Chapter 5 – The Eye of the Storm
Anastasia has been in the hospital for a week now. She's in a regular room and according to Sawyer, physically she's doing better than expected, but emotionally she was struggling. It turns out my mother was acting as her primary care physician and a few days ago summoned Dr. Flynn to visit with Anastasia as the attempt on her life left her feeling, for lack of a better word, fragile. Flynn visited her daily and according to Sawyer, Anastasia's outlook was improving. Her discharge was on target for tomorrow afternoon.
I will admit, it angers me that she won't see me. I don't understand it. Even though I own Grey Enterprise Holdings, little Miss Steele has the audacity to decline my visit, yet she seems to have struck up a decent rapport with both Sawyer and Taylor. I feel green with envy. She trusts them, but not me. All I know about her condition is from Sawyer – her headaches and dizziness are decreasing, she's walking the hallway assisted, her appetite is non-existent, and she's now suffering from night-terrors. Unfortunately, I can relate. I want nothing more than to call my mother and Flynn demanding to know about Anastasia's condition, but I know neither of them will share information. Damned patient privacy and government regulations!
The only other thing I've found out is Anastasia has forced her father to head to the Seattle apartment she will share with Kavanagh every night to sleep. Her father is planning on heading to Montesano tonight to grab more clothes, then return to Seattle in the morning, so this evening is the perfect time for me to pay Anastasia an unexpected visit.
It's times like these where being rich is a good thing. How else would I be able to track my mother's cell phone so I knew when she left the hospital for the day? Once she's gone, it's time for me to head for my unannounced visit with Anastasia. She has to see me. I need to make sure she's healing well and to get her to sign the updated NDA with her real name.
When I exit the elevator on the third floor of the hospital, I see Sawyer standing dutifully outside Ana's room. I dismiss Taylor, who is right behind me. It doesn't surprise me when he follows me anyway, albeit at a greater distance. When Sawyer sees me heading down the hallway there is a flash look of disapproval on his face, which quickly reverts back to his CPO game face. I know Ana's attached to him, but clearly, based on his reaction, they've struck up a friendship. Perhaps I can make that work in my favor.
"How is she Sawyer?" I ask once I approach him.
"Her entire medical team finished meeting about thirty minutes ago – Dr. Trevelyan, the physical therapists, her neurologists, her therapist, and a half dozen other doctors, therapists and discharge planners. She's nervous about going home."
"So she's alone?"
"I believe so," Sawyer replied. "Ryan came to relieve me for dinner break after they arrived. I returned just a few minutes ago and according to Ryan, they all left. The room has been quiet since then.
"How do you believe she'll react to my visit?" I had to ask.
Sawyer shuffles nervously before he responds. "I would keep one hand blocking your nose, the other blocking other areas just in case. I've met her father. He's a good man who taught her well. He even brought her a new pepper spray which she keeps in her bedside table."
"I will take that under advisement," I inform him. If the situation weren't so unstable with Miss Steele and the lack of a valid NDA, I would have found his comment oddly amusing, but right now, I just am not able to do so. I crack the door open slowly and peek in. Her bed is empty, which means she's probably in the en-suite. I hear voices as I enter, but they are low, so I'm assuming it's the television.
When I fully enter the room, two sets of eyes are staring at me horrified but both for different reasons. My heart feels like it stops dead cold for a second, either that or it just skipped a few beats. Anastasia's glare is a mixture of anger, fear, and utter panic. John Flynn's is pure shock and of sudden, horrifying understanding.
"Miss Steele, I wasn't aware you had visitors. Would it be acceptable if I returned a bit later so we can talk?" I ask having lost the element of surprise.
"Sorry Mr. Grey, but I don't negotiate with arrogant, deranged ass dumplings," she replies bitterly. "I think you should go back to your ice tower in the sky and contemplate how you got to be the man you are today. I'm using the term 'man' loosely."
"We need to talk privately," I implore her while Flynn watches with interest, but giving away nothing of what he is thinking.
"Anastasia, do you need me to leave?" Flynn asks.
"No!" she quickly answers at the same instance I answer a resounding "yes".
"I want you out Grey. You are not allowed in here. I have an approved visitors list and this is one VIP list you aren't on," Anastasia practically yells at me.
"I need you to know I didn't have anything to do with your accident," I reply attempting to keep the emotion out of my voice.
She sighed and rubbed her eyes, before turning her attention back to Flynn. "This is what I meant earlier. My whole life, well most of my life, I've been quiet, bordering on ridiculously shy, and generally a nice person, but he brings out the worst in me. I feel like a lamb being lead to the slaughter around him even though I know he had absolutely nothing to do with my accident."
"And how do you know that?" Flynn asked curiously as he continued to glance between the two of us.
"Because I left him pepper sprayed and a bloody lump on the floor of his apartment. He was unconscious, but breathing. I called an ambulance when I got into the cab. Outside the apartment, I noticed a black SUV parked in the distance with the parking lights on. I remember seeing it again when I rented the car. He couldn't have had anything to do with it because he wasn't conscious and I imagine by the time he was conscious, I was long gone."
"So how do you two know each other?" Flynn asked. I could have sworn he was struggling to hide a smirk when he glanced my way.
"Let's call it worst date ever and after that, he's the first guy I went on a date with and will be the last," she sighed.
"Why do you say that Anastasia?" Flynn asks softly.
"You attract one of two things: what you are, or what deep down what you feel you deserve, so in my case I'm either a sick, twisted, ass dumpling; or I attract them. Either way, it's not good."
"What made you say yes to him as opposed to any other male who asked you on a date?" Flynn queried.
"I plead the fifth in mixed species company."
I couldn't help it, I laughed. God I loved her smart mouth. Flynn looked at me and I could tell by his gaze that he wanted my approval to reveal that he was my therapist as well. "Anastasia," I begin anxiously, "Dr. Flynn has been my therapist for five years. He knows me better than anyone else – the good, the bad, the ugly."
Her jaw drops open in shock. We can both see her brain racing. "So did you send him here to pick my brain or to have him help you get me to sign your stupid form?"
"No, it's a coincidence," I reply. "We will discuss the form later."
"Right, and next you'll be telling me that my doctor is your sister or something," she snaps at us, causing Flynn to laugh at the irony of the situation.
"Who's your doctor?" I ask, knowing the answer.
"Dr. Trevelyan."
"She's my mother, not my sister," I reply somewhat embarrassed. "She's one of the best pediatricians and family medicine physicians in the state."
"You're like an octopus, aren't you?" she asks bitterly. "There's no escaping you anywhere in Seattle, is there?"
"It's not intentional, I assure you." Even Flynn looks shocked when I say it. He knows I'm a control freak but in this instance I kept my involvement to a minimum, even using Sawyer, who my family has not met as her CPO.
"So he knows it all?" she asks.
I nod.
"What on earth made you believe that I would want to be in a relationship where I was financially maintained while allowing you to tie me up, beat me, and have your way with me? Do I give off that vibe? I can assure you, it certainly wasn't my intention," Ana sighed tearfully before her anger takes over. "I can't be bought at any cost, no matter how good looking you are. I won't trade my body for jewelry. I might not have had the most stable upbringing and my mother's choices left me damaged in some ways, but let me make this very clear Grey – you can do one of two things; either take your billions and buy yourself a clue to what a real personal life is, or, realize that the only types of women that would sign on the dotted lines with your arrangement are as damaged or more damaged than you are. Maybe you should stop beating then, keep fucking them but nicely, and pay for their therapy with the good doctor here, because they obviously need it."
"I'm sorry," I sigh as I sink into the chair on the other side of the room with my hands covering my face.
Is she right? The panic is welling up in me. For years I've believed that since the relationships were consensual so it wasn't an issue, but Anastasia's take, from the outside looking in, has sent me into a tailspin. Did I allow my emotional scars to cause harm to woman who had as many scars as I did. My brain was running faster than any CPU I'd heard of as I went back through my previous submissives.
I'm pulled out of my thoughts when I hear Anastasia whisper to Flynn if she broke me. His reply shocked me. "You didn't break him. I prefer to think you made him look into his world from an outside window, and that's always a good thing."
My emotions are raw. I came here to talk to her and get the NDA signed, yet here I sit, completely overwhelmed and a bit disoriented.
"Ana, will you answer Dr. Flynn's question from earlier about why you said yes to a date with me? I'm trying to understand … well, I'm trying to understand myself."
"I'll answer if you will. It goes both ways," she replies anxiously.
I nod in agreement and she continues.
"When I interviewed you for the college paper, I thought you were an arrogant, control freak, but on the drive back to Portland, I replayed the interview and realized there was more to you simmering underneath the surface. Your obsession with feeding those without, then quickly attempting to make me believe it was a money play, when there isn't money to be made feeding the poor unless you steal it and sell it on the black market for profit. Your casual statement about people believing you don't have a heart, yet anyone that reads up on your charitable work knows that's not true, so it's your own belief in yourself with regard to not having a heart. I did some research after the interview because I couldn't put my finger on what it was about you that I couldn't put my finger on and I realized, you were adopted at four by a good family. It was at that point I realized that I was looking into the eyes of a damaged, lost little boy in a man's body. I wanted to fix you, because in some warped way it would be like fixing myself. In the end, what I saw made me realize, I was losing myself to the darkness that caused my own scars years ago and it scared the crap out of me. You wanted me to repeat my mothers' mistake but going into it knowingly with a smile on my face. I vowed never to become like her. She's not a bad person, but sometimes she makes poor choices and lives with the consequences until so much damage is done, she's beyond repair. As much as I love her, I will not be like her."
Her candidness was overwhelming. Just as I feared, she could see right through me from the start. She saw and understood in a half hour interview more than the therapists I'd paid tens of thousands of dollars to, before Flynn, couldn't. Flynn was staring at me, his look of shock must have been mirrored in my own eyes but multiplied tenfold.
After a minute of awkward silence, she states, "Your turn."
I close my eyes and lean my head back and think back to our first meeting. I can't help but smile before I open my eyes again and look into her blue ones, "The first thing I saw was your beauty, but beyond that I saw your innocence, and your eyes lacked the usual guile that most women have. You were the first woman who I felt saw the real me and my need for control, and challenged it. I was awed by you."
I couldn't pull my eyes away from hers. It was like being trapped. I felt like she was using x-ray vision to get inside my warped mind.
"Back in high school I had a friend named Susan," she began speaking softly addressing her story directly to me, "she was smart, beautiful, and shy. Everyone saw her for who she truly was, except for her. She grew up in a divorced home where her father rarely saw her, leaving her with her alcoholic, high achieving mother who had time for everyone except her own neglected daughter. Her father remarried his mistress and promptly had a few kids and on the rare occasion they saw each other, every other word out of his mouth was criticism. In her case, it didn't help that she resembled her father's family, which caused her mother's family to transfer their feelings of anger, loathing, and hate toward her because they didn't see him. She looked in the mirror and saw an ugly monster who deserved the scorn and hatred of the masses. It's all she'd ever known in her sixteen years of life. But you know what?"
"What?" I barely managed to croak out past the knot I felt in my throat.
"If she can overcome the damage her scarred parents caused her in the first sixteen years, then you can overcome whatever happened before you were adopted. All you have to do is see those that surrounded you for what they were – damaged people with their own issues. People who most likely took out their own self-loathing on an innocent little boy. No child deserves that. I know you well enough from our limited time together that if you saw someone abusing a small child that you wouldn't blame the child – you would blame the adults. It's the only rational choice; yet, in your own case you are blaming yourself."
Flynn nodded in agreement. "You're very perceptive."
She laughed wryly. "When Ray brought me back to Montesano from Texas and the damaged human being that was husband number three, I was broken. I still feel broken only it's a bit more obvious now. At that time, I read everything I could with regard to psychology and realized that a great deal of it is common sense. It's funny how one can apply common sense toward another's situation, but not their own."
All I want to do is go home, have a drink, play depressing music on the piano and try to turn my brain off. The overwhelming sense of panic over not being in control of my own mind is paralyzing. I've seen myself as Christian Grey, master of his domain. Right now, I feel like I'm lost in a tornado of rational truth as I try to cling onto my past beliefs regarding myself, but like Anastasia's beliefs about me, they are slipping though my fingers and I'm lost in two hundred mile per hour winds just waiting for the free fall.