Christian's POV
"Grey" and there's silence on the phone, who the hell is this? I really need to check before I answer, "Christian, how are you doin' bro" but I don't recognise his voice, he sounds like he has a massive hangover "Elliot?" I ask "Yes dude, my fucking head feels like it is going to explode with the shit you've been through, what Ana's gone through .." and I can hear him sobbing again – why is everyone taking this so bad? And then a thought hits me "Elliot, listen to me, you CANNOT tell Katherine any of this. Tell me you haven't spoken to her. Elliot…what have you done? Have you told Katherine anything?"
Finally he composes himself and says "No bro, I haven't told Kate, she thinks I was out drinking I think because I couldn't get any words straight when I spoke to her this morning. She is coming up today with all of Ana's study stuff and I want to see her to make sure we're all straight and I need to bury myself in her – what the fuck am I going to say to her?"
"Elliot, you need to pull it together, I've lived it and you are …" and he angrily responds, "Shit Christian, you don't get it, we had this dumped on us yesterday, all of it, yes you've lived it for all these years and we still don't know what you lived through before you came to us but we have had it dumped on us like a lorry load of shit, not spread out to absorb and react over the years – now I understand why you were so ready to lash out at people, no-one better get in my way today. Sorry Bro' now I'm lashing out at you."
"Just don't say anything to Katherine, I haven't spoken to Ana about it and Katherine is a reporter with reporter instincts, I can tell, so make something up about something happening at work and don't go into the hospital with her – I don't know who is going to be there today."
"Was anything decided last night? I've had my phone off all night and morning until now." And there is silence on the end of the phone and then Elliot says "Where'd you go last night?" and when I say the hospital he actually chuckles "Damn Ana has the right effect on you, don't fuck it up bro'" and I can't help but think it is already.
How am I going to tell her about everything and if the only reason she feels anything for me is because of the Stockholm Syndrome (or something like it) then she is really going to hate me. I must have been quiet for a while because Elliot says cautiously "You haven't already have you bro?" and suddenly I'm really angry "Since when have I gotten anything right except for business? Nothing, I have never gotten it right, no matter what I do so yeah, I probably have fucked this up already" and I hang up.
Actually, I'm not angry I am beyond terrified that when I go into Ana's room and tell her what I know about her, about me and those that have touched both of us that she won't see me again, that she'll tell me to go away. If she does, I will walk away and I won't be able to come back because I will be shattered, I don't know what it is about her but her innocence and now I know her back story, I don't want to be the one to give her more grief how much can one girl stand?
So with a heart beating so fast that it shows me that I have a heart, I walk back into Ana's room. She is lying back on the pillows, her cheeks are stained with tears, she looks like she is twisting her face to stop herself from crying anymore and her fists are clenched on the sheet and that formerly non-existent heart feels like it misses a beat. "Ana what's the matter, where's Ray?" I whisper, has someone said something to her? I am going to kill them… and then I hear "Christian, it hurts, I can't do this, I'm never going to walk again. What am I going to do?" and my heart tears a little more. "Ana, will you trust me? I know you don't want to take the pain killers because of what happened with your mum and I will explain why I understand, but why don't you let that be something I help you with. If you're scared of dependency, why don't I control it so we record it all in a spreadsheet, you can see how much you are taking and we won't let it get to a dependency situation – I'll do it on the iPad if you want or if you want me to control it so there is no way you can manipulate it then I will? Why don't we treat this as a business of "Getting Ana well" and it can have smaller projects "Getting Ana to graduation" and "Getting Ana to fly through finals" and then "Getting Ana a job"" and then she says something that makes that non-existent heart melt a little "Can we have a small project in there called "Making Christian Happy" and another one "Making Ana not so sappy"?"
And I want to kiss her to make her feel better and to make me feel better but the picture of Stockholm runs through my mind and I pull away, I can't do it, I can't keep making her feel like she is obligated to me. Ana is staring at me with worried eyes, "What's the matter Christian? What has happened? What have I done? Oh God, you think I'm like Carla don't you and now you don't want anything to do with me." And then she gets angry, really angry and it's as sexy as hell but I drag myself back to what she is saying "I can't believe it, you have had everything handed to you on a silver platter all your life, now you know that I have dragged myself out of the scum of society and you don't want anything to do with me. Well fine, let's get these projects organised and done so that I am no longer in your hair. God forbid that I put some dust on that mighty fine suit or a fingerprint on your life somehow" and then the angry tears slide down her cheeks as her body starts to shake.
"Oh Ana" and I go to put my arms around her and she pulls away with a strangled "Don't touch me!" and the irony is not lost on me and what I thought never existed is shattering entirely, my heart breaks and I know that the only one that holds my heart in their hands now is Ana and she has the power to bring it to life or strike out the tiny spark of life it has seen.
"Ok, although you are completely wrong about me having everything on a silver platter all my life, you are one gorgeous ball of angry and you know, it makes me feel better." As she huffs at me I continue with "Don't get angrier, we need to talk, you are not going anywhere and we are going to talk and I am not having anyone else interrupt me so let's do this, let's start project 'Getting Ana Well'." And I get up and lock the door, no-one is going to interrupt us.
"First Ana, as you would recall from the interview on Monday, I am driven and I will succeed, so this project will succeed, I need you to believe in that and trust me, in business I understand what to do. In the rest of my life, I would honestly say that I haven't had any success and you deserve to understand it before you are angry at me for not kissing you. That was what started you off just now wasn't it?" And I am rewarded by a stubborn pout and then a downward look from those big blue eyes and when I press with "Wasn't it?" an angry little "Yes". I just want to kiss her and lose myself there for days but I can't when I keeping thinking that I have backed her into this somehow, I get the feeling she is going to tell me that I am being ridiculous but now that the idea has taken root in my brain, I can't shake it off.
"Secondly, let's do this, you need some pain relief and I will not give you any explanations on anything until you take it and there are a lot of explanations I have to make to you." For a second I think she is going to defy me because I have upset her, the crossed arms sure indicate that she is listening to me under sufferance at this point. "I agreed to take tablets instead of being injected but then I refused to take them" she says and so I say "Ok, let me go and speak to the nurses, don't go anywhere" and she twists her lips as if to say "Yeah, so not funny asshole" I find the head nurse and say quickly that Ana is concerned that she has a familial history of painkiller abuse and so would like pain relief tightly controlled and recorded. I tell her that I have said I will do the recording for her and would they assist and come and give some pain relief.
The nurse actually looks relieved and comes down and provides the medication and says "You know that while your pain is so severe, it is unlikely for your body to develop an addiction as it is using it all to assist with the pain levels but here are all the details and the number you have taken so far. We will keep a record and update you in the morning each day, will that do?" and with Ana's nodded acceptance, she watches Ana take them, notes it down and leaves the sheet with me to record all the details. I fire up my computer and show Ana how I am recording what she has taken, how many and at what time and she nods again. If I could only see the tightness in her eyes disappear from the pain, I'd be so much happier.
"Thirdly, what you told me about your mother this morning doesn't change a thing between us." And before I have a chance to say anything, she bursts out with "You need to understand I am not like my mother" she looks at me with such grief stricken eyes that I can't help but get up and sit on her bed and pull her into me, rubbing circles on her back reassuringly and thankfully she doesn't push me away this time. "Honey, I know that with every fibre of my being" there is nothing even remotely similar between Ana and Carla except their looks and even in that, Carla is coarse and over done while Ana is a simple natural beauty. A vision that should be standing on a cliff top with the sunset shining behind her as the wind blows her hair.
"Actually I lie, it does change something, two things actually, my respect for you has increased in leaps and bounds for what you have had to go through and from such a young age, I'm sorry that I ended up causing you all this extra pain now and the second thing is that it makes our lives very similar. It means I can understand some of how you think, although I don't profess to understand how a woman's brain works, let alone yours, it's just that we have somehow lived what could have been parallel lives." And she looks at me like I have grown two heads.
"I haven't told anyone what I am about to tell you now, well, I have told a slew of therapists so please bear with me, I find it very hard to talk about. I have a number of cigarette burn scars on my chest and back from my childhood." My voice drops to a whisper as it gets harder to say "I had a horrific childhood. The woman who brought me into this world was a crack-whore, Anastasia. Yes, one step up from your mom and it sounds like you had men coming and going in your life too and I hope they never laid a hand on you" I can't look at her because I don't want to see an affirmation in her eyes and I don't want to see the pity there either.
"One of the pimps used to butt out his cigarettes on my body if I didn't hide. If I did hide he would find me and hit me with his belt and then kick me until I stopped crying. My earliest memory of this is about age 3, of being hungry and being hit and burned and then when I was 4 one day the pimp discov ered the crack whore had had enough and committed suicide by overdose. I was so hungry and so thirsty and my mother was so cold and she wouldn't wake up, no matter how I tried to wake her. It took him 4 days to make the discovery of her dead body and phone it in to the authorities. He knew I was there because I was huddled over my mother trying to make her warm, he gave her a kick for "fucking up his life" and me an extra kick for being there then he shut the door as he left . . . left me with her . . . her body." I can feel Ana shuddering next to me and she simply reaches out and grabs my hand in hers, pulls it into her lap and strokes it, she doesn't say anything but the hand on mine is trembling and then I feel the tear drops on my arm. Without hurting her ribs I pull her a little tighter, I can't give her anything but I need to absorb her comfort and she curls herself in as comfortably as she can.
"You were 4 and you remember?" she asks softly and I say "well you were 5 do you remember?" and I feel the nod under my chin. "It was the belt mostly, if I was 'in the way' or 'eating all the profits'" and this time I am shuddering because I can't imagine hitting a little girl and then the unwanted image of all the brown haired girls I have belted in the playroom comes to mind and the realisation comes as a slamming sucker punch, I am as a bad as all those pimps that have beaten the Ana's of the world, I am the same as the pimp that used to belt me and my mother. That's what I have been doing all this time, I have been punishing the crack-whore for every time she didn't protect me from the pimp by effectively turning into the beast himself. I quickly disentangle myself from Ana and run for the bathroom, my stomach relieving itself of its contents. Finally Ana's voice manages to cut through to my consciousness as it sounds like she is becoming frantic and it is when I hear her say "Christian are you ok? I am going to press my panic button" that I manage to lift me head up and say "I'll be back in a minute". What am I going to say to her?
Finally I am able to pick myself up off the floor and wash my face and mouth, rub my teeth with some toothpaste and walk back in, I can see the concern written all over Ana's face but I can't look her in the eye. "I'm sorry Christian, what did I say?" and I can't believe she is taking responsibility for my reaction. "God Ana, you are unbelievable, get back to your story, how long did the beatings go on for?" and I am scared at the answer.
"Only until I figured out what was going on and then I disappeared as soon as either type of man turned up. I think I was 7 when I spied on my mom one day and saw the pimp give her pills and she gave him money, then some other man came along and they went into the room and then he gave her money. Then the pimp started breaking the tablets, giving her smaller tablets and she gave him more money. It was an interesting way to learn about business…." I learnt the lesson and started making brownies and selling them at school, then I cut them slightly smaller and so made more money with the same tray of brownies. It was a valuable lesson to learn because I could then cook an extra dinner a week." She shrugs and then chuckles. "Trust me, I can manage a budget. You always have to find the positive" and there it is, this amazing girl has found the positive while I have always wallowed in the negative.
"Do you want to tell me what that was about?" she says pointing at the bathroom, "I obviously triggered something" well ok, it's now or never.
"Ana, you have to promise me that you won't cut me out of your life, no matter what I tell you now, please?" And I know I am begging and asking a lot of her as whatever I am going to say is going to be awful but those blue eyes are looking at me calmly and darken as she says "I promise I will listen to everything you have to say because I feel you don't talk to too many people, hmm you shout at a lot" small smirk, I can't believe she has managed to smart mouth me in the middle of an important and heavy statement and she continues with "I promise to not jump to conclusions, I've done that once today and the possible outcome of you walking out the door made my heart twist. I will hear you out but only if you give me the kiss you owe me from before." And I know she is asking in case she never wants to kiss me again and I am willing to do that because I don't know if I will ever be able to have a chance again.
Her kisses bring light into my life so I gently take her face in my hands and she puts her hands in my hair and we give ourselves over to it, it feels like a farewell and the tears running down her face are salty as they mingle with her sweetness. I take my lips away from hers and gently kiss the tears saying "I'm not saying goodbye but if you decide to never speak to me again, you need to understand I will still make sure you are at your graduation and you will complete your finals and you will be standing and walking again and you will have your dream job, whether I am here or not" and the tears turn into sobs at the anticipation that whatever I am going to tell her is going to be life changing.