Chp21. Finding new hope

Hospital room Seattle: c-pov

I wake to pain, like Elaina beating the crap out of me pain. I feel strange, as my eyes open I see a tube down my throat, wires and tubes about me. Monitor with medical icons and graphs. I try to focus. Mom is sitting holding my hand. I'm in a hospital. Why? What happened. As memories flood my vision. The ex-sub, the gun! The shots and pain, Jason firing going down, blood on his shirt. Looking for Anna. Her face down on the side walked red carpet, a dark stain flowing from her head.

I caused this, my fucked-up life caused this. I've lost the only woman I loved. I try to hide the pain. "BEEP! BEEP! CLANK! CLANK!" goes the monitors, as the graphs go askew. I lose myself in the memories, that cost me my wife. The disciplines under Eliana, the betrayal and pain of Carrick. The indifference of Mom. The isolation of Escala. How I clung to Gail, for some form of normalcies in my life. How I betrayed everyone with my selfish desires and whims. The cold emotionless sex. And how I needed to control and command everything. Like a fist tightly clenching a palm of sand, it always run through the clenched hand.

How I kidnapped Anna, I must have felt, of known at some level how important she was to me. How she accepted me. Loved me. Loved me? How can she love a monster, and evil selfish monster. I watch the room spin with staff, Mom is yelling at me, the mouth moves but the word and sound don't exist right now. I try to rip these tubes and wires from me. Flashes of Anna happy cascade at an ever-increasing speed thru my mind. The brief glimpses of Her laughing playing Uno. Of cuddling into me watching Big bang. The Walks thru the snow at mammoth. Watching her dazzle at her wedding reception surround by Trekkies. Wiping and suck the whipped cream from her nose in the lodge. The soft touch during a meeting. The way she lights up a business conference room. The poem in the middle of nowhere English lake district. The bold vixen in sex. The woman sitting in a van, looking thru me to my soul.

I destroyed all that, killed her, ruined her chance of happiness, with my selfish ways. My selfish needs. My fault, my fault for being fifty-shades of fuck-up-ness. Why did keep her, I should have let her go. Protected her form me, the evil monster, selfish and scared. Scared? I've always been scared. From the first moments of the pimp and Ella lost eyes. to Carrick and Graces adopting me, why did they adopt me, they didn't know what a monster I am. How I'm bad, useless, and evil, everyone leaves me. Everyone see thru me, to the bad boy, the evil boy, the loveless boy. I sink into disparate reality. I killed her. I killed her! My fault! Fault! Cycle thru my mind, blocking all thought and imagines. Till I just give up.

"OUCH!" mom just bent the end of my little pinky together curling the finger, the pain shoots thru my body and mind. I stare at her with anger and hate. She points to a screen on the wall, I woman with brown hair lays in a sea of tubes and wires like me. Her head bandaged and the swollen face, a grease, stingy hair can hide the beauty that is my wife. ANNA! I watch her chest rise and fall. She Alive! Alive! How bad is she hurt?

I try to speak, but the tube mutes me. Devlin pushes an IPad to my right hand. I write, try to write. They get it? as my hearing returns "She stable but _the bullet grazed _ skull_super_coma._she'll get better." Mom explains. I just stare at the screen. She talks as I try to relax. I think I woke earlier, but it's a series of dreamscapes unreal, or real. I need to make amends to Anna. I need to touch her, shit they said she in a coma. COMA! I flinch at the reality she may as well be dead. I hear her voice calling me, searching, begging me to find her.

Everyone leaves as Elliot sits with me. Teasing my hand, trying to get my attention. But my eyes stare glued to the screen. Watching the machine lift and fall her chest. Breathing for her. As my does for me. I see the ghost reflection of myself in the screen, as my machine breaths for me. I must look a sight. I feel dirty and foul. As the evil seeps thru the room. Frightening everyone who dares enter.

Slowly the sounds and word come to me unfiltered. Elliot is relating some fish tale. I notice mom outside the window, lock staring at me, locked in Delvin arms. How much pain and suffering I have cause that woman. How much I forced on her. How can she still love me, care for me, like me? My fault. Everything is my fault.

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anna-pov

I free float along a river, watching the trees and grasses. The clouds playfully act out plays of Yeast, Shakespeare, Milton and Austin. As birds soar thru the stage. I drift in happiness and peace, is heaven like this I dream. Darkness falls about me, I'm lock in haze. As people pass me, uncaring, un-answering my pleas. I run and run into my house, the house on the sound. Our house. Christian is sitting on the couch, Models and Debutantes litter the room, naked and pliable, catering to his every wish, dream, thought. Laughing at me. I beg him stop. "Why, plain Jane, I don't need you any more, how could I delude myself that you were enough, enough for me, the great Christian Grey, Dominate. CEO, Demi-god." I plea as the model drag me out "your luggage is packed in the car of your Patron" Christian taunts me. I turn NO! NO! I scream in muted silence. Stephen, number 3, I shake and run and run but he's always there, here. I hear crying. A closet door, I kneel, begging the child to talk to me. She does it me. When 3 locked me in a closet in Vegas, for three days, no food, water, bathroom. When Mom final released me, foul and starving. She washed me naked in the tub, while he stood and watched, commenting, humiliations, and fear. Mom just washed me, like he wasn't there. She always did as he demanded, asked. She plead and beg for his touch, sex, drugs, abuse. Like I was at fault for not supporting her love for him. I see her face. It's my face in the mirror. Now I let Christian turn me into my mother, pleading and begging, taking all he heaps at me. The things I know he thinks, how I'm not sexual enough. Or pretty enough, or love him enough. He could do so much better finding a mate, a beautiful model, culture and wise to the world. I'm just a bookworm, plain jane, loser. I can't do anything right. How could I keep him? The shooting was my fault, he would have been saved if I hadn't married him. Loved him. He'd be alive. But he's dead, I killed him, I let him down.

I hear Ray, and Mia, Elliot and Grace, barney talking kinglon. French, Spanish, Italian. Star trek, lots of star trek, Babylon five, Serenity, Westerns, any big bang. I try to open my eyes, but they stay shut. I try to wake, but I slip deeper into the darkness. Time is lost to me. As I float thru the darkest horror and sweets heavenly slices. I can feel his hand although I know he's dead. Lost to me. I run thru a maze of hallways. Everyone, hits me, yells at me. Ignores me.

Xxxxx

Seattle: hospital Room 458 general ward.

It's been two months since the shooting, I'm walking better every day, lungs getting healthier, I only need a cane to balance when winded. I'm camp out in Anna room. I live here. While she's still in a coma. I do range of motion, bath, care for her. I spent the morning in therapy, an hour of tv. And lunch. Then Grey house till 5pm, back here to feed Anna. She has a feeding tube, I feed her four times a day. She is still in a coma. Her brain wave monitor shows violent dreams. When I hold, her hand she stays calm and relaxed?

During my bedridden days, Barney decide that since I'm commodore of a star trek club, I should know the show. So, chained to the bed, with tubes and wires, I was forced to watch star trek from original to prequel, even the cartoon. To force me to watch, he played the movies on Anna monitor, with a small box in the right-hand corner of Anna.

Anna got to hear language tapes, different one in each ear. When she wakes, she'll be fluent in 6 languages? According to Barney. I sit in the chair near the bed, holding her hand. We're watching Almost Human BBC, waiting for a CPO to bring lunch from Gail.

I hear the hospital food car cladder down the hall. "BOOM" the building shakes and the door slams open. I leap covering Anna. I spin nearly biting the floor, as my balance is just recovered. I head for the door. The two CPO are down, a third lays in front of them some ten feet next to remnants of the food cart. Blown to wreckage. I can't tell who. Sprinkler and panic reigns in the ward. Patients are screaming. I look up a there he is, evil Carrick smile, dyed hair and undyed beard. Jack, Jack Hyde, walking towards me with a gun. He smiles like he has won the biggest stuff animal at the fair.

"Christian, Christian Grey, my half-brother. I can't have my life. You won't have yours, no one beats me. No man! First, I'm shooting your knee cap, then enjoying Anna pussy, maybe leave a kid? Then I'm shooting your brains out. Maybe I'll do you both. Maybe I'll (BANG)" Hyde's rants just stopped in mid-rant as a hole appears in his chest splattering me with blood. I watch his face flash incongruities, like how did this happen. How did I lose. He slowly slimes to the floor as his life pours out on to the floor.

Behind him is Mom, Andrea and Mia. Mia holds a gun, a large automatic, smoking in the indoor rain of the sprinklers. I walk around the madman, approaching her. She seems stuck, they all seem stuck. As I near her and food cart remnants I see the blonde hair of my dead CPO. He must have seen the cart barreling for the door a dived stopping it. I take my sister in my arms. Taking the gun, his gun. The dam breaks as she wails, and weeps into my chest. Mom and Andrea surround and hug us.

I watch a Doctor, soaked bend to check Hyde "First the victims, then the evil madman. Doctor!" he strait's and check the CPO at the door, shaking his head no for both. It's been a bad day. I let Mom and Andrea lead Mia away to her office, has Taylor arrives with reinforcement. He stares, tears run down his face. Sawyer was his right-hand man. His buddy. He brought him into our lives. I mourn for him, and the two others, but mostly for him. He would have made a great brother-in-law.

I limp back into Anna room. The floor is wet and slippery. I see she soaked, well everything is soaked. We'll have to move to a new room. Maybe I should take her home. I grab her hand. She clenches mine, blue eyes look at me. I lean in a kiss her sweet lips, she softly purrs. "Welcome back!" she blinks ad nods. I lift her in my arms and carry her thru the Halls to Mom office. She's weak, soaked but awake. Entering Mia sees Anna. A leaps screaming louder than Hyde's bomb. I place her on the couch, Mia hugs her as I go to fetch dry gowns. Mom stops me, turning me around to watch Mia and Anna. Mia, in shock and grief, smiles into Anna's eyes. Patting Anna's round baby bump. "Sawyer's dead, but I'm having his son. I'm two months pregnant."