Chapter 39 - Chapter 38

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((( ZHIO )))

"Whatever," I dissented but let the matter pass for now. I have other things to worry about.

"But that woman, Raya, who is she? You seem to know her personally. What connection do I or my father have with her?"

Wenziel sat at the edge of his working table and crossed his arm.

"She's someone we know in the university. And don't worry, she isn't related to you or your father by blood."

Mild pain shot up my side to my stomach but I ignored it and remained silent. The doctor continued on with his story.  

"She changed her surname to Zel Cantheliz when your father got married," he laughed.

I shut my eyes to the pangs of pain that followed. It got worse as it crept down to my crotch and legs.  

"Zhio?" Wenziel noticed.

My sight blacked out when I tried to stand. The last thing I heard before passing out was a loud thud as I fell on the floor.

I woke up to the sight of the white ceiling and a little tube attached to the back of my left hand. It was certainly a hospital room.

Sya, who sat at my side, uttered relief when I opened my eyes,

"How are you feeling?"

"What happened?" I tried to move immediately but pain suddenly bolted down my torso again.  I yelped at the excruciating pain.

Eriez came in with two male nurses. He took a syringe from the tray he was holding while the nurses tried to restrict my movements.  

"This was a recurrence of your childhood physiological trauma," he explained as he injected me with a narcotic analgesic.

"This will help to calm you up."

"Just take me home,"

I struggled as my body felt heavy and everything blurred out in drowsiness.  

Time passed by me swiftly while everything was in pitch black. Eriez's footsteps were the first thing I heard as I drift back to my senses. He was studying some radiographs against the morning light by the tall windows of my own room.

All the burgundy curtains and the casement windows had been spread open to let the light in.  

"Stay still," Eriez advised without looking at me.

"This is most probably due to a relapse of your injury when you were young. You fell off a speeding horse, remember? All because you've been so confident that you've mastered equine riding without the trainer to escort you. Hard-headed from childhood up to this day, I see."

I puffed loudly at his reprimanding,

"How long will I stay like this?"

"The swelling of tissues in your lower thorax may take about two weeks or much longer to heal if you don't respond well to medication," he answered.

"And I suspect fibromyalgia for the rest of the chronic pain you were feeling. You might have been hiding the much milder to worse pain for this long, haven't you?"

"Two weeks? That's too much!"

I complained to avoid his much more important question. But the truth is, I already had some mild attacks of body pain immediately after a year of taking over at the company.

"Fibromyalgia is due the brain's overreaction to pain. Therefore, normal pain would feel rather unbearable. It is caused by a past trauma, stress that could be work-related or not, depression and many more factors," he lifted his glasses to briefly rub his eyes.

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