Every Bookshop Needs a Cat (Fleckney Fields Series, Book 2)

Break It to You

"The next day after Semra was here," Klaus said, "her father called me. Colonel Assefa... I despise the man, always have. For many reasons, but mostly because he's a terrible father." He huffed an angry exhale. She felt his hot breath through her tee. "More so to Semra. He could never control Caria. No one could, whatever James Whitlaw says now." Klaus lifted his face and gave Anna a joyless smile. "Her home life was hell, but sometimes it seemed that she didn't even care. She always had this tunnel vision, nothing ever mattered but her science. And then she left for uni, and Semra was the one left behind. After the accident, it became even more obvious who had been his 'favourite' daughter: Caria whose publications he could boast about, or Semra who stayed in Fleckney after leaving school and was working small jobs waiting for her boyfriend to come back from his backpacking across Europe."

He grew silent, the already familiar expression of well-contained rage twisting his features: his jaw jutted out; his eyes narrowed; and his full, soft bottom lip tensed, into a thin line.

"What did he say when he called you?" Anya asked quietly.

Klaus returned his attention to her, and his face softened. If anything, he looked almost apologetic. He regrets how much that what he's going to say next will affect you, Anyutka, her inner voice announced a sudden clear realisation. This one is going to be a whopper.

"He said he's got a connection to a surgeon who could fix the injuries in my thoracic spine."

She'd guessed right then. That did feel like a full-blown punch in her solar plexus.

"I thought they couldn't operate on that part," she muttered.

"So we thought, but he knows a specialist, a military surgeon, who's done it," Klaus said, his eyes lighting up. "Anna, he can do the vertebral decompression, which they all said was impossible! And he can install the internal fixation. I won't need bracing, and I can start working on my lumbar spine therapy! And maybe I won't even need the second operation! And there will be less pain, and I'll be able to move much better. It's risky, obviously; the list of complications is like a phone book. But Anna, if he can fix those vertebrae–"

This hadn't been the first time she got this 'feeling' - as if there was some strange buzz at the base of her skull, as if some sort of an electric signal her mind was catching from him, almost like interference. It's like she could almost read his thoughts. She just knew.

"What aren't you telling me, Klaus?" she whispered.

He stopped mid-sentence and looked away, furrowing his eyebrows. Again, somehow she could clearly see that he was weighing his options.

"Klaus..."

He lifted his honey-coloured eyes at her, and she saw his throat bob anxiously.

"They would need to do both: a laminectomy, to remove pressure from the spinal cord; and a spinal fusion, to join those vertebrae with a synthetic graft." He leaned forward, pressing into her again. Hiding his face. "It's an anterior operation. And it'll require prolonged general anaesthesia."

Anya's fingers curled up, her nails sinking into the cover on his bed. It was hard to breathe; and it hurt - it properly hurts - between her ribs on the left side.

"They're going to open up your chest to operate on the spine," she breathed out.

"It's a well-known–" he started speaking, no doubt, planning to assure her of the highest quality of the care he'd receive - and then he just nodded.

"And they will keep you under, for longer than normal." Anya was starting to shake. "And Vi said that your heart was nowhere ready, even for a regular surgery."