Missing Memories

"Happy birthday, Sakura," Kankuro said.

Sakura Haruno opened her eyes cautiously.

It couldn't be her birthday. Her birthday was March 28th, and today was - well, it was days earlier than that.

And where was she, anyway? Her face was completely bandaged, except for her eyes, and under a blue cotton blanket, something was squeezing each of her legs with rhythmic wheezes. It felt kind of good.

"Kankuro? Are you okay?"

"He's fine. I'm here, too, Sakura," a woman's voice said.

That was Temari standing there.

"Where am I?" Sakura tried to ask, but it sounded more like "Whug ma," even to her.

"Don't try to talk, Sakura," Temari said. There was a moment's silence.

"Give Sakura her birthday present, Kankuro," Temari told her brother.

Silently he grabbed a small box from his pocket. Gently he held the box in front of her face. She noticed that his arm was wrapped with bandages, but didn't think anything of it.

"Thank you," Sakura said, wriggling a hand up from under the covers to accept the gift. Her hands felt normal, at least, but she didn't bother to even open it.

There was another moment of silence.

"Hope you like it, Sakura," Kankuro said softly. "Your old one burned up in the fire, so we got you a new one."

The fire? What fire?

"Fire?," Sakura asked, barely able to understand it.

"The doctors said you might not remember,... what happened," Temari said. "We just came here to wish you a quick happy birthday... We can talk about it later..."

Talk about it.

Later.

But Sakura wanted to know now. "No, you guys can stay," She said."Sakura you should really stop talking," Temari said, " It isn't good for you." She was about to ask why, but instead gave a small nod as understanding.

"We'll be back in a while Sakura."

* * *

It was Sakura's sixteenth birthday, and she was in a private room on the second floor of the Hospital in Suna, Wind. She knew that much, now.

There was some discussion going on about whether or not she should be in that room, however, and she was overhearing most of it.

"I really think that Miss Haruno would be better off if we moved her in with a girl closer to her own age," the woman with the clipboard said to someone who must have just walked in. The clipboard woman had come just as Temari and Kankuro were leaving. She'd been trying to for an hour to get Sakura to talk to her, or even to write down her thoughts, but Sakura finally pretended to fall asleep.

Because whose business was it what had happened? Some stranger's?

Not that Sakura could remember much about the car accident - or the day leading up to it, or the days after it.

The doctors had told her that was to be expected, though. "You've experienced a shocking event, Miss Haruno, and then there's the concussion...."

She did remember a few things. Sasori and Deidara had been talking softly. Sasori was driving and Deidara was in the seat behind him, Gaara next to him and they started chuckling at a joke someone had made, and then there bright lights, and the black sky, and there were stars whirling past the open window, and then -

"We call her Sakura," an angry voice shot back. "And she is going to stay in the best private room this hospital has to offer."

Temari. Sakura shut her eyes tighter and wished she could turn her face to the wall. She was supposed to lie perfectly still, though.

She counted a few leg squeezes. The leggings-like devices were there to reduce the chance of her getting a blood clot, the clipboard woman had explained. There was slight danger of this, because Sakura had been lying in one position for so long.

Four days, so far, since she had woken up.

"I know you're upset, and rightfully so," Sakura heard the clipboard woman say softly, "but we really need to think of what's best for - "

"I know what's best for Sakura. She has been through a lot lately and I don't want her to feel any more pain!," Temari said, her voice shaking with rage.

"I really don't think that by just moving her to a new room would - "

"Like I said, I know her, you people don't even know what she had to face - what she had to see the night night of the accident."

The clipboard woman didn't say anything.

Sakura felt dizzy, hearing all these words at once. She could not sort them out. Sakura thought her heart was going to stop beating.

"I think we should move this discussion out into the hall, don't you?" the clipboard woman said firmly.

"No, I do not," Temari snapped. "I'm done with this."

* * *

She had been awake in the hospital for ten days, and her doctors finally felt that Sakura had safely passed the period during which swelling of her brain might have further endanger her.

The clipboard woman would check on her everyday and ask her if she could remember anything, and so Sakura learned that she could say "I can't remember!" in a dozen different ways, and, people would still listen.

Everyone was very nice to her. But they didn't make her cry, Sakura thought with some satisfaction. She had wanted to avoid that, because if she cried, then everything that people were saying had happened would be true.

So in a way, it was all up to her.

* * *

"They're going to fix you up as good as new in Konoha," the consulting plastic surgeon said, beaming. "Maybe even better than new, but not for another couple of weeks. Not until your body heals. But then they'll smooth you out like nobody's business! I know some older women who would give anything to have the operation you'll be getting." He was standing half in Sakura's room as he spoke and half in the hallway, as if he was supposed to be in two places at once but couldn't quite figure out to pull it off.

"How could I be better than new?" Sakura managed to ask, fingering the bandages that covered the bumpy pieces of grit that had gotten embedded under her skin as she skidded across the desert floor at a million miles an hour.

The surgeon laughed as if Sakura had tried to make a joke. He looked at his watch.

"I mean it," Sakura insisted, not backing down. "How could any doctor make me any better than I was before?"

The man paled under his tan, and he stepped back into the room, letting the heavy door close behind him. "I - I - "

"Oh, it's okay. You can go," Sakura said, suddenly feeling sorry for him.

"I only meant that - that you're going to feel like a whole new person, miss Haruno. It'll only be little debridement. You know, touch-up work, to smooth all those abrasions and even out that cut on your cheek a bit. You're a very pretty girl, honey, and we want to keep you that way."

But she didn't want to be touched up, Sakura thought.

She just wanted things to be the way they used to be.

* * *

"What are you so worried about, Sakura? They have excellent plastic surgeons in Konoha, you know," the clipboard woman told Sakura that afternoon, almost conversationally, but Sakura already knew that. Sakura never really did bother to know her name, thinking it was pointless. The clipboard woman was okay - as long as she didn't talk about the accident. But the woman seemed to have a one-track mind.

What about the way I look now? Sakura wished she could shout. Why do I have to go around scaring little kids for two more months just to make things easier for some Konoha doctor? And if you must know, She wanted to add, I'm worried about looking different. Everyone I know won't be able to recognize me if that stupid plastic surgeon changes me too much.

But she couldn't bring herself to utter the words. If she did said them aloud, maybe it would happen.

* * *

Her hospital days seemed endless. The high points were when the doctors made their rounds made their rounds in the morning, even though Sakura was embarrassed to be the center of attention, and when the floor-waxing man whirred his machine down the hall each afternoon.

The door of her room was usually left open, no matter how many times she asked that it be closed.

The other twenty-three hours each day were boring, even though Sakura sometimes suddenly felt terrified for no reason that she could figure out. And occasionally there was pain. The fear or pain might only last a second or two, but even that was enough to make it difficult for Sakura to let her mind relax the rest of the time. It was as if she had to keep her eyes open, or who knew what might happen?

Therefore, she was spending a lot of time thinking, but only about certain things. She attempted to reconstruct every detail of her life, for instance - of her old life in Konoha, that was, not this bogus Suna hospital life.

Losing herself in such a detailed kind of memory helped Sakura to make sleepless hours pass.

It was kind of a game, actually.

Also, thinking of her old friends kept Sakura from thinking about anything else.