InsaneJournal

Meet You on the Other Side [closed to Genma & Raidou]
[Directly follows Follow You Into Dark]

One of the hardest tasks a medic ever faced, according to the wisdom of Konoha's most experienced healers, was keeping alive a patient who believed he had lost any reason to continue the struggle. Only the suicides were worse, and it being a ninja village, there were almost no suicides who survived long enough to receive any medical treatment at all.

No, it was the shinobi who came in a bloodied mess, clutching dogtags torn from the necks of corpses; the men and women who had watched their partners cut down; the jounin-sensei bringing back the lifeless bodies of the genin they had sworn to protect; the survivors of capture and torture who had failed their missions, their teammates, themselves--those were the ones the medics dreaded caring for most. There was no hope you could give a man who'd had all his hopes wrenched away.

Of course, Konoha's medics weren't the types to give up easily. Even in the most dire of cases, there was always a chance. As long as the patient made it through the first twenty-four hours, they said, there was hope.

Within an hour of arriving in Konoha, Genma was in surgery. Ten hours later he was moved to a closely monitored recovery ward, swathed in bandages painted with intricate seals. An hour after that he was back in the operating theatre, crashing, failing. Dying.

The medics painted more seals. Cut through damaged flesh. Cast jutsu upon jutsu.

Twenty hours after arrival, Genma was moved to ICU. His broken hand was in traction, thumb and each finger suspended individually to hold them straight, to pull the shattered bones into perfect alignment while they healed. Delicate lines of blue script ran down each digit, merging in intricate spirals of ink across the palm and back of his hand, and tracing along his forearm. It had taken Ito, the hand surgeon, fifteen of those twenty hours to paint the seals.

His bruised and swollen larynx was forced open by a narrow tube of plastic connected to machines doing the work of breathing for him. His throat was bandaged. His airways were flushed clean of poison residue and the sloughing flesh the toxin had destroyed.

Blood-tinged bandages around his torso hid the ugliest damage. Broken ribs were wired in place over a deep tear in his liver. It, too, was held together with seals painted internally, and the efforts of several medics working in tandem to pour healing chakra in.

His less severe injuries were cleaned and bandaged. His broken false tooth had been removed, though no replacement had been implanted. If he survived the day, the week, then dentistry might be worth worrying about.

He lay unmoving but for the rise and fall of his chest with each mechanical breath. The nurses on the floor spoke in hushed, guarded tones, and turned all inquiries away. It was too soon to tell, they said.

At the twenty-fifth hour, Genma's eyes slitted open.

There was dim light. A scent of antiseptic mingled with blood. A taste of anesthetic lingering in the back of his throat. The soft beep of monitors, the hissing shush of a ventilator. The beeps picked up tempo as he came back to himself.

Raidou was dead.

He tried to fight the rhythm of the respirator, and an alarm shrilled. Lights brightened, a hand caressed his forehead, cool and long fingered.

"Shh, shh, don't fight it. Just relax. Easy breaths. Easy, easy..."

A metallic taste flooded his mouth as drugs were injected. He started to float away.

"It's okay, Genma," the voice said. "You're home. You're safe." For a moment, before he drifted off again, he was sure it had been Yumiko calling his name.