Chapter 5
Crying shatters the silence of the night; it startles Sakura, the others in the room with her, and half the neighborhood; and even if it hadn't been her own daughter, three months old and sleeping right next to her she couldn't tune it out because two more identical wails follow in succession and it turns to acoustic torture. The triplets had excellent sets of lungs and had inherented their father's attention-seeking disorder; Sakura, reluctant to attend to all that, lifts her pillow over her head and quietly sniffles. It's the hormones. She loves her daughters, all identical three of them, but at night she appreciated slumber a little bit more. Nighttime is when Shina, Mito and Emiko are changed, bathed,fed, and put to sleep. Certainly the babies nap in the daytime but rarely at the same time; and anyway those few moments are spent doing housework. A lot of housework. At night she has 'Sakura time' ; she bathes, brushes up her training or looks over some medical scrolls and hospital reports- on marital leave she is but she's also an S-class medic-nin and there aren't enough of those for her to catch a break- then has a snack with a glass of sake ( Lady Tsunade wasn't the best of influences) and doses. Sometimes an emergency would come up; most commonly a difficult surgery, resulting in Naruto sending clones to help out; or one of her girlfriends call or come over, or her husband wants some 'wifely attention'; and in which case she could forget about sleep. Naively, she had thought herself capable of raising her children on her own, even before the shock of triplets- THREE. not one. THREE- she wanted an unaided motherhood. But a nursemaid wouldn't be unwelcome right about then. She stretches a leg and brushes her sole against Naruto's calf. Tag, she says without words, you're it. Distinguished among the infant's screaming is Naruto's own yelp of pain. She had projected a current of chakra to shock him awake. And by the hasty movements on the bed it worked. She feels weight being lifted off the mattress and hears shushing, the covers are fixed over her but she doesn't lift the pillow off her head until she hears the door click shut and silence returns. It's unfair of her, she knows. He had been running a village all day, compared to dealing with the council diaper changing was nothing. But she was doing 'nothing' all day. She was doing it on her own. And now there was someone. And someone should do 'nothing' too. Sakura shuffles and stretches to occupy the rest of the bed, willing to forget motherhood and all others.