This place reeks of budget healthcare and stale sweat.

Taylor skulks along behind me, his wingtips squelching on the sterile floor, doggedly avoiding my murderous gaze. I'm not a blithering idiot, I I know he and Ros were cooking this bullshit up behind my back. It was too seamless to be a one-woman job. A harried looking desk nurse looks up with a formidable scowl as I stalk towards her. I mean, the least these people could is look humbled by my presence. Cheering myself up with a variety of subtle payback options I can put together for Ros and Taylor, I rap my fingers smartly on the grimy desktop.

"Christian Grey. I believe the pediatric ICU is expecting me?"

Nurse Ratchet heaves her beleaguered bosom up from a tatty file in front of her and raises a bushy brow.

"Christian Grey? And who might you be, Christian Grey? Are you a parent of a minor patient?"

Who am I?

Who am I?

Jason dies inwardly beside me. He is a very patient and polite man and laments my complete and utter patience for the bullshit I am so often plagued with. Nurse Ratchet stares defiantly up at me through beady little eyes as my chest inflates with indignation. I'm not sure, but I probably own the land this shit hole stands upon and this woman thinks she's going to make my Friday night even worse? Besides, is she so blind that she thinks I look old enough to be a father? My moisturizer probably costs more than her rent. Me, a father?

I think the fuck not.

"I am Christian Grey of Grey Enterprises," I snap, much to Taylor's chagrin. "I'm here donating my time to the infected and what have you. I was told that the ICU would be expecting me. Do you think you could maybe, just maybe, pick up your little telephone and ring the fine people in that department to let them know that I'm here? Or shall I just wander the halls and hope to happen upon a snot nosed kid?"

Taylor just wants to die.

I can sense it.

It makes me happy.

Nurse Ratchet gasps in outrage, her jowls quivering comically. Clearly, she's top dog around here and nobody puts this baby in the corner. I smirk inside. If I have to be here and be miserable it seems only fair to spread it around. Like one of the delightful pathogens I will no doubt leave with. I'm being an asshole and I know it but I can't stop myself. I don't want to stop myself. A couple of years ago... I'd have been reasonably polite to this ball buster, but now, I don't have a flying fuck to give so she's just going to have to deal.

"I don't think I like your tone, Mr Grey," she snaps, "There is no need to be so rude."

I lean over the counter, cocking my head to one side, noticing that she notices my looks.

"You should know you don't like my tone, not think you don't like it. Confidence is the key to getting you out of this chair and actually helping people. Now, for the second time, do you think you could let the damned ICU know that I'm here or should I come back in time for next Christmas?"

Taylor wants to correct me, but Taylor also wants to stay employed.

Decisions, decisions.

Nurse Ratchet clearly decides that I'm just another rich prick in a fancy suit and she snatches her bashed up looking phone into her beefy hand, not sparing me another look, her voice choked in anger.

"Nancy? I got a Mr Grey here who says he's due in ICU to spread some festive cheer? Real nice guy, Aimee will love him. Shall I send him down to you? Great. Bye."

She slams the phone down and points sharply at the nearby elevator.

"Third floor. Have a great Christmas."

I thank her, sarcastically of course, and stalk off. Taylor lingers a little longer than necessary and I just know he's apologizing to that wretched woman on my behalf. He seems to be doing things like that more and more lately so I'm either getting ruder or he's getting softer. I deliberate on this as he slinks into the elevator and steadfastly pretends he didn't just write that bitch a sonnet.

Poor Taylor... he's getting softer.

The third floor is not an improvement on the first. In fact, it's considerably worse. It hits me in the face the minute the steel doors slide open. Christmas music, Jingle Bells, to be specific is blaring. There is a stench of cookies and juice box aroma in the air. Excitable shrieks waft up and down the halls, accompanied by the cooing of mindless adults. It's Christmas on steroids and I am out the gap. Can't cope, won't cope. Fuck Ros and her chit, I'll just get the lawyer to get the doctor to say I wasn't in my right mind.

Can't enter a binding agreement when you're not in your right mind.

Right?

Right.

I try to escape. Jabbing the "close doors" button furiously, I am thwarted by an irritatingly agile Jason Taylor. He bocks my exit by standing bodily in between the doors and raising an audacious brow in my direction. This is insubordination of the highest, most contemptible degree. If we were operating in a dictatorship, I'd simply have him put to death and move on happily with my life. Fucking America and its constitutional protections and such like, what a pain in the fucking ass. I stare him down.

"Taylor. I am not doing this. I just can't. Move away from the doors, right the hell now."

He shakes his head in that Taylorish way that always makes me feel like I'm seven years old.

"You gave Ros your word, Mr Grey. Your word is your bond, you know that."

This is actually outrageous. I am being abused by my own staff, by him and Ros both. I am also being abused by own warped sense of honor. I'm a wildly successful CEO. I shouldn't have any fucking honor but Grace and Carrick parted the Red Sea to beat the importance of a man's word into my head. I'm stumped. I have nowhere to go, nothing clever to say. I did give Ros my word and my word is my bond.

I push past him onto the ward and make a mental note to reassign him to Siberia.

A nurse dressed in irritatingly pink and smiley faced scrubs stops in her busy gait with a curious expression on her face.

"Mr Grey?"

Finally, someone who knows who I am.

"That's me."

She shoots me an irritated look and gives me a terse follow me before setting off down the hall, not sparing a backwards glance. I follow with the feeling that she might be Aimee or Nancy and that Nurse Ratchet had poisoned the well. Glancing at my watch, I set myself an upper limit of an hour. I will not spend another second here, not another millisecond. The media aren't here yet, at least not where I can see them, and that irritates the hell out of me. All of Ros' moaning and groaning about repairing my image and she couldn't even get the rag mongers here on time.

We're led into a wide, spacious room.

It is full of shrieking children. Some are running, some are walking, some are sitting up in their beds. My eyes follow one boy, about five or so, as he races past my legs. There are bandages all over him, tubes semi-permanently taped into position on his skinny little arms. He's followed quickly by a blonde little girl, slightly slower, and slightly more bandaged up. Nurse Nameless beckons to me and I snap out of my reverie and follow she and Taylor down to the bottom of the room, ignoring the painted clowns on the walls.

I hate clowns.

They freak me the fuck out.

There's another set of doors and we walk through them and then another, and another. The air and atmosphere changes as we walk. We seem to be burrowing into the inner sanctum of the hospital. Taylor shrugs uncomfortably as we continue to stride along, the nurse not uttering a word as explanation. We finally pass through a heavier set of double doors and emerge into a smaller room, with three or four beds. There are no running and screaming children here, no Christmas music or clowns.

I feel myself swallowing.

We've reached the real, terrifying part of the ICU.

The beds are occupied by three boys and one girl. All between two and four. All extremely, even to the layman's eye, ill. Parents sit beside the beds, each one of them with heavy bags under their eyes. It's obvious they've spent a lot of time here, they all know our nurse by name. Aimee. She holds up a finger to silently tell Taylor and I to wait as she makes her rounds, placing a comforting shoulder on each parent's arm.

I look away.

I cannot be here.

I am not made for this.

This is clearly a mistake. This must not be what Ros intended. There's no way in hell I'm being photographed in here, this is sick. This is not right. I want to go back out to where the kids are screaming and running. I want to go back out to where the kids can get out of bed, where they're not hooked up to machines bigger than I am.

I need to get out.

Another nurse walks through the doors and appears shocked to see us, before looking utterly scandalized. Storming over to Aimee, she gesticulates furiously in our direction and I see Aimee's face fall. This is indeed a mistake as I knew it must be. We weren't meant to be brought any further than the running, screaming part of the ICU. The both of them speed over to us, Aimee looking suitably chastened.

"Mr Grey, I am Nurse Connors. I'm friends with Ros Bailey. I approved your visit here, but there has been a mistake. You were not meant to be brought to this part of the ICU, as I'm sure you can tell... this is where our sickest little boys and girls are. So, if you could please make your way back through to the main ICU ward, I'd really appreciate it and-"

The doors slam open.

We all jerk around. A man, in his mid to late forties barrels in, he's beside himself. The bed containing the one little girl in the room is in the far right corner and he makes a beeline. The, who I'm assuming, mother of the child looks up and there are tears in her eyes. Nurse Aimee and Connors exchange worried glances, but they don't get a chance to intercede.

"They're not gonna pay," the guy hollers. "I've just been on the phone with them, and they're not gonna pay. They say it's too experimental to be approved. They say that she's not even covered to stay here through the rest of the week. I said to her that if you don't approve this treatment, my niece is going to die and they just didn't CARE. They hung up, Ana, they hung-"

His words die in his throat and he collapses into the free chair by the sleeping child's bed as the mother, Ana, begins to shake. Shaking turns to shivering and shivering turns to sobbing. Racking sobbing. Taylor and I stare on, rooted to the spot, as the two nurses rightfully abandon us and race to the little girls bed, hushing and shushing, soothing and petting. They swap pained glances and my knack for reading people tells me they were expecting this news, that they were resigned to it. To a small child being denied what appears to be even the smallest morsel of hope... because of money.

Something strange, very strange, is happening to me.

"Mr Grey!" Taylor hisses, scandalized, as I shrug him off without a glance.

My legs are operating independently of my brain.

They're carrying me across the room and to the bedside of this collective angst.

My hands, like my legs, are going rogue. They're reaching into my pocket, extracting my card, and handing it to the terrified looking mother. She reaches for it instinctively and looks at me with confusion laden tears. The two nurses stare, the brother stares, they're all staring. My mouth joins the mutiny and even my voice doesn't sound like my own. It sounds... soft, like goats cheese. I feel like I'm either under water or under the influence as my own words float back to me, burrowing into my ears like I'm standing beside someone who looks just like me, but isn't me.

"Ma'am, my name is Christian Grey, and I may be able to help you and your daughter."

...