Heaven wait (Hashirama x Madara)

10. ABCDE (Hashirama)

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.