Blaring alarms. Defibrillators once again. Anna's body jolting off the bed. A prayer from him for the assault on her body to just stop. The miracle of a sinus rhythm. A call for an operating room punctuated with a STAT! A plea from Robin that her mother wasn't strong enough that it was too soon. A rushed assurance from Patrick that her ICP was rising too quickly and there was no time left. A grim faced Patrick walking out of the OR. His shoulders slumping as he reached them. An unwanted answer to that earlier prayer. A series of events that led Robert Scorpio to where he was right now. On one side of Anna's bed with Robin on the other, both of them holding Anna's hands trying their damnedest to hold it together as they tried to say good-bye. Neither one of them wanted to believe Patrick when he told them that he'd done all he could do, but that Anna would not make it through the night. Robert found it interesting how everyone had their own coping mechanism. Patrick had snuck off to hold Emma, while Robin has cycled in between clutching her mother's hand begging, pleading, and cajoling and researching, determined to come up with some eleventh hour miracle; he chuckled to himself. Anna swore Robin had married him, but the truth was she'd married her. It was a scenario that had played out enough times, Anna clutching Robin close while he bulldozed through the problem. The only thing more amusing was his own reaction. There was no bulldozing to be done today. All he could do was watch the clock with the sinking realization that every minute passing was a minute less Anna had left and plead for time to stop.

The idea of losing Anna was driving him to the brink of insanity. There had been other times, but he'd known that she was okay. After the explosion on the docks, he'd left her in the hospital. Injured, but alive and on her way to a full recovery, and after the tanker he'd known that she was again injured, but okay in the hands of Bart. The only other time he'd come close to feeling this helpless was during the Putnam affair, but even then there had been something for him to do to help her, to save her. He had searched. He'd held her in his arms as she collapsed. She'd gotten her to GH, well he and Lavery, but that was a point his possessive nature preferred to gloss over. She was his Anna, his and only his, and now his Anna was preparing to leave him, and the simple truth was he didn't know who he was without her. If Patrick was right, and she left him before morning, he wanted to go with her. He needed to go with her to know that she was okay just as he'd done so many times in the past. He needed to go with her to tell her how he felt once and for all and to know that she'd heard him. Robin swore that patients in a coma could hear those around him, but he didn't know that she was right about that fact. He vividly recalled his own coma, and while the people he loved had been with him, they'd been more a figment of, as Anna had put it, his psyche than an actual presence. What if she hadn't heard him earlier? What if she died without knowing how much he loved her and how sorry he was for everything? Their's was an epic love story, and it couldn't end like this, it was just wrong.

He prayed she'd wake up. He prayed that if this really was good-bye, it would at least be a proper one. The universe owed her that much. Anna may have quite a bit of gray in her sense of morality, but at the end of the day no matter how wrong her actions they were always done with the intention of helping someone, and she had. Anna had helped so many people over the years both in her "superspy" life and in her everyday friend, lover, sister, mother, grandmother role that he was certain her karmic bank account had to be full. He was well aware his was in the red, but that was his account, she shouldn't pay his debts and neither should their child.

Robin was the one thing he'd done right in life, and the amount of pain she was in right now was more than he could bare, although true to form he was allowing his own pain to overshadow hers. She was a testament to the impact Anna had in his life. Finding out that he was a father gave him a reason to fight even harder for all that was good. It wasn't just about saving the world anymore, now it was about creating a better world for his little girl. Lord, he hoped she could see that and understand all he'd wanted to do for over the years, but how could she without their translator. Robert didn't know who to plead to anymore: God, fate, who ever would listen, so he turned to his one constant and whispered in her ear, "Luv, the chips are down. I need you and your stubbornness to come through for me one more time and prove Patty Cake wrong. I'm not ready for this, come back."