Work Text:
One of the scariest things in life is injury, some would say.
Being awake for your own surgery is an entirely new level of terrifying, though, and Itachi Uchiha somehow found himself completely calm after being told that his arthroscopy would require being completely alert and awake. He’d been given a pamphlet full of information on the surgery and, after reading all of it, remained completely still.
“There are loose bone fragments in your arm,” his doctor said, “and because of how small the incision is, putting you under general anesthetic would simply be a waste of everyone’s time.”
Itachi sighed internally and looked down at his shattered arm - a fight gone wrong and a far overused Sharingan had left his body in an extremely fragile state, which caused an astounding pain once his enemy had landed a fatal jutsu on Itachi. He completely destroyed the bones in his arm when he used it to shield himself from the attack, but it was a clear indication that he’d be long dead if he simply took the hit to the chest. He clenched his fist and felt the pain surge through his wrist and up to his shoulder; it was a terrifying procedure, but he wasn’t concerned about the camera being inserted into his arm to assess the damage, or the potential for nerve damage and clotting blood. Instead, Itachi was worried that he’d be out of battle for too long once the procedure had finished. He could fight with only one arm, but he couldn’t fight while laying in a hospital bed.
“How long is the recovery period afterward?” He asked, refusing to look away from his hand. He heard the doctor sigh in thought for a second before shuffling through some papers attached to the clipboard.
“It depends on what we find, really.”
Itachi looked up and locked eyes with the person standing before him. He urged them to proceed.
“If we’re able to assess the damage and do what we need to do without complication, then you’ll be out of here as early as tomorrow morning. If we find more than what we can repair, it’s likely you’ll be here for a week or more.”
He shook his head. “It’s repulsive, is what it is,” he spat, “I find it ridiculous that such a simple injury requires surgery to fix.”
The doctor furrowed their brow. “You have extensive damage in your arm,” they said, “and without the surgery, you’ll either get an infection and lose the arm, or it’ll clot and you’ll damage all of the nerves in it.” They sat down on the short stool across from Itachi, who was sitting on the patient bed in the office. His feet were dangling off the edge of the bed and it reminded Itachi of the few checkups he had as a child, the ones where he’d laugh as the doctor would test his reflexes and cause his childish self to kick. Now, as an adult, it was only a place where Itachi received bad news.
“I cannot be here long. I have work to do,” Itachi spoke lowly. His hair fell to his face as he looked back down, and he subconsciously reached up to push it back into place, only to face the reminder that his hand was still destroyed.
“Our best surgeons will be working with you,” the doctor had promised, “and we will do everything we can to get you out of here.”
Itachi narrowed his eyes at the comment. “It’s in your best interest, I assure you.”
When you came into work for the evening, you saw an arthroscopy listed on your schedule.
“Is an arthroscopy really necessary?” You asked your coworker passingly, and she shrugged at you.
“Look,” she said as she pointed at a note on the chart, “it says the x-rays were inconclusive. Dude’s probably got weird arms.”
You chuckled and looked through his chart. John Doe, 25, no patient history. He had one note on his patient file: ‘Patient is not hostile but seemingly capable’
With a sigh, you began your short walk to the room where your patient was waiting for you. You’d only just gotten to work and it was already a long day, so you were most certainly not in the mood to deal with a potentially hostile and suspicious patient that was probably going to argue endlessly with you.
When you entered the room, you saw a man sitting calmly in the chair next to his bed, reading a book with one hand while the other was dangling off his lap, clearly mangled. The bandage had been taken off and dismantled lazily.
“Did you do this?” You asked, pointing to his arm, and he simply nodded in response. You sighed. “Okay, well, don’t do that, please.”
“I told them not to touch me and they ignored my demands,” the man said in a low voice, “I do not appreciate it.”
Another sigh escaped your lips, and you were able to predict the next few hours.
Once you’d told him that you also wanted him to leave, he decided that your honesty made you trustworthy enough to listen to your directions.
"Could you tell me your name?" You asked. Your patient eyed you suspiciously. "I won't write it in the records, if that's what you're worried about."
"What value does knowing my name have for you, doctor?" He asked with an insincere tone. A spark of anger flicked in your chest as you felt the tension grow further.
"To put it simply," you sighed, "knowing your name gives me a more… humanitarian perspective. Having a face, a name, anything attached to a patient brings me closer to them, which statistically makes my brain inclined to provide better care."
He paused for a moment, considering your words. His eyes moved back to his mangled arm before he looked back at you. "My name is Itachi Uchiha."
The name sounded familiar to you - not in any way you could place, but you noticed your stomach twist ever so slightly as the words left his lips.
"Well, Itachi, let's get you prepped for surgery."
It was surprisingly easy to prepare Itachi Uchiha for surgery. It helped that you were explaining your reasoning behind your movements every time you made a move - He clearly preferred to have agency over his body, and knowing exactly what you were doing to him was invaluable. When you brought him to the clinic room for his surgery, you had him sit down in the center chair and you rested his arm along the positioning device. A nurse practicioner entered the room, introduced herself, and waited for your instructions.
“I’m putting this tourniquet around your arm to limit bleeding,” you explained as you tied it, “and it’ll make it easier to see inside your arm.”
Itachi watched as you tied it in a strict knot, which caused the blood flow to his shattered arm stop almost completely. The tightness caused a moderate stinging pain to shoot down his arm, one that almost brought a wince to his face.
Next, you placed an intravenous catheter into Itachi’s unbroken arm. “This is to give you some mild sedation, enough to dull most pain and ease any nerves you may have.”
“I am not nervous,” Itachi said decisively, “I have been through far worse than this.”
You hummed, amused. You held up a large needle filled with a local anesthetic and smiled at him. His face remained unchanged. “This is to numb the arm, it’s a lot of anesthetic because it’s such a large area to cover.”
You pressed the needle to his broken arm and watched as it sunk into his skin. Once it had reached your desired insertion length, you emptied the contents of the syringe into his arm and promptly removed the needle. When you took a step back, you realized that Itachi’s eyes had been glued to the needle the entire time. It almost unsettled you, how interested the man was in his own surgery.
“Taking notes for next time?” You joked as you discarded the needle and grabbed your tools. He shrugged gently. Something in you thought that your joke may not have been far from the truth.
Itachi watched as you sunk the blade into his skin. You created a small incision hole, just barely the size of a penny, before the nurse working with you used a small tool to hold the incision open while you prepared to insert the camera tool.
“I am entrusting you with the future of my life,” Itachi said as you hummed a tune to yourself. You smiled at him and ignored the annoyance in the back of your mind.
“Even if I do mess this up, which I won’t, you can live without an arm,” you said. You grasped the camera tool and began inserting it into your patient’s arm, being careful to insert the camera at an angle that allowed as much visibility as possible without sacrificing nerves.
“You have no idea what my life is like,” Itachi mumbled, “being confined to only one arm is not something I intend on living with.”
“What, so you’ll just lay down and die if you have to live with one less arm?”
Itachi remained silent. You took that as a yes, that Itachi would probably just let himself die if he lost an arm. It only made you more curious to know what the man did for a living - it had to be a painful endeavor, you decided as you stuck the camera tool in deeper.
You were looking at the monitor for only a few seconds before Itachi began talking.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to see what you’re doing.”
You turned to him, careful not to move your hands, and replied with only a “huh?”
He nodded his head toward the monitor. “I’d like to see the monitor while you perform the surgery.”
You did as told and asked the nurse to tilt the monitor toward the man, just enough so the both of you would be able to see it without compromising your own abilities. Itachi’s eyes remained pierced on the screen for the duration of your surgery, not once looking down at his open arm on the steel table. Up until now, you’d thought he was an impressive and calm man, but his entire demeanor was quick to change once you began moving your tools around inside his arm.
The first thing you noticed was the sound of his fidgeting - with his free arm, he was flicking a piece of paper between his fingers and creating a distracting sound. Next, you noticed the monitor to your left update to reflect Itachi’s heart that had begun racing.
“It’s okay to be nervous,” you mumbled. “I sure as hell would be if I were awake while my arm was like this.”
“Are you implying I have something to worry about?” He responded. Shit - talking to patients was never your strong suit, which is exactly why you worked in the OR and not in the hospital room.
“No, just saying it’s scary for anyone.”
“I’m quite used to injury like this, I am not worried in the slightest.”
You scoffed. “Yeah? What, are you a bookworm by day and an infamous ninja by night?”
For the first time in many minutes, his eyes went to the wall. “Something of the sort, sure.”
You nodded. You were mostly joking, but it was clear you were actually right somehow. “Well, I hope this puts me in good standing with the evil ninjas then.”
Itachi glanced back at the monitor. He didn’t quite understand what you were doing, which was admittedly frustrating for him.
“I looked at the scans,” you said passingly, “and it’s really inconclusive. Couldn’t exactly tell what I was going into.”
“What have you found, then?”
“What I have found,” you sighed loudly, “is a buttload of damage to your arm.”
Itachi’s fidgeting stopped.
“But I should be able to repair it all within the session.”
It wasn’t super complicated - you’ve done the procedure many times before and they’d all been major successes. What made this task so difficult was just how many places were damaged. It was a miracle that his arm was even attached, you thought. The fact that he wasn’t screaming in agony every waking second showed you that Itachi was not a man to be messed with. This thought was only solidified as you watched him continually stare at the monitor while you worked, going long periods of time without even blinking.
You were just about to begin finishing up the procedure when Itachi asked a question.
“Surgery is traumatic for the body, correct?” It was a simple question.
“Very,” you said. “Surgery is extremely traumatic, especially if you have repeated injuries in the same places.” You narrowed your eyes as you began to finish the procedure, proud to have finally finished repairing Itachi’s injuries. “I’d really advise you not to get your arm crushed again.”
“My enemy used a fatal attack against me. If I had not raised my arm, the attack would have pierced my chest and killed me instantly.”
You hummed. “Well, that’s a sticky situation. I guess you should keep crushing your arms then, if the only other alternative is death.”
“Indeed.”
Your mind wandered to the man’s life once more, curious to get as much information as possible from him.
“You find yourself in situations like that often?”
“Quite often yes,” Itachi hesitated, “my job is more dangerous than most. I find myself on the receiving end of forbidden jutsu almost every day.”
“One hell of a job,” you laughed. “And I thought my job sucked.”
Itachi was surprised to see you straighten your back and pull the camera out of his arm. With a satisfied grin, you placed the camera on the tray beside you and began preparing to stitch his wound closed.
“You’ve finished already?”
You glanced back at the clock. “It’s been about four hours, you know.”
“I thought the surgery would take much longer.”
You began stitching his wound, careful to make each stitch perfect. You decided to make them extra secure, knowing there was a very high chance that Itachi would walk out of this hospital and immediately get into trouble.
“Other people take more time, but they’re not as good as I am.” You smiled.
Thirty minutes later, Itachi was standing up and ready to leave the hospital. The local anesthetic was still numbing his arm and made him feel much more confident in his ability than you wanted him to.
“You’re going to have to stay the night, probably,” you stated, flipping through his very desolate file. “I have a feeling you won’t come back once you step foot outside the hospital, so I want to at least keep you overnight to make sure your body doesn’t reject the surgery.”
Itachi sighed in clear annoyance. “You are correct, I have no intention of coming back here.”
You smiled at him. “I promise, I’ll have you out of here by noon tomorrow.”
He met your gaze and then glanced down at his injured arm, now covered completely in bandages and placed in a sling. It would be useless to travel in this state anyway.
“Fine.”