank god!" Sakura gasped, "Somebody help me and hold him still-"
The resident was there in a second, pinning Sasuke's arm. He ordered the other two to keep the rest of him still while Sakura eased in the IV needle. Seconds later, Sasuke's jittering stopped. There was a collective, unuttered sigh of relief.
"What happened?" their resident demanded, annoyed. Sakura grimaced.
"Not entirely sure. One moment he was fine, the next his blood pressure was dropping like crazy and he was having seizures," she related, staring at her feet. The resident shook his head.
"At least he's stable-" No 'good job' for Sakura, because he just wasn't that kind of resident, "- but someone has to stay with him until he wakes up. No volunteers? Alright. Haruno, you'll stay. The rest of you, finish up and turn in for the night."
Defeated, Sakura slumped against the railing of Sasuke's bed, watching the rest of her company leave without looking back. She fancied she'd imagined Ino giving a glance over her shoulder, but wasn't about to fool herself into believing it. She looked over at Sasuke ruefully.
"Just you and me, then," she whispered, not sure what else to say.
-
The room felt different when Sasuke awoke. It was noon, but the resident and his herd hadn't stopped by to change out the stuff on the rack. Besides, today was supposed to be a chemo day. And why the hell was the chair on the wrong side of the bed and- damn, it was that crazy nurse again. She stirred, slowly blinking her way into awareness. She immediately noticed he was awake and smiled wanly.
"Uchiha-san," she breathed, reaching over the railing to grasp his hand. "You're finally awake!"
She sounded relieved. Sasuke didn't care, because he realized that his hand- his whole fucking arm- didn't hurt. For the first time in almost as long as he could remember, there wasn't a buzzing, dull throbbing, feeling-like-lead sensation in his right arm. He looked at it. A few of the excess tubes had been removed, replaced with little round band aides and a look of clean. The stained-brown vein had receded and all that was left was the faint web of veins that were always visible.
Before the nurse could say anything, or he could do anything to preemptively shut her up, the resident strode in. He gave all the machines and wires a quick but thorough once-over before addressing Sasuke.
"Three days ago you went into seizures," he informed Sasuke dispassionately, "During our efforts to stabilize your condition the needle for the experimental drug was removed and replaced with another IV drip. Since your condition has improved dramatically since the termination of the beta drug, we will not be putting you back on it. Our sincere apologies that it did not work, Uchiha-san."
Sasuke could hardly care. He wanted to see Naruto, and he couldn't see Naruto until the stupid doctor and his interns left. Then he would have Naruto to himself until the night shift nurse came in. It seemed like the resident was waiting for a response on Sasuke's part.
"Fine," he managed to get past the sand-paper of his throat. "Damn... thirsty..."
"I'll get you a drink," Crazy Nurse squeaked, scampering out. The resident nodded and left, taking his subordinates with him. Sasuke waited for Naruto to come, but the blonde didn't appear. He closed his eyes. Maybe Naruto was waiting for the crazy nurse to go away. That suited him just fine; he didn't like Crazy Nurse and it was only fit that Naruto wouldn't, either.
"Here," the nurse returned with a plastic cup of water. She helped Sasuke sit and clumsily swallow a large portion of it. "Are you sure you don't want that bandana?"
"Positive," Sasuke hissed. He'd had his water. Now he wanted Naruto. Shoo, Crazy Nurse.
"I'm glad you're all right now," she confided in him. Sasuke tried his best not to glare, he really did. In the end, she drew up one last weak smile for him and left. Sighing contentedly, Sasuke closed his eyes, waiting for Naruto to come in and call him rude names.
Before he knew it, the night shift nurse was in his room, helping him lie down again and pulling up the scratchy hospital-sheets around his chin.
-
Weeks later, the doctors admitted defeat. The crazy nurse with the doe-eyes pawed at her tears as her resident informed Sasuke he had two months left to live. Maybe less (which meant probably less). Did he want to keep trying, or would he rather leave and spend his last months outside the white-washed walls and fluorescent-light rooms of the hospital?
Yes, yes he wanted to get out, Sasuke snarled, which came out as more of an angry stage-whisper.
A few days of lamenting the absence of Naruto later and Sasuke found himself on the curb in front of the hospital, unsure of what to do with himself. It was too bright, too unlike fluorescent lights and Naruto-sunshine. It was too noisy, not like constantly blipping machines and obnoxious Narutos. It wasn't the outside he remembered.
Somehow, Sasuke managed to stumble his way into a taxi and forcibly dredge up his old address. The old house seemed even larger than he remembered it being, after having lived in a cramped hospital room for around a year. Bitterly, Sasuke trudged up the stairs to his old room, ignoring the calendar still hanging in Itachi's, month circled in dark red. It was almost like a still-life; Sasuke's old toys were still strewn on the floor, and Mother's room was safely shut to prying eyes, because if Sasuke knew his family, he knew that his mother's soul would still be lamenting their family's 'curse' in her room, drowning herself in tears.
Frustrated, Sasuke staggered into his room and flopped on the bed, reaching up for the millionth time to feel the ugly orange rag Naruto had given him for a hat, but finding nothing but his ridiculously bald head. He hadn't been able to find the planner with the little red circles and the careful Xs counting down the days 'till the circled date.
It was like everything had suddenly disappeared. And if there was ever a time when he really, and I mean really, needed something to distract himself from the dark recesses of his mind, it was now. But there was nothing. Everything he had known was gone, and he was stuck back in the wispy dream-land of his youth.
God, he missed Naruto. Missed the way the blond beamed when he grinned. The way he got angered so easily- all it took was the right word. And, god, it was delicious how livid he would get. Sasuke missed that kind of vivacity dearly. It was a form of life that he had never seen before- the cancer and the chemotherapy had always dragged his family down, like soggy paper-dolls in the downpour.
And Sasuke felt soggy. He felt all washed up, because without Naruto there was no life in him left. There was nothing to annoy him, nothing to humor him, nothing to intrigue him and nothing to make him care. All that was left was a slowly deepening pain in his lower back spreading itself out across his body.
How long 'til the morphine was squandered entirely, he wondered.
He missed, wanted, pined for the brilliancy that was Uzumaki Naruto, most annoying, most alive, most lovable person Sasuke had ever known. Lovable. Sasuke rolled the unspoken word around in his mouth. Love. He tasted the new concept carefully.
He couldn't remember lovable people. Itachi had been a disappointment to him, always too tired and sick to be what a big brother was supposed to be. Mother had been too depressed to nurture her children. He could concede to being slightly compulsive about trying to impress and please them, but never to loving.
Naruto, on the other hand, he loved.
Or did he?
Sasuke thought about it long and hard.
-
Eventually, when Sasuke had finally made up his mind, he found himself back in his fluorescent-light room on the fifth floor of the downtown hospital, hoping against all logic that Naruto might come back for one last visit. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken in, and his hands shook profusely. Withdrawal from the sudden cut-off from such intense morphine levels.
The low-dose oxycodone just wasn't cutting it.
Standing at the side of his old bed, Sasuke stared at the tangled sheets, thinking wistfully that he was being stupid. Naruto wasn't going to magically appear just because he wanted him to. Without Naruto, without the chemo, without the experimental drug, everything was just going down the fucking drain. Now he was just flat-out glaring.
He wanted to see Naruto again. Needed to see the dumb blonde. He'd made up his mind, and he had to relay his conclusion to the other teen.
And if the other teen wasn't going to come to him, he was going to have to find him. But as soon as he would think that, Sasuke realized how tired he was. There was no way he could go about searching for someone as alive as Naruto. Someone that alive surely never stayed in one place for long. No, if he was going to find Naruto himself, he was going to have to get better.
A particularly nasty bout of muscle spasms yanked his legs from under him, bringing the rack down with him, half-empty bags of liquids sloshing around, wires tangling with his arms.
Had to get better. Had to, if he wanted to see Naruto again and tell him what he'd discovered-
The bag with orange fluid was still nearly-full.
Had to get better-
Sasuke scrambled for the tube connected to that particular bag. It took a few tries, but he finally located the needle and his arm and a random vein and hope-to-god it was the right one, because he shoved the needle in, and the vein slowly turned a sickly shade of brown. Up, up, up... until it disappeared into his shoulder.
"Sasu... me... Sasuke... teme..." Naruto's voice wavered out of the distance. Sasuke smiled tiredly.
"Dobe," he whispered, "I know now."
"Know what, teme?" Naruto's voice was clearer now, and Sasuke could almost see him.
"I love you," he breathed. There was a hesitation, a brief pause from Naruto, and Sasuke's heart clutched in his chest, threatening to stop for a moment.
"I always knew you did, Sasuke," Naruto answered, pointing to his heart, "I could feel it. Can you feel it, too?"
"Feel what?" Sasuke rasped, squinting at Naruto's blurry form.
"My love for you," Naruto beamed, flashing Sasuke that brilliant, toothy grin of his. Contented, Sasuke laid his head down, and Naruto slipped from his view. Doors crashed, and Crazy Nurse and her resident and maybe some others- Sasuke wasn't too sure, and he didn't care, anyways- rushed in, shouting and grabbing things and making altogether too much commotion.
Sasuke closed his eyes and remembered Naruto's smile.
-
Owari