Chapter Text
Naruto stared at her still form that was laying in the hospital bed.
The only sound that echoed through the room was the beeping from the multiple machines surrounding the bed. The void of emptiness he felt was ineffable, inconceivable to him. Numbness flowed through his veins to every part of him, making his heart feel the brunt of it all. As if time had lapsed, Naruto watched as he reached his hand out to hers, ever so slowly. He scooped her hand into his, alarmed by the lifelessness it had in his hand. Taking in a few deep breaths, Naruto stared at her face before whispering, ‘H-hinata...’
His lips pursed together for a few moments before Naruto succumbed to tears that were fighting to fall from his eyes. “Why? Why would you do something like that for me?”
Lifting his gaze to her face, Naruto reached his other hand to softly carress the scars that adorned her features. “If anyone deserved this, it should have been me, damn. I should have been hit by that car. I’m so sorry, Hinata. So sorry…”
The door to the room creaked as it opened, startling Naruto to a standing position, turning to face the entrance. A sad smile graced Sakura’s face as she came into the room, a bouquet of flowers given to her by Ino. “Hey there, I’m just dropping by these flowers. They’re from everyone.”
Sakura set the vase on the small nightstand next to the bed. Looking at Naruto, Sakura set a hand on his shoulder. “How are you doing?”
“I don’t know...” Naruto spoke after a decent amount of silence, easing down into his seat again. “I’d lost everything before I was born, any person who could have been important. Growing up in foster care didn’t give me much hope for anything. Then, I came to Konoha High. Hinata was really quiet, extremely shy. I was first kinda freaked by her, but, she came to make me feel important, like she really cared. I can’t explain how I started seeing her as something more valuable than myself...”
Naruto broke down, bending forward to allow his face to fall into his hands. “Why wasn’t it me, fuck…? I should have been more fucking aware of what was going on.”
Sakura, having known Naruto for several years, could recognize the best way to respond to him. She knelt beside him, resting her hand on his shoulder again. “Naruto, I know I can’t give you the right answer, but I know one thing. She loves you so much to make sure that you weren’t hurt. Nothing else matters, I guess. I have to get back with Tenten and Ino, so we can help out Hanabi and everyone. I’m a call away, let me know updates.”
After she had left, Naruto looked up to the bed again. He remembered that moment of the crash vividly. He was going to surprise her with a birthday present: a spending spree at a local garden so she could actually grow her own flowers for pressing. Naruto had felt so proud of being original with his idea, as well as the extra work shifts and labor he put into raising the funds to do so. It was a simple miscalculation, for the power downtown was temporarily shut down in certain places for repairs. Crossing the street is an easy task, done routinely and regularly for the both of them, but a sharp turn by the incoming, speeding car on an empty intersection caused all of this to happen. If he wasn’t to busy thinking about the future plans, he would have been better prepared for that car and have been able to protect Hinata from the peril that she was currently in. She had been stabilized, but in a comatose state since the day before.
Sighing, he closed his eyes, leaning his head back over the top of the chair. He needed her to wake up soon. Naruto had never felt more torn before in his life. The battle of his own feelings of the remorse over not protecting her and the innate fear of loosing her raged through his mind. Everything , he didn’t notice right away as one of the machines picked up the current pace it had in tones.
Jumping and staring at the machine, Naruto glance from the heart beat rate to her body, anxiously awaiting what would come from it.