Haruichi had no notion of how it had happened, but at some point in the past he had gotten it into his head that hospitals were safe places. It was ridiculous. He knew they were full of illness, and stress, and disaster; and he'd nearly died in the one he was running through right now more than once. Still, the sense remained preserved within him and he was hoping it made some difference to the serried ranks of his patients that had managed to get themselves housed in Konoha General while he'd been gone.

Four in particular were going to need all the safety they could get when he got his hands on them, and gods help the first one he came across. Haruichi might have had a black eye and a sprained wrist thanks to his mission conduct; but he wasn't stuck here like Ginta, Kakashi, Raidou and Genma. Haruichi still didn't know if all of them would ever be able to leave; or if they'd want to.

Ito-sensei's forced wryness as he'd pulled Haruichi aside and mentioned Genma's hands stung in the younger doctor's memory. Almost as badly as the words that had sealed the chakra surgeon's impromptu report: 'Don't worry like that, it can be fixed again and at least he's safe in hospital now.'

His feet stopped on their own, sneakers squeaking on the linoleum in the bowels of the rehab wards. Haruichi flitted his byakugan to life and searched towards the physiotherapy rooms for Genma, feeling a cold twist in his lungs when he had to acknowledge that the parched tangle of chakra paths near the end of the corridor was him. He stood there in the empty beige hall for a good few minutes, watching tiny traces of Genma's life flicker around his body with the same beat of a sick sparrow's heart. Work had been expertly, excruciatingly done on his hand - Haruichi could tell by the way the paths were almost too straight, forced into a textbook shape instead of the languid curves a lifetime's rapid and expert seal use had brought to them.

The familiar sense of anger, of outrage that this had happened to somebody on his watch, and especially somebody who had somehow deserved to be on his watch, knotted itself up and sank into Haruichi's stomach. He quietened his eyes, scowled at the floor, and then padded buisinesslike to the door in question.

He crossed his arms over the chest of his khaki vest and felt his fists tighten at the sight Genma's surface made. Oh gods. Safe in hospital didn't feel safe enough.

"I'm thinking of investing in those huge bubbles," he announced, watching Genma's attention divert from the machine prodding and prising his fingers. "You know, the ones you put children with no immune systems in so nothing can possibly hurt them. Or those gigantic hamsters they get in Rice Country so they can run around safely. Or jounin with no ability to stay out of trouble."