Thursday, 23rd of July. Sarada is 18 weeks old so 3 weeks old.
Sasuke was holding her tighter against his body.
"Sakura, calm down."
"I am calm. Just know that if you hurt me, I will hurt you back."
"You don't need me to hurt you, you're about to hurt yourself."
"I'm not gonna hurt myself."
"You just told me that you needed to hurt yourself to wake up." he was extremely confused at the entire situation. He was scared as well.
"I am asleep so I won't hurt myself in the real life."
"You need to see Tsunade."
"Why?"
Her voice was cold and she started to move in his arm using her strength. There was no way that Sasuke could stop her from doing whatever she wanted unless he used his Susanoo.
"Because you're having another nervous breakdown."
"I'm not!" she turned around and pushed him away. He nearly lost his balance. He thought of using his Susanoo but he definitely could not bring her to the hospital with a giant purple arm holding a screaming Sakura.
"Sakura..."
"Quiet. Someone is talking."
Sasuke focused some chakra to his ears to enhance them and he still couldn't hear anything. He could hear the noise coming from the street but that was it. "No one is talking."
"Well, I can hear someone so be quiet."
She seemed to focus on whatever she was hearing and that's when he realized that she wasn't joking at all. She was really hearing something. His breath stopped in his throat. She was hallucinating, that was serious.
"Sakura, did you take anything?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You're not yourself."
"How would you know how I am? You're not the real you. We are in my dream."
"Sakura."
"Stop saying my name! Stop. Saying. My. Name." she started to speak louder. "You don't understand me! You never do!" she was starting to get angry. He saw her clenched fists shaking. He approached her gently, the palm of his hand held up and facing her.
"I won't hurt you, just let me come near you."
"No!" she punched the wall that was beside her. "Shut up! Why is he so loud?!" she was avoiding his eyes and his heart broke. He hated seeing her like that.
"Look at me!" he lifted his eyes to meet hers. Something in them had changed. They weren't clouded by something anymore and he saw her. She was back.
"Sakura."
"The voice... it's getting really loud." her face started to transform and one second later she was in tears. "It is scaring me..." her voice trembled and his heart broke. It was killing him to see her like that.
"I'll bring you to Tsunade."
"Please." she started crying and fell against the wall. He rushed up to her and carried her by the waist.
"Just hold onto me. I'm here."
"I know you are."
He walked her to the hospital scared that she would snap again. The way there felt longer than usual but it was probably due to how nervous he was.
He arrived there with her fists clenching on his t-shirt. She was shaking in his arm.
"Call Tsunade and tell her to go to Sakura's office! Now!"
"Y-yes."
Without a look for the receptionist, he marched towards her office. He locked the door behind him to make sure that no one was going to see her like this. When he turned around he could see Sakura holding back her tears. He sat next to her and took her hand.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." She stood up and opened one of the drawer in the room. She came back with a syringe and a liquid. "This will make me sleep. You tell Lady Tsunade what is happening."
"Is the voice bothering you?"
He didn't get a reply so he continued speaking. Maybe if he kept her mind busy she wouldn't hallucinate.
"Why do you want to sleep?"
"So you don't have to worry about me for the moment."
He had nothing to disagree with so he didn't say anything. It was safer if she was asleep until Tsunade knew what to do.
Five minutes later her head fell on his shoulder. He lovingly kissed her forehead. "Everything will be fine. Don't worry." he didn't know if he was trying to make himself feel better or her. He heard a loud knock on the door and lay Sakura on the examination table. He opened the door and found a panting Tsunade behind it.
"What the hell is happening?!"
"Something. You need to help me find what is happening, but something is happening."
Her eyes moved past his shoulders and he knew that she had seen Sakura. She pushed him out of the way and he nearly lost his balance. Damn them and their annoying strength.
"Why is she unconscious?!"
"She did that to herself. She didn't want us to have to deal with her."
He realized that his choice of words were completely wrong. Now she was thinking that Sakura had killed herself or something.
"Excu- and you let her do that?!"
"She is fine. She just made herself sleep."
"Why?!"
"If you let me form more than one sentence I could tell you."
He saw how angry she seemed and it amused him a bit. She was very similar to Sakura in a lot of ways. Sakura was more similar to Tsunade than she was to her mom.
"Remember the first time that she had a nervous breakdown? I found her cleaning her kitchen obsessively in her emptied apartment."
"I remember that. Naruto told me about it."
"After that she became more unstable. The smallest thing would have triggered her. When I was in the dimension with her while she was pregnant, she told me to go away because I didn't want her to stay alone. We didn't see each other for three days. When I wrote you the letter telling you that she wasn't sleeping and eating, I also added that she had a tendency to snap out of nowhere. You told me that it could be a depression mixed with some PTSD and you gave me a treatment for her. The treatment worked very well. It took a week or two to kick in but after that she was fine. I just have a question before I continue. If this is a post traumatic stress disorder, why did it show up now? Two years after the war?"
Tsunade sat on the desk and crossed her arms. "The mind is a very complex thing. What she had is called a delayed-onset post traumatic disorder. We haven't done a whole lot of research on it, but based on what I've seen, ninjas who had gone through the atrocities of a war all suffer from ptsd at some point in their life. Some have stronger symptoms than others and some even have delayed ones. It doesn't mean that she didn't have anything these past two years, it means that the symptoms were minimal. She was probably dealing with them with her chakra pills and she was managing her anxiety. What can trigger it later on in life, is another traumatic even. In this case, it was you leaving after your big fight and after you married her."
"So I was the trigger?"
"Yes. I gave her the treatment for the PTSD issue. Why? What else is happening?"
"She has been very intense these past two days. Sakura is someone who usually focuses her energy on something but she has been very chaotic. This morning she told me things that were completely out of character for her. Things like she didn't even want to be a mom, she couldn't bond with the baby or things like I wasn't real. She also told me that she could hear someone speak but no one was speaking."
"She was hallucinating?"
"Most likely. We had lunch with her parents and she stormed out of the room. Her mom told me that it wasn't the first time that it happened when I left."
"Does she sleep?"
"She told me that she had two hours of sleep."
"How was she?"
"When?"
"Not her actions but more like how she was acting."
"Restless? She was extremely happy and restless. She was talking louder than usual and more as well."
"No sleep, restless, delusions... did she mention anything about someone wanting to hurt her?"
"She was convinced that I was going to hurt her."
"Other hallucinations other than the voice she could hear?"
"She was convinced that I wasn't real and that she needed to hurt herself to wake up. Apparently she dreamed of me before and that's how she got out of the dream."
"Was she irritable?"
"More than usual. She got angry not irritated."
"That's definitely not the ptsd because she took her treatment. It might be a postpartum psychosis."
"What is it?"
"As you've witnessed, pregnancy creates a lot of hormonal imbalances. For most women, they will have some sort of baby blues after giving birth. For some women, the symptoms are worse than a little baby blue and it turns into a depression. We also have seen something even more rare called the postpartum psychosis. It appears if a woman has a history of mental illnesses, or someone in her family has a history of mental illnesses. I should've thought about it... Sakura was most likely gonna have that."
"What are the exact symptoms?"
"Excited or looking "high", depressed, confused, changeable mood, strange belief, hallucinations, loss of touch with reality... The symptoms can be very similar to someone who has a bipolar disorder. They have a mania episode, too much energy, extremely talkative, busy mind, having trouble sleeping, behaving out of character. It can also have the same symptoms as someone who has a schizophrenic disorder like feeling paranoid or suspicious of people, feeling that the baby is dangerous or that someone you can know is spying on you, etc,..."
"What if she has multiple symptoms."
"That's how you're sure that it is a postpartum psychosis."
"How do you heal that?"
"Anti-psychotic, mood stabilizers and possibly a therapy. The symptoms usually last 2 to 12 weeks after the birth so it's should stop very soon. The fact that the baby was born too early probably triggered it but she pushed herself to stay focus until Sarada was at a normal baby age."
"Will she fully recover?"
"Normally yes. It takes up to a year to recover. What we can do if she doesn't respond well to the treatment is what's called an ECT. It involves delivering a controlled amount of electromagnetic stimulation to the brain."
"Is it safe?"
"Yes, we often use it. But we need to try the treatment first. Sasuke, you need to be by her side during all of this."
"I will tell Kakashi now. Does she need to stay here or can she stay at home?"
"She can stay home if she is watched by someone all the time. If you feel like something is wrong just send her back here and I'll handle her."
"Hn."
"Come, on. I'll help you carry her home."
Tsunade grabbed Sakura and started waking. Sasuke followed her around the village, reassured that she was going to be fine. It was such a relief.
"I need to tell her mom. Bring her home, I'll come as soon as I can."
He left and walked to her parents' house. He knocked on the door and her mom opened with a smile.
"Ah Sasuke! Good to see you! So how is Sakura?"
"She has a postpartum psychosis. She has a treatment and Tsunade and I are taking care of her. I just wanted you to know about it."
"What is-"
"It's a psychosis caused by the pregnancy. It doesn't stay forever and it should disappear soon. I am just surprised that in ten weeks no one realised that something was odd with her."
"We didn't see her much. She dropped Sarada and left."
"Hn. I'll need you to keep Sarada for me. I can't take care of the two of them and besides she hates her baby right now."
He walked away without giving her the opportunity to reply. A part of him was angry at her parents. Her own family didn't even realize that something was off. The mom told him that it wasn't the first time that Sakura was acting this way so she must've realized that somethig was happening and she didn't do anything about her.
He was soon back at the house and he found Tsunade sitting by the side of the bed. When he came in she turned around and looked at him.
"Thank you for coming to me. Sakura is... she is like a daughter to me. I'm glad that she has someone who looks out for her so well."
"I'm her husband."
"Yes and a lot of husbands wouldn't do half of what you've done for her. You stopped working to make her travel, you stayed by her side every time her mental health was acting up, you contacted me to find a solution,... Sasuke you are a great husband. You just need to realize that for yourself." she stood up and stopped next to him. She put her hand on his shoulder. "Anyway, I will get her the treatment that she needs. I'll leave it in front of your door with the instructions. I can talk to Kakashi for you. Who do you want to send on the next mission?"
"Naruto and Sai should be enough. If Kakashi feels like adding someone else he can do it but based on what I know of the island, it has to be these two at least."
"I'll tell him. Good luck with her."
Without another word she left the house. Sasuke took a deep breath. She was his wife, his love and probably the only person that he would fall in love with. The idea that he was losing her because she was losing her mind terrified him.
He moved to the bed and lay on it. He passed his arm around her waist and brought her back against his chest. He will stay with her for as long as she needed. If it was a year then it would be a year. He didn't want her to ever feel lonely or powerless.
One day he knew that he will need to go back on missions and he wanted her to be healthy for when it happens. For now he was just going to do easy and quick missions as soon as the psychosis stopped.