There are moments in life that tell you everything you need to know about yourself.
This is my moment.
I am no longer a wallflower.
Five hours and three minutes have passed since the army of medics, led by Grace, snatched my broken Fifty back from the brink of certain death. But only just. Their pursed lips and furrowed brows tell the tale of their silent disapproval. They hate their Hippocratic oath right now, they see no point in sustaining his life. He is nothing to them but a garbage bag of salvageable organs. They eye him, as he lays guarded under my watch, and they're vultures circling their prey.
But they will not have him.
I will not let them have him.
He is mine.
There must be something we can do; of this, I am now convinced. They say that there isn't, that he is beyond all medical intervention. That to keep him alive, tethered to machines, is not to keep him alive at all. His continuing existence is superficial, it isn't real. They say he cannot hear me, cannot feel me, cannot sense me. He suffered a severe cardiac arrest, his heart has been pushed to the breaking point. It will happen again, they say. And when it does, they think I should sign a form that says I do not want him to be brought back. A DNR, they called it.
Do not resuscitate.
They say he's gone. That the Christian Grey who stole my heart has floated through the roof, clutching it in his transparently ethereal hands. That what is left behind is merely a carcass. An empty vessel that no longer contains his warm wit, his secure insecurity and his amazing capacity for love. A tepid corpse that doesn't smile that crooked little smile, doesn't blink with that burning gaze and doesn't wrap himself around me like a vine come nightfall.
But that cannot be.
I will not let that be.
For this is my moment.
For the first time, I am unashamedly gripped by our wealth. We are, despite my earlier reservations on the matter, billionaires. And rightly or wrongly, billionaires receive medicine on the cutting edge of brilliance years before it trickles down the money train to the masses. That is wrong and that is distasteful, but I will use every elitist dollar to save him. I will drain every cent we possess, I will liquidate that which can and cannot be liquidated and I will sell my soul to the devil if that's what it takes.
For this is my moment.
He has always been the one to look after me, to protect me, to cherish me. Now it's my turn. I've made some calls and Grace has made some calls. The doctors plead with the Grey matriarch to see reason, to use her medical expertise, no matter how painful. But she brushes them off. With a cold fury I would never have believed her capable of. But there is nothing but passion as she holds my hand from her side of the bed, our fingers entwined over his softly rising chest. I am grateful to her in this moment.
We're waiting.
It's a game of patience, now.
Grace's contact in New York polarizes the medical community. Some consider him a maverick, deserving of a stripped license. Others consider him a medical virtuoso with a touch of savant syndrome about him. I'm choosing to believe the latter. I am clinging to the latter. The latter is the only thing filling my lungs with air right now. Dr Peter Moore is due to call back after he has reviewed Christian's charts and formed a prognosis of his own.
Grace is rarely blunt, but when she suggested Dr Moore, she was the bluntest.
He will either save him or kill him, Ana. There is no middle ground here….
That is the risk I am taking.
For this is my moment.
I am his wife. I hold power of attorney. The final decision rests with me, no matter what route is chosen. There's a rustle at the door and as I look up, the chief attending pops his head in the room and stares at me with disapproval that he tries to pass off as sympathy. He is tall, dark and not handsome. He's like the anti-Christian.
I've named him Dr Death in my mind.
I think Christian would like that.
He'd smile that bemused smile that always make me hear colors and see smells.
The smile that consumes me.
"Mrs Grey, your mother-in-law informs me that you have reached out to a Dr Peter Moore in New York in regards to your husband's case. I don't wish to be indelicate, but with all due respect, it is a fruitless endeavor. There is next to no neurological activity on Mr Grey's EEG. We cannot legally, after considerable deliberations, declare him brain-dead. But for all intents and purposes, he is. Even if we managed to stabilize his heart and make any kind of headway with his other devastating injuries, he would be in a persistent vegetative state at the very best."
He smiles with a sadness so false I want to smash his teeth into oblivion.
Grace eyes him with venom and emits a feral growl.
Her body shakes with it.
I squeeze her hand, reassurance burning in my palms, restraining her.
For this is my moment.
"We are going to proceed with the option that gives my husband the very best chance at the greatest degree of recovery," I hiss quietly, "Clearly, such an option isn't going to be found in this second-rate institution. We will travel to New York if Dr Moore thinks he can help him. If you try to interfere with that travel, if you try to circumvent my decision or if you eye him like an organ sandwich one more time, you will hear from our lawyers. Now leave."
He raises a condescending brow and his lips purse into nothingness.
"As you wish," he murmurs silkily, and slithers out.
The room lapses into the bone-crushing silence of despair drowning in hope. I simply stare at him as I slowly die inside myself. He looks like he could be sleeping, he is peaceful. He doesn't cry out as he does so often in his slumber. He is completely relaxed, completely unworried and completely broken. I will not cry. This, I have promised myself. I must be strong for him. I must have the kind of strength for him that he would have for me. He would fight every doctor who dared to end my life, even if it was coming to a crashing end regardless. He would pull in every resource and favor known to man, to save me. I must do the same for him, now.
For this is my moment.
Carrick has taken Elliot and Mia downstairs for coffee and I'm glad. Not because I don't want to see them, but because seeing them breaks what little is left of my heart. Mia is the first person to draw words from my broken Fifty. There is a special bond between them. Elliot, strong, cocky Elliot, he is decimated. He is a shadow of himself.
The Grey brothers are on the verge of extinction.
Suddenly, Grace's cell shrieks in her hand and my world stops. She was very clear. This Dr Moore is our only shot. He's the only one daring enough to attempt to fix the unfixable. If he says no, if he says there is no hope, that is it. My world as I know it is over and the world as it knows me shall be two people short. My mind is resolute in absolute. I will not live on this Earth without him. I cannot live on this Earth without him.
If Dr Moore cannot help him, I cannot help myself.
A split second blanketed in an eternity passes as we stare at the phone.
With trembling fingers, Grace takes the call.
My blood ices in my veins. My heart balloons in my chest and the air in my lungs thins into nothingness. It's painful to breathe, so I don't. I hold my breath and wait in sweaty terror for my world to implode into shards of grey. The room is closing in and my windpipe is buckling, but I battle to stay in the present and fight to hope.
For this is my moment.
Grace does not speak, she merely listens.
Her face is impassive, her eyes have long since disconnected from her soul.
I know nothing.
His life is in this doctor's hands and I know nothing. Hyperventilation threatens to overtake me, but I flick it off. I cannot be anything but consciously present right now.
For this is my moment.
She doesn't hang up the phone as she slowly peels it down from her ear and her eyes swivel to mine. She looks at me like she's never looked at me before and in that split second, I can see Christian in her. Impossible, I know, but I can. There's a level of emotion radiating off her that is so powerful it sears me. My heart is in my mouth as hers slicks open to utter the words that will either prolong my life, or end it here and now.
"We're going to New York, Ana. We leave tonight."
A single, solitary tear slides down her face and trickles down her chin.
"There may be a glimmer of hope."