sunshineverse | [open]|Konoha General Hospital

Entry tags:

zz old game: naruto

[open]|Konoha General Hospital

Where: Konoha General Hospital, Konoha Village
When: January 29th
Notes: Open to all

As much as every training he found himself unexpectedly shoved into reinforced the fact that medical ninjutsu was not his natural talent, Sasuke had to admit that it was a chakra workout, if nothing else. His own reserves were hardly inconsequential and still medical ninjutsu was draining unless he focused every ounce of concentration on maintaining perfect control, using only the exact amount of chakra needed for the task. Too little and the healing was incomplete; too much and he risked overloading his patient.

Not that he'd had an actual patient today. He'd thought he'd been done with resurrecting food and housepets, but the grumpy medic-nin who had somehow been blackmailed by Obito into training an unwilling Uchiha had said, in a tone brooking no argument, that there was no damn way Sasuke was getting anywhere near a spinal injury until he'd proven he could handle more complex vertebrates than a fish, and until then he was to leave suspected spinal injuries the hell alone until a professional could get there.

Which meant he'd been resurrecting snakes for the better part of the morning. Where the medic-nin had located this many snakes was something Sasuke didn't particularly want to examine, but he was still picking sloughed skin out of unexpected parts of his chuunin uniform as he walked through the hospital, heading finally for the freedom of somewhere not a sterile office.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It wasn't that Sasuke didn't know that; it was that he didn't like it, and on top of that, he'd been spending a considerable amount of time around medic-nin who didn't bother to hide their opinions on the way shinobi ran themselves or were run into the ground before they stopped in for so much as a common cold. Still, his shoulders slumped out of their irritated tension before long. Obito had been the one to notice something was seriously wrong first, after all, which made him better than Sasuke.

Some medic training.

"It better be getting addressed," he said, some heat still remaining, but gone with the next sigh. "It's not sensei's fault. I should have been paying better attention, too."

"Sasuke," Itachi started out almost severely, but his voice softened as he went along. "It's not your job to take care of me or monitor my health. I should have been doing a better job of that myself." He had known something had been going on for a while, but he'd reasoned it away or ignored it.

"Shisui only noticed recently, and he's been watching out for my health my entire life." There was something to be said for someone having known you forever and being able to point out what was different from now and then as Shisui could. Honestly, Itachi thought Shisui had noticed only because Itachi usually crashed as Shisui's apartment instead of his parent's house. After long missions and when tired he was more likely to try and stab whoever woke him up, and he'd rather stab Shisui than his parents or Sasuke.

Itachi could say that, but what was Sasuke's purpose if not to watch his brother's back? The clan knew it, their family knew it -- that was what a second son was for. Backup in more ways than one. Sasuke's mouth twisted, self-incriminating, as he folded his arms more tightly.

"Still," he insisted, not directly contradicting Itachi's words, but not agreeing with them either. "I'll pay better attention from now on."

"Yes, I'm sure you will." Itachi tried not to sound as resigned as he felt. Everyone seemed to take it as a personal failing they hadn't noticed he wasn't as healthy as he had once been. Despite everything, Itachi took his ability to hide what was wrong as a sign that it wasn't that bad. He had been hiding little things, though he hadn't until recently begun to realize the little things might all be connected into something larger. Everyone's accusations that he didn't take good care of himself were probably better founded than he would ever admit, but he would have to do better now. Everyone would be watching to make sure that he did.

There was a brief knock on the door and Tsukiko-sensei came in, frown line between her brows. She paused, obviously surprised by Sasuke's presence.

"Tsukiko-sensei, this is my brother Sasuke. I hope you don't mind that he'll be joining us today." Itachi kept his tone polite but firm. Sasuke was staying, and Tsukiko would have to get over it. Luckily, the woman didn't seem troubled by Sasuke's presence.

"I know your brother, Itachi-san." She looked at Sasuke. "It's nice to see you again. Has your training been going well?"

If Itachi looked less than enthused at the idea, Sasuke didn't notice, too focused in his own private vow to keep a closer eye on his brother (however elusive he might tend to be) before the medic-nin entered. Tsukiko looked as delighted to see a patient as she ever did, but at least Sasuke knew that she was thorough.

He nearly jumped into questioning right away until Itachi's formal introduction reminded him that he wasn't here in any capacity as an actual medic-nin, just a relative. A concerned relative, and also an Uchiha who had to keep up appropriate manners in public.

"Hello, Tsukiko-sensei," he said, holding back his impatience. "Training is going fine. I'm here to --" Learn as much as I can about the situation was maybe too much to start with. "-- support my brother."

Support made it sound like Itachi was a wilting plant that needed to be propped up, but he was being uncharitable. Still, he nodded as Itachi's words.

"It seemed less would get lost in translation if Sasuke were here with me, instead of me relaying what you said to him," Itachi added. Hopefully Sasuke would feel free to ask questions. Itachi realized now Tsukiko could find it offensive that Itachi had brought along Sasuke, as if he didn't trust her judgement or skills.

Still, the woman didn't look troubled. "Then you don't care if I tell him what I found or what I'm checking on today?" Tsukiko asked with an arched eyebrow. Itachi shook his head.

"Well, your brother has an unusually low T-cell count, especially since he was sick last time I saw him. From what I can tell, the rate with which he picks up infections and illnesses is abnormally high, and he takes longer than expected to recover for someone his age and supposed fitness." The woman flipped open her file. "He's also has hypocalcemia, which is easy enough to fix with supplements, but odd that he would have it.

"It's already documented that he has the beginning of arthritis in his fingers from injuries and hard use, which isn't at all strange for someone who started their career so young. I did find inflammation in a few other joints, mainly his knees and hip and feet. He also had some in his lungs, but that I hope was from his illness. Today I'm going to see how those levels of inflammation compare to the ones I found last time, and re-run the blood tests, as you seem to be in better health now." Tsukiko directed this last bit at Itachi, who nodded. No sniffles or coughing for him now.

"Good. We'll start with the blood work." Tsukiko placed her folder aside and reached out a hand for the one Itachi carried. "And these are all injuries and illnesses that were left out of your file before?" Itachi nodded. For security reasons, his ANBU injuries and how he came in from those missions were kept in a separate medical file, and it had taken a while to get the clearance to release the files to Tsukiko so she could study them. Itachi had been a little dismayed to look back through the years and see how often he came back with some kind of cold or infection picked up on his travels or labelled as needing a week or two off from all duties to recover from exhaustion.

Itachi began to dutifully roll up his sleeve.

Tsukiko did have a tendency to share information like a firehose rather than a trickle, but Sasuke absorbed the words with a deeper and deeper frown. Everything she mentioned was of the slow, insidious type -- explaining why they wouldn't have noticed at home, for all that he still felt guilty about it -- Itachi could have hidden the symptoms (not unlike him) or even not noticed them himself if the onset had been gradual enough. There were some byproducts of the shinobi lifestyle that Sasuke had grown accustomed to seeing in the hospital as well, arthritis and inflammation among them, but for them to present at Itachi's age and with enough severity to warrant documenting was worth noting as well.

Folding his arms, Sasuke watched his brother's blood fill first one sample tube and then another, the crease between his eyebrows furrowed deep. What could cause such a host of symptoms all at once? Sasuke himself rarely caught so much as a cold, let alone wound up in hospital on the wrong end of a medic's prodding; as far as he knew, their mother and father were in excellent health for their age and profession as well.

"How long has he been presenting with the symptoms?" He asked Tsukiko after she had drawn the needle out of Itachi's arm and turned it over to him to apply pressure and gauze. Caught up in trying to come up with a rationale, here, Sasuke held the cotton ball over the exit wound and still managed to talk as if the patient weren't quite there. "Have they all been around for the same amount of time, or did they have different starting points?"

Itachi almost opened his mouth to say that he could hold his own cotton-ball, thank you, but he decided he might as well let Sasuke feel as useful as he needed to feel.

"The file he just brought me will tell me about when this all started, but it's been a year and a half or so since there was a change in his medical records. The inflammation in his hands has been going on a little longer than that. It's nothing very noticeable until the last seven months," Tsukiko deigned to look at Itachi as she put blood into scrolls. "Anything else."

"Minor deafness from close quarters explosions," Itachi added reluctantly. Tsukiko nodded and jotted down some notes.

Sasuke had spent a few weekends in a row sticking needles first in himself and then in apprehensive shinobi, and the training told now; he took in the information with a frown of concentration, hands absently and efficiently switching the cotton ball out for a bandage once the bleeding stopped.

Deafness wasn't entirely unusual, though he did shoot Itachi a look askance, a wordless question as to just when Itachi had spent this much time around that many explosions -- jounin missions were difficult, but this much damage at this speed seemed kind of excessive in Sasuke's limited experience.

"Is any of that reversible with care?"

"No. It's healed as much as it ever will. He's only lost the highest registers of hearing, and unless it progresses there isn't much to do about it." Tsukiko made a few more notes. She set the scrolls with the blood work aside and walked back over to Itachi purposefully. He folded her hands through signs, and then reached out for him.

"Hands first." Itachi dutifully held out his hands, submitting to the diagnostic jutsu. "Less swelling than last time, but you've been on leave for a while. You've still obviously got the beginnings of arthritis here. Have you started the joint supplement I told you to?" Itachi nodded as she moved her hands up his arms and down to his chest, frowning.

Irreversible damage was hardly out of the norm for shinobi, and slight hearing loss wasn't the worst thing that could happen by far. Still, the patients Sasuke had gotten used to seeing around the hospital with hearing aids and the like were far from Itachi's age, even if Itachi was in turn probably far from needing hearing aids.

His expression was a little too intent as he waited for Itachi's answer to her question, arms folded again once the used cotton was deposited safely into the biohazards bin.

Tsukiko ran her hands up his arms, taking extra time around his chest. "Your heart is fine. have you noticed any irregular heart rhythms?"

"No," Itachi reported, feeling very much like a child. Tsukiko nodded and frowned.

"Your lungs are still showing some inflammation. It's not much. It could just be your cold trying to clear out, but make sure it doesn't turn into pleurisy or bronchitis. Have you been having trouble breathing?" Tsukiko's hands moved down.

"Only slightly, but it's been improving as my cold has gotten better." Overall, Itachi didn't think his lungs were an issue. Unless he was sick, he couldn't recall ever having trouble breathing.

"I want them checked before you go on another mission," Tsukiko demanded. "Do you have any morning stiffness in your joints?"

Itachi hesitated. This he did not want to answer. "Usually only when I've finished a hard mission, or when I have to sleep outside in the cold. It doesn't last long."

"Where?"

"Mostly in my hands, but depending how I've slept it can be my knees and ankles as well. Sometimes my feet." Itachi watched as Tsukiko's hands hovered around his feet. She grunted.

"I'm going to suggest some supplements for inflmamation, and we'll see if those help with the joint stiffness. It would be odd for your body to be breaking down now, but not unheard of. You've broken enough toes and bones in your feet that the aching there isn't worrying if the weather is changing. If you notice swelling, that's when we'll worry."

Itachi nodded. He wasn't worried, really. Everyone else was worrying enough about things no one could change and that he could handle. Having regular medication to take meant trouble on long term missions, but he could manage. Hopefully.

"Now let me check the blood..."

Without pen and paper, Sasuke couldn't actually take notes, but if either Tsukiko or Itachi thought that he was doing anything less than memorizing the session, they were sadly mistaken. For all that he'd come to a point where he wanted to equal (maybe surpass, though that was a distant dream) Itachi in strength, he knew his place in the clan: Itachi's job was to run the clan and interface with the village, and Sasuke's was to watch his back.

If that meant making sure that he paid attention to Itachi's breathing and movement and saw to it that Itachi both received and actually took his medication, then so be it. It wouldn't be the easiest, and Itachi shied away from spending much time at home as it was, but it needed to be done.

Not for the first time, Sasuke thought to himself with some irritation of how much more convenient things would be if he could just get that jounin promotion and go into the field with his brother once in a while.

"Are you going to be staying in the village long enough this time to get into a routine of taking your supplements?" He asked as he moved out of the way for Tsukiko to get to the blood-drawing kit and the alcohol swabs.

"Yes, Sasuke, I am," Itachi replied with obvious resignation as he gave his brother an almost baleful look. "My goal is to avoid needing further medical care, not get myself admitted because I won't take my vitamins."

"Your brother is an awful patient," Tsukiko said as she picked up the scrolls she'd set aside and examined them. "Most of the higher ranking ninja are."

Sasuke returned Itachi's look with a raised eyebrow of his own, because he strongly suspected what Tsukiko confirmed in the next moment: that Itachi was a terrible patient. There were many things to admire about Itachi and Sasuke knew of all of them, but there were times when the calm confidence that he had exuded for as long as Sasuke had been aware edged over into stubbornness. And shinobi in general were poor patients, as Sasuke had learned quickly in hospital.

Something about the presence of stern medic-nin wielding needles and treatment plans reduced some of the toughest jounin into Academy brats fleeing to escape punishment.

So Sasuke nodded in a knowing way at Tsukiko's words. "I know. I'll stay on him to stay on track."

And then with perfect conviction in his brother's invincibility, he added: "With that and a break, you'll be fine."

With anyone but Sasuke, Itachi would have been more exasperated. Sasuke shouldn't have to worry about Itachi's health at all, but at least he was taking it better than Itachi would have if their roles were reversed. Sasuke had faith in Itachi. Itachi would have only put his faith in the worst possible outcomes. Itachi gave Sasuke a rueful grin and tried to poke him on the forehead.

Anyway, Itachi would have to remember to take everything if he expected to function at optimal levels, which was something his job demanded or he could end up dead. Worse, he could end up getting someone else killed, so he was probably lucky this intervention had come before something serious had convinced him he needed to be checked out.

He still wasn't enjoying any of this.

"Mmmm..." Tsuiko looked at the scroll. "It looks like your calcium levels are up, so make sure you don't skip that supplement." She set the scrolls aside. "And...it looks like your T-cell count is now ridiculously low." The woman frowned. "It's not due to HIV, we ran all of those tests last time." Tsukiko tapped the scroll and then pinned Itachi with a look that wasn't a glare, but wasn't comfortable either.

One of these days, Sasuke would both see that poke coming and completely want to avoid it -- today was not that day. He flinched back late, Itachi's fingers landing smack in the middle of his forehead, and was in the middle of smacking Itachi's hand away and shooting his brother a deeply aggrieved glare when Tsukiko continued with her review.

The lighthearted, if annoyed, expression fell away to one of seriousness when she mentioned T-cell counts, the worried frown returning easily to his face.

"What else could result in it?" The fact that his training was mostly in on-the-spot, battlefield medicine was telling here: there had simply not seemed to be a need for him to learn about anything less immediate than a stab wound.

"Quite a few diseases and then things as benign as malnutrition and being too tired." Tsukiko frowned over her notes. "I'm going to suggest you don't run any hard missions for a while, and gain some weight. And I don't mean more muscle. Eat several small meals a day and get plenty of rest. If that doesn't get the count up, we'll try some drugs."

Itachi grimaced. He couldn't be dependent on medication if he were going to be undercover. He was gone for weeks at a time, and he couldn't guarantee he would have access to what he needed even if he brought it with him. He'd lost everything on him one year when he was caught in a flash flood in the mountains. It hadn't happened since, but who knew.

If it kept him from needing a steady dose of medication, he would take it easy for a while.

Or try to.

"How long will it take for you to know if it's something more serious?" Itachi asked.

"Let's give it three weeks, then I'll do another check," Tsukiko suggested as she wrote a few notes. "And take these supplements in the mean time. They'll take care of any nutritional problems you have."

"Thank you..." Itachi took the note and resisted the urge to sigh. Medics had a special way of making one feel like a child.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[open]|Konoha General Hospital

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject