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It has become a habit—Sasuke’s nightly vigil by the window.
Part curiosity: he watches people, sees them come and go, uses his honed senses for a pinprick of residual danger in the aftermath of the war. Humans are creatures of habit. The daytime shift security marshall takes a nap across the bench and waits for his partner to finish at eight. They have this secret handshake that lingers a few seconds too long. The two pediatric receptionists sneak out under the dogwood tree to eat their okonomiyaki at the nearby yatai. It’s the one that has long lines where nobody seems to be in a hurry. The novelty of a good taste. An elderly bald patient prefers to take his walk around the oval, twice and a half. Tonight, he is faster by ten minutes.
When the door to his room opens and the antiseptic cuts through the air, Sasuke is also reminded of his own ticks. He tenses just a little bit, leans forward towards his bent knee, and gives a nonchalant nod as greeting.
This is the other side. Part pretense. Pretending he didn’t notice that her shift is over a while ago and that she is late today. He had told himself earlier, that she has a life outside of her white robe and maybe she smells something other than alcohol and betadine. On some nights when she did just that, Sasuke couldn’t help but feel it again—loneliness.
Everyone in his line of sight has somewhere to go, something to do, some place to be, while he is here, in his hospital room, in an existential limbo. What will he do tomorrow? It depends on his chart. Does he have someplace to be? Where even is home ? What happens when he gets discharged? Untethered, he is.
The bottom corner of Sasuke’s bed sinks as Sakura sits.
“Did you have an emergency?” he asks.
She nods. “A gastrointestinal case.” Her nose scrunches up as if reliving the memory. “It was a quick one.”
“Hn. You better go home. I heard from Naruto you’ll have an early start tomorrow.”
“Ah yes, the boring council meetings. Kakashi and Tsunade-sama insist we attend, for the transition or something.” Ever perceptive, she picks up on his brooding. “What is it?”
Sasuke shakes his head, feeling silly now. “Nothing.”
Sakura learns, over the course of their nightly conversations, to wait the silence out and carry in comfort the weight of the yet unspoken. It’s the hospital , she said to him one time, it’s the people on these beds that taught me patience while knowing that time is precious.
So eventually, he lets it go. “Great things are waiting for you. Kakashi will be hokage as will be Naruto given his birthright. And you, you’ll be the hospital director.” The green eyes staring at him glimmer at the anticipation. She has been waiting for this, he realizes. “You’ll be the best,” he adds and her smile only gets bigger.
“I know,” she tells him, “Thank you.” In that split moment, Sakura seemed unrecognizable to him. Gone is the girl who would shy away from compliments. Here in front of him now sits someone who basks in her own light.
Everyone has found their place after the war, like stepping into shoes already made for wear. What happens to an avenger? Sasuke muses. No one tells stories of the avenger who survives the battle and lives.
Sakura inches a little closer to him, the proximity of their fingers jolting him out of his self-pitous revelry. “The girl we operated on today had to have her intestines dissected and sewn together again to get rid of a tumor. It’s an invasive procedure, but I can better control her vitals than risk cutting through everywhere. Her gut lining, however, got wiped out, but it didn’t scare us one bit. Ask me why.”
“You’re treating me like your intern,” Sasuke winces, but then relents, “Why?”
“Like blood, the cells in our gut lining live under a week. They get replaced rather very quickly, a day, in three to one hundred and twenty days. About 330 billion cells get replaced daily, equivalent to about 1 percent of all our cells. In three and a half months, these would be like 300 trillion cells,” Sakura explains. “Some cells that make up our organs also get replaced, did you know that? Your esophagus, your skin, your eyelashes, your lips. They say, it takes seven years. Seven years to become a whole new you.”
Sasuke couldn’t help but look at the stump that borders his arm, one that prevents him from reaching out to tuck the stray strand that keeps on escaping her headband. “Some parts don’t grow back.”
“You’re right.” She throws both of her legs on the bed and sits under them. “Some cells regenerate very slowly—your brain, your heart—but I think it’s better that way, isn’t it? After all, they hold our memories, our feelings. I would never want to part with them.”
“It’s a dangerous thing.” Sasuke thinks back to his past, to the many unspeakable sins he committed, the wrongs he tolerated, the decisions that put him on this bed, in front of a girl he once tried to kill with the limb that is now missing. “To be promised with a new beginning.”
“It’s the universe’s way of giving chances to our bodies, I guess.” Sakura lies down completely across his bed, barely grazing his leg, her fingers gingerly dancing with the breeze from the window. “We don’t really have the power to deny life.”
Sasuke recalls this view. She is fourteen, splayed across the blanket in the middle of a clearing, and the storm has just passed. The grass is wet, and the forest is thick with the sound of crickets and frogs and buzzing of insects. The air is clear and so is the sky. The villagers said that a comet will pass by the earth after traveling for one thousand years in human time. Kakashi and Naruto are asleep while Sakura plays with the embers from the campfire, incandescent particles that burn too bright and too hot and fizzle out just as quickly but leave them with a warmth that lingers. She knows this, Sasuke realizes, that’s why she’s not afraid.
He doesn’t witness the comet’s arrival. He was busy watching it make its journey in her eyes.
“Seven years is too long,” he tells her in the hospital room.
“There’s no reason to rush now that peace is here,” Sakura assures him. “Besides, we’re not leaving Konoha anytime soon. I mean, Naruto and Kakashi, and me.”
There’s no stars tonight, and the air rides on the cusp of spring and the start of everything. Sakura is still playing with the wind, and her hair is a mess of wisps. Sasuke reaches out and tucks the persistent strands behind her ear. He doesn’t look at the window, but the moon is full tonight.