Chapter 9: I'm Back Again

Sean was sitting at his desk at home trying to ignore all the noise Christian, Annie and Conor were making playing hide and seek and messing all his stuff up in every wardrobe at the same time. With all the good intentions of getting reacquintened with the children, he had to be serious about what he's given his agreement to and get ready for the procedure they were going to perform on Conor tomorrow. In fact, Christian was supposed to familiarize himself with the what he had to do as well and that raised a question in him. He stood up, cornered his desk and set off to..."ready or not, here I come!"

"Great, dad," Annie jumped at him immediately, "Conor's usally very easy to find, but not when Christian helps him hide!" By the excitement in her voice, this even seemed to energize the otherwise calm and collected Annie maybe because it was new territory. "We need more people, since Denise's not here!"

Sean sighed. He did need to find Christian cause they'd practically avoided each other all weekend and there were some things that had to be discussed. He didn't want to spoil the game and upset the kids either, but this was just the beginning of a real frustrating game.

But then he realised Annie was just happy for Conor and not because of the game, "I'll show you how to do it. You go around, pretend you're looking and not hearing him talking to Christian," she whispered, "he loves not being found for a while. I'm looking behind the couch..." Annie said loudly, "he's not here!"

"I'm looking in the bathroom," Sean joined in, "he's not here!"

"Tada!" Conor appeared in the hall with a mischeivous grin. Christian followed, shaking his head.

Sean took the opportunity right away, "Christian, could you come over to my room?"

Christian raised his eyebrows briefly and pouted. He didn't like the sound of that, "Annie, could you watch your brother for a little while?"

Sean closed the door behind them, "I'll leave you to yourself to study the surgical process," he arrogated, "but before that I need to know if you'll be able to assist me."

"First of all, I studied the surgical operation at home to the nth degree and detail and that's when I decided I'd come to you instead. I could actually do it all myself, but Julia trusts you more with these things. And second, why the hell would I not be able to assist you?"

"What's with these pills you're taking?"

"You think they're drugs?"

"Annie told me you had some sort of disease, so for the sake of the operation I need to know if I can rely on you, if you are not too unwell to perform surgery."

"You think I would be here if I was?"

"How many times I needed to sort some mess of yours up? No, Christian. If you want something from me after all this, you have to tell me the truth and all the time and before! Something happens and not after."

"All right, fine, let's get this over with shall we?" He said angrily while unbuttoning his shirt to reveal two surgery scars, one quite recent, "chronic diverticular disease. Acute faze was dealt with using the two stage surgical approach," he said quickly as if he would've been talking about someone else, "and there was another single operation in which the diseased bowel was resected as treatment for a fistula secondary to diverticulitis. You want my medical files too?"

Sean winced. "I'm sorry," he said and he meant it. Seemed like Christian didn't only have fun over the last couple of years. Despite having had almost all of this information previoulsly from Annie, he never really thought about it much. Christian was guilty of taking his wife and the wall of anger stopped there, not letting anything else in. "Uhm...if you need anything, if you suddenly don't feel well..." He added genuinely.

Christian however, took it the other way, "I'll be sure to let you know," Christian said sarcastically. He turned back from the door for a moment, "Julia was free to take, but do you think I don't live with the guilt every day?"

tbc