Three years later.

"Dr Senju! Won't you come join us for tea?"

"No, thank you", I said with a stiff smile. "Gotta go do surgery."

It was a lie. I had no patients coming. I swerved around the table that had invited me in the lunch room where I had gone to get some water. I had only gone there because it had a water machine that provided ice cold water, and I was a water snob. Nowadays, I almost always avoided social interactions, especially at work. Going from thirty-two to thirty-five meant my colleagues thought they had even greater right to insight in my private life than before. And now, their constant nagging about it being time for me to settle down hurt not because of one, but because of two reasons. The first one was, of course, what it always had been, the one big thing that I never talked about, and definitely did not think about. 

The second, new thing was the absence of Madara in my life.

"Hashirama!" A group of middle-aged women. "Won't you come sit with us for lunch?"

"I need to go operate", I repeated through gritted teeth.

"You can't operate on an empty stomach!" they cooed.

And then, I saw the one thing that had me give in and sit down with them. A woman my age, a specialist-in-training who was new here.

"Help me!" she mouthed, making the prayer sign with both hands pressed together.

I felt my shoulders slump down when I finally gave up my attempts at fleeing the minefield and sat down with them.

"Thank you!" she mouthed and rolled her eyes. 

I smiled sympathetically back at her.

They gossiped for a bit. Then, they turned to the new colleague. 

"Do you and your husband have kids?"

Jesus fucking Christ. We hadn't even spoken for two minutes. Couldn't they keep their claws in for longer than that?

"Umm..." She blushed, and I felt terrible for her.

"You don't have to tell them", I said sternly, surprising myself; I hadn't spoken against them like this before. Maybe, hearing them pose the same questions that had bothered me for so long to someone else, someone who was in a much more vulnerable position than me, had me going. "It's nobody's business but you own."

She smiled gratefully at me, but the women wouldn't shut up. 

"Nonsense, Dr Senju! All women love to talk about their families, don't they?" 

She looked at the poor woman encouragingly, but she was now looking down on her stomach. I could just see the flinch of her hand as she made to put her hand on her stomach before she stopped herself. 

"I..."

She can't. She wants to have children but she can't.

"Oh, trouble in paradise?" Another nurse winked. "Then maybe, Dr Senju here could help."

I thought I would die at her words, but the nurse seemed completely unbothered by her messed-up statement. 

"I..." 

To my horror, the woman got tears in her eyes. Then, she stood up and left.

"Oh, dear", the nurses said. 

I looked at the poor new colleague leave, clearly crying, and before I could help myself, I stood up.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" I screamed.

The nurses, and the rest of the lunch room as well, looked at me in shock, gaping. Never in my life had I raised my voice like this. Never in my life had I even had a single little conflict in my working place.

"Were just messing about", one of the nurses said, shamefacedly.

"Not only have you pestered me with your mockery for the years I have worked here, asking me about my private life, demanding facts as if you had any right to it. But to bother another woman like that! A new colleague!"

"She could have said something", another nurse tried, but I wasn't having it. I wasn't having any of it. 

"You're not idiots! You're nurses! Educated fucking people! You should be able to read a room! I hinted several times! How many times did I have to refuse to answer the questions you kept shooting at me like daggers before you understood what it meant?! I don't want to talk about it! I don't want to tell you anything! Neither did she!" I gestured at the woman who had just left. "We shouldn't have to say it straight to your face for you to get it. But since you clearly lack the social responsiveness, I will. I was going to have a child. Ten years ago, when I was twenty-three. But she died. Do you understand me? The baby died in her mother's womb, and then the mother didn't want me anymore, either. Since then, I don't want kids. Nor another woman. Are you happy now? Now, never ever ask me about it again, and I swear to God, if you bother anyone else with your fucking nosiness, I'll fuck up your careers and make you unemployable."

If there had been time, I would have been able to meet the silence of the lunch room that would follow. I would have been able to listen to, and perhaps also take in, the apologies from the nurses, their faces displaying shame.

But there wasn't time. Because as soon as I finished, another nurse ran into the room.

"Hashirama, are you free? We have an emergency in the ER. Come, quick. We're losing him."

And without a glance back at my colleagues, I left the room.

But I would forget everything about what had just happen in a heartbeat when I understood who the emergency was all about.

It was Madara.

When you dealt with a medical emergency, you did it according to a structure that allowed you to take care of the most vital parts first before you moved on to the less vital parts. The structure was also made in such a way that you could easily fall back on it if you panicked.

The structure was called ABCDE, and stood for airway, breathing, circulation, disability and exposure. You weren't supposed to move on to the next letter before the first was cleared, because the letter that followed depended on the preceding one. For example, if you haven't freed the airway, you wouldn't be able to breathe anyway. If you weren't breathing, circulation was rendered useless as there would be no oxygen to circulate to your organs. And so on. 

When Madara' s limp body was brought into the emergency room by the paramedics, however, my brain froze at the sight of him. The letters ABCDE didn't exist in that moment for me; there was only him.

God, he looks so thin. 

As a model, he had been lean, but this... He looked like he had gone up into his drug abuse completely.

Please... Please don't let it be heavier things. Please.

"I don't know what to do", I whispered, tears in my eyes.

Then, I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I turned round, it was the woman who had ran away after the nurses had asked her about any potential children. Catherine, her name tag said. She had a wedding band in a golden chain around her neck. 

"Do you know him?" she asked. I nodded. "Do you want me to take it? We're the only doctors in the ER."

I thought for a while. Then, I shook my head. 

"No. No, but please, stay." She nodded. "And don't tell anyone", I added; we weren't supposed to treat those we knew. 

She took my hand and squeezed quickly.

"Begin with A", she said encouragingly. 

I nodded. Then, I got to work with my former lover, with my M. 

"This is Madara Uchiha, according to the ID card", one of the paramedics announced, and a whirl went through the room as the rest realised who we had with us tonight; his name was still known. "He was found in the park. With cocaine on him and his pupils are dilated, so that's probably it. An overdose." 

She gave us some parameters, and I got to work. 

"A!" I said out in loudly in the room. "Madara, do you hear me?" 

He didn't respond. If they responded, you could free A immediately. I checked his mouth quickly to see if there was anything that could choke him. 

"Please, soft green tube through his nose", I asked when I had freed his mouth. 

A nurse helped with this.

"Stethoscope, please."

My voice was trembling. My hands were unsteady throughout the procedure. I had to force myself not to look at his face until I was done with the ABCDE. Since cocaine did not have an antidote, all we could do was stabilize his symptoms, and when we were done, Madara lay unconscious but breathing and with an acceptable blood pressure, and we could move him to the emergency ward and connect him to telemetry. 

I went into the staff room, empty now, and that was when I realised how exhausted I was, physically and emotionally. 

Madara is here... He is here, with me. I'm going to have the chance to  talk to him.

Which was, of course, a horrible thing to think considering the circumstances. 

I sighed, leaned forwards and hid my face in my hands. I don't know how long I sat like that when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Hi."

It was Catherine. Up close, I could see the crow's feet at her eyes, and I could see that  reddish blonde hair was thick and coarse. Her smile was watery and kind.

"Hi", I said. "Sorry", I added, even if I wasn't entirely sure what I was apologising for. 

"How are you?"

"Terrible", I said.

"I understand."

We didn't say anything for a while, just hung out in silent company. 

"I'm sorry", I said. "About..."

I couldn't finish the sentence, but she understood.

"One month before he was going to be born, his heart just stopped beating. Worst part was, I still had to give birth to him. Give birth to my baby, only to bury him a few days later."

"It was the same for us", I said. "Are you still... With your spouse?"

"Yes", she smiled. "She and I have been together since we were eighteen."

I smiled a crooked smile back.

"So my gaydar was right. About you."

"How about you? You still together with your man?"

"It was a woman, actually. And no. She couldn't even look at me after. We had been so young."

I expected her to say some words of comfort, but she didn't. When I looked up at her, I saw she was looking at me with such a stern expression, it was almost comical.

"What?" I asked. 

"When are you going?"

"Going where?"

"To visit that Madara boy, of course!"

I looked at her, aghast.

"He doesn't want me like a hawk over him yet!" I said. "I thought maybe you could be his doctor for a couple of days, and then-"

A nurse came in.

"He's awake in the ward now, the patient. We would like a doctor to check up on him."

"Hashirama will do it", Catherine said immediately.

And before I had time to say you son of a bitch, she had stood up and left. 

And since I was the only other doctor on the house, I had no choice but to do it.