BOOK V
CHAPTER XI
OLD NIGHTMARES
“Do
you know the way to the hospital?”
“Yes,
sir. It’s Wayne County.”
I
dial Ana’s number again and after one ring, it’s sent to voice mail. A quick
response text message dings into my inbox.
*
I’ll call you later.*
I
text her back, totally pissed.
*Answer
the FUCKING PHONE!*
Nouela - The Sound of Silence
“Where’s
the SUV Sawyer was driving?” I’m extremely agitated as I dial Sawyer’s number.
Taylor taps the
blinking blue dot at our destination. So, he’s at the hospital with Ana. That’s
some sort of a consolation, but he too doesn’t answer the phone. He doesn’t
even send a quick text back!
“How
much longer?” I ask after nearly twenty minutes of nervous silence of the
drive.
“Twelve
more minutes sir. I’m also tracking Mrs. Grey’s phone at the hospital. We
should be with her in about sixteen minutes, sir.”
“Did
you know anything about whatever she’s doing right now?” I turn and ask Taylor.
“Not,
a clue, sir,” he says slowly and clearly. Good, Taylor is mad at Ana, too! His
hands are gripping the steering wheel a little too tight, his knuckles are
turning white. Ana has a lot to explain. God, if something happened to her, I
don’t know what I would do!
“Where
the fuck is Sawyer? Are you sure he’s with her?”
“I’m
tracking his phone sir. It’s been moving only within a few feet of radius which
is odd,” he says concerned.
“…and
he isn’t answering it.” I state the obvious.
“Right.”
Concern is loaded in that single word.
The
ride to the hospital is torturous. Minutes feel like eternity. When will it be
over? Taylor senses my anxiety and runs several red lights without getting a
ticket. Tires screech, as Taylor barely slows down to make a turn into the
hospital parking lot. As soon as Taylor parks, I run out of the vehicle. I can
hear Taylor’s string of epithets as he scrambles behind me. Even though I’m in
the same building with my wife, my anxiety doesn’t stop. I run to the
Admissions counter. The nurse’s jaw drops open when she manages to look at me.
“Oh...”
she clears her throat, “may I help you, sir?”
“I’m
looking for a patient here. Anastasia Grey.” When she manages to break her gaze away from
me, she types into her keyboard. She shakes her head.
“We
don’t have a patient by that name, sir. Are you sure she’s in this hospital?”
“She’s
in this building. Can you check Sawyer…” Taylor interrupts me.
“What’s
the last name?” The nurse asks.
“Sawyer
is
the last name,” I say turning back to her, completely irritated for being
interrupted by Taylor.
“Mr.
Grey!”
“What!?!”
I hiss.
“I
know the way,” he murmurs, indicating the way with his head.
“Where
the hell are they?” I ask, bad memories of her last hospital stay flooding my mind.
“I’m
not sure what department, sir. I just pinged Mrs. Grey’s phone. I’m following
it.”
Christ!
I’ve been gone all day. All kinds of shit could have happened! Shit has
happened!
“Jesus!
Ana!”
Taylor
and I make quick way through the crowded hospital corridors. Among the crowd, I
see a young woman holding a little child who couldn’t be older than four years
old. I’m immediately overcome with a sense of déjà vu. I feel in a trance and
stop in my tracks. Taylor notices and turns to me.
“Sir?”
he questions me. I can’t more a step forward.
“Taylor,
do you think the hospitals, places have memories?” my eyes engrossed in the
young mother and her child wearing dirty clothes. Was I born here? Brought here
by Ella as a sick child like this mother? I feel as if these old walls are
calling me, ‘hey little insignificant guy! There you are again!’ Does it
remember me? I think I remember this place. This particular hospital. Why is
Ana here? Am I to make another memory for these walls to store up only to
replay it for me at a later date again? It’s like the different stages in the
fabric of my life will keep replaying themselves here, within these walls. I
hate it already. Yes, I recognize this hospital. Hospitals, they say are the
same. But they are not. This one says, ‘hello old friend,” to me. Yet, I don’t
find it friendly. It gives me an unexpected anxiety.
Eminem - Mockingbird
“Mr.
Grey? Mr. Grey, this way.” I turn to Taylor and notice that this isn’t the
first time he’s calling for my attention. I don’t like being in the dark. Even
the fucking hospital only gives me bits and pieces of information of my past.
Not a complete picture. I found that knowledge is my ally against anxiety caused
by the unknown. That’s why I like having control. And it is my wife who often
makes me lose control. Taylor looks at me expectantly. I nod and follow him.
The corridor takes us to further into the hospital. We go through the double
operating room doors; it opens up to yet another corridor. The rooms echo the
constant sound of the beeping monitors, some have bustling nurses. Anxiety
grows. I can feel my heart burst through my chest. Taylor and I come to a stop
at the end of the corridor, right in front of an obscure room. It’s manned by
someone I don’t recognize. Taylor stands before him.
“Can
I help you?” The stranger’s tone is foreboding.
“No,
you can’t. We need to go in here.” Taylor takes a step forward, staring down
the man. To his credit, he doesn’t back down. He’s wearing a long trench coat.
His face had seen too many tough years. Military? Police? He doesn’t look like
a cop, but he has definitely danced on the line between legal and illegal.
“I’m
sorry, but I’m keeping this door closed until I’m further instructed.” He
spreads his legs shoulder width, and gets into a defensive pose.
“If
my wife, one Anastasia Grey is in that room, let alone you, the entire hospital
can’t stop me!” I hiss, invading his personal space enough to see the roots of
his hair. He checks his watch without flinching. He looks me over with close
scrutiny, his eyebrows knitting together.
“Shhh!
Don’t say her name out loud!” He looks around, side steps me and looks both
directions. Then he checks his watch again.
“You
need to wait about three more minutes,” He says without flinching.
“Mr.
Grey, I’d be happy to remove him,” Taylor moves forward.
“You
need to step away, and wait till your time is up. Taylor!” he orders.
“How
do you know my name?”
“The
lady boss,” he indicates his head. Lady Boss? My wife?
“We
need to go in!”
“Like
I said, it’s locked from inside. Besides, the dude’s dyin’. Lady Boss needs to
speak to him before he expires.”
“Oh,
God! Sawyer!” Taylor and I both shout, our faces mirroring the same horrified
expression.
“Open
the fucking door!” I order. “I have to see my wife!”
“Locked
from the inside, sir,” he says exasperated, yet unmoved. I turn to look at
Taylor; a silent conversation passes between us. I turned the guard appointed
by my wife. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “don’t take this the wrong
way,” and punched his lights out just as Taylor kicks the hospital door in.
***** ❦ ♡ ❧ *****
It
took me a at least twenty seconds to adjust my eyes to the dim light of the
room after the bright hallway. Ana was seated by the hospital bed and leaning
towards a patient who was lying in the hospital bed. She still had her workout
clothes on; black yoga pants, and a yoga tank of the same color. She doesn’t
even turn her head towards the noise as if she had an important mission to
accomplish and she is racing the clock no time to complete it. The scene in the
room looks completely wrong.
Sawyer
looks up, but doesn’t move from his station, or speak a word; he seems
exhausted, a little roughed up, disheveled, the arm of his jacket is ripped. By
the swelling he is sporting, his face would soon show some bruises. He is
standing behind a man, expertly tied up with improvised apparatus on a chair.
Ordinarily, I would be very impressed with such exquisite rigging skills, but
now is not the time. The man’s mouth was covered with surgical tape, while he
sports two shiners. His dark hair was partly matted with blood and sweat. His
bodybuilder size looks far larger than Sawyer’s with his broad shoulders,
bulging biceps covered with exquisite tattoos, and leg muscles that had seen a
lot of hours at the gym. The man appears to have passed out, but involuntarily
moves a little and a muffled moan is heard. I’ve had it!
“What
the hell is going on here?” I bark, as I take a step towards the middle of the
room. Taylor reaches the light switch the illuminate the room, but Sawyer
whispers in a loud tone: “No!”
Ana
continues to whisper to the man lying in bed, the man speaks back to her in
whispered tones. But I realize it’s not because he’s responding her in kind but
that’s as loud as he can speak. He has tubes attached to his arms and a host of
other tubes coming out from under his bed covers. Who the hell is this man?
“Ana?”
I call out to her.
Without
turning to look at me, she whispers, “Shhh!”
Frank Sinatra - Killing me Softly
I
slowly step towards the bed to take a better look at the man. He looks to be in
his late fifties or early sixties. Although it’s hard to tell; this is a man
who looks like he lived life on edge and lived hard. He has no hair or eyebrows;
his skin is jaundiced. His face is swollen with the typical effects of chemo,
but his body under the covers just like his arms over them appear to be skinny.
There’s a hard to forget, sickly-sweet odd odor permeating through him. It is
an odor I’ve smelled once before and I immediately know what it is: approaching
death. This man is dying. This is an odor one does not forget. Scent, they say
has the most powerful memory trigger. I feel my chest tighten and a huge
sadness descends, washing over me. Vivid memories come flooding back to me
trigged by this putrid smell of death. I remember this scent because it was all
over my mom!
I’m
frozen in my spot. Poignant memories don’t just trickle back to my mind; they
break the levees holding them back and flood every fiber of my being.
“You
fucking whore! Bitch! Oh, Jesus Christ! You did yourself in! What the fuck! How
could you do that? I coulda sold that pussy for at least another fifteen years!
Where the fuck is her twerp? Did that crazy bitch kill him, too? Oh fuck! What’ll
the cops say? They wouldn’t care about a whore but they’d care about her
bastard!” he shouts. The face I buried deep in my mind, one I never wanted to
see again is now sitting in that chair and moaning.
But
how could that be? He’s about the same age as he was then if older by ten years
or less. Bulkier. I take a step towards him. I grab his chin and force his face
to look up at me. He’s missing some scars. His hair is thicker. He is also
bulkier.
A
name I had forgotten, buried deep in the darkest corner of my mind pops into my
head. “Detroit Willie,” I hiss. The moaning man slightly cracks his now very
swollen eyes and they drift away from me. The reaction I expect doesn’t come
from the man tied up in the chair. It comes from the sickly, dying man in bed
in the form of gasping words. They are staccato, muffled and forced.
“Who...
who wants…” big gasp for air, “…to…” another gasp and pause, “know?” finally an
exhale.
“The
little twerp!” I respond bitterly. I walk over to his bed and carefully
look at this pitiful man. No sign of what he had been is left other than just a
broken, mangled shell. In fact, I recognize nothing of his young self except
the deep cut scars on his left cheek, possibly attained during a brawl with a
john or a rival. There is nothing else that remind me of Ella’s pimp. He makes
a herculean effort to crack open his clouded eyes. Fixing his gaze on my face,
he tries to place me in his memory, find a name to identify who I am or how I
may know his name.
“My
memory… is weak. ‘fraid don’t…” deep breath, “…know you, man.”
Ana
pauses her phone from recording. “Christian!” she chides me as if I’m
interrupting her mission.
“You’re…
him!” He redirects his gaze Ana, and I immediately get pissed.
“Ana!
Get out of the room!”
“I’m
not done, yet!” she retorts.
“Yes,
you are!”
“No,
I’m not!”
“Taylor!
Take Mrs. Grey out of the room!” I order. Taylor walks towards Ana.
“Mrs.
Grey, please,” he pleads.
“Taylor,
I’m tired of being manhandled. I’m not leaving, don’t you dare to try to make
me! How about you two wait for me out…”
“Ana!”
I am unyielding on this.
“It’s
okay, kid.” This time the voice comes from the bed. “I told you… what… I know.”
Then
he turns to me slightly, and adds, “Sorry boy,” he pauses a long time,
struggling for breath, his eyes drooping, face going paler. “You look… like…
h…” but he doesn’t finish his sentence. He slips into unconsciousness. The man
in the chair gains his consciousness and starts struggling against his
restraints. Sawyer tries to keep him in his seat and as quiet as possible.
Ana
puts her phone in her purse and rises from her seat.
“Sawyer,
take me back to the hotel.” She orders in a firm tone, leaving me standing.
“What
about him?” he asks looking at Ana, then at me.
“The
PI will deal with him,” Ana responds, giving me an exasperated glance.
“Ana!
Who is that man?” I point at the struggling man.
“His
half-brother.” Ana has a lot to answer. Why is he tied up? Did he attack Ana.
He seems to have attacked Sawyer.
“Did
he touch you?” I hiss through my teeth.
“No,”
she says gently this time. “Sawyer had an altercation with him when he tried to
prevent me questioning Mr. Willie.”
“So,
he touched you!” I immediately get near her check her face, arms and check her
body for any visible signs of hurt or damage.
“No,
Sawyer. He took care of it. He wasn’t supposed to be here when I came to talk
to him,” she points the bed with her head. I walk back to the chair and rip off
the surgical tape from the man’s mouth.
“Why did he tie you up?” I ask with
the last shred of patience.
“To get to my brother! I opposed.
She disagreed,” he says nodding his head in Ana’s direction. For a minute, my
heart fills with pride because Ana stood up to this huge man. In the next
second, I worry and get angry about her recklessness. I am at a junction of
confusion, anger, lack of control of the events surrounding my life and this enrages
me. At this moment, I don’t know how I’m going to deal with Ana. I mentally
count down in my head to cool off.
“Sawyer, I need you to take Mrs.
Grey to the hotel.” My voice is cold and devoid of any emotion. He looks at the
man in the chair.
“Fuck you and the bitch that rode
in here to harass a dying man!” he spits at Sawyer. Quick as a cobra, Sawyer
throat stabs him using just two fingers, effectively knocking him out, and
wordlessly walks across the room.
“Mrs. Grey?” he asks her
reverentially. Ana looks at me vibrating with pure rage. She doesn’t say
goodbye or soften her gaze and then the two of them walk out of the hospital
room. I see the glimpse of a grumpy PI as they close the door.
“Wish he hadn’t done that,” comes a
weak voice. “Thinks he’s Jesus to… save my soul,” he tries to laugh which turns
into a cough.
“You have no redeemable soul!” I
bark, unable but unwilling to let the tormentor of my dreams to have power over
me even in his death bed.
“Don’t matter. I’ve lived my life.”
A murderous rage rises in me. Suddenly, I’m furious that he outlived Ella! Taylor
watching every move and twitch of my body immediately blocks my way to his bed.
His hands clasping my arms. I’m ready to fight Taylor to get him out of my way.
“He deserves a long suffering, not
a quick death. Don’t you agree, sir?” Taylor whispers quietly.
“What’s the matter, boy? Weak like
the crack whore?” I’m not sure if he said those words or I imagined them. Even
one foot in the grave, he’s taunting me. I look at Taylor in such a way that he
releases my arms and lifts his hands up in a surrendering fashion.
I fill the chair Ana vacated
earlier, lean into the bed and whisper with malice. “I have aaaall the time in
the world to watch you die suffering, all the while knowing that no one ever
loved you, all you accrued in life is hate and your existence had been pitiful.
You have nothing. You are nothing.”
I knew what I said got to him by
his rising pulse on the beeping machine behind him.
“Don’t!” a choked voice came from
the his now awaking brother. “Let him die in peace.”
“Did Ella die in peace? Why should
he deserve such luxury?”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right! It
won’t bring back any ho’s who OD’d on their own!” the brother tries to shout
with a raw voice.
“I didn’t kill her, boy!” Willie
says sounding stronger. “Was mad at her for doin’ herself in, but she’d have
died sooner or later. She wasn’t strong. Not like your woman…” he says and my
reaction is exactly what he expects.
“I’ll kill you if you take a
sideways glance at my woman!”
“We’ve no intentions,” the brother
says. “That ain’t no little lady! She’s the white witch! That woman’s scarier
than you!” This fist sincere declaration takes me aback. What did my wife do to
terrify two adult thugs?
I’m surprised in the way I can rein
in my rage. Before I can ask another question, there’s a knock on the door.
“What!?!” I find myself shouting.
“Excuse me,” a nurse in scrubs
sticks her head in and only looks at the direction of the bed. “Doctor’s going
to be making his rounds in the next twenty minutes. I can stall another ten, but
that’s all the time you have left,” she says leaving me confused. How had Ana
arranged all this? She has a lot of explaining to do. I get up and pace the
room. The brother’s gaze follows my movements cautiously.
“Are you gonna untie me or what?”
he asks cautiously.
“Shut up!” I stand right in front
of him. Invading his entire personal space, I lean down and look into his eyes.
They’re the exact copy of my former tormentor’s eyes. Except, instead of hatred
and fury, these eyes have fear in them. Fear! Of me!
“Are you taking your brother’s
place in harming young women now that he’s kicking the bucket?” He blanches.
“I’m a tattoo artist. If I hurt
anyone, it’s consensual and for body art. Look man! He’s been done with that
part of his life a long time.”
“Maybe, I still have it in me,”
murmurs Willie’s weak voice. “If…” he breathes heavily, the oxygen constantly
pumping into his nostrils. “…if I was healthy, I would entice your little lady…
like a classy escort.”
Suddenly I descend on him to deliver
a deathly blow, fury I had never experienced before oozing from my pores.
Beyond the hateful haze clouding my eyes, I see a plea of death from this
pitiful creature. He wants to commit suicide by my hands! I won’t give him that
satisfaction. I’m so singularly focused on him, I finally hear Taylor’s voice
behind me, trying to hold me in place while Willie’s brother is shouting “no!”
I drop my hands. My breathing is
rapid, and my heart is running like a charging horse. “Your death,” I whisper
leaning in, “won’t be by my hands. I hope you don’t die right away! You suffer
long and when you do die,” I enunciate, all the while smelling his death in the
air, “I hope you pay for what you did to all the women you trafficked.”
He only smiles halfway, with not
enough strength to even for a full one. The only reaction I get is from the
machines showing his heightened pulse and blood pressure. I turn to leave his
room, Willie speaks again.
“I was wrong about you, twerp. You
are as dangerous as your woman! Just as savage.” Again, I come to wonder what
Ana did to this man who tormented me in my dreams in the last twenty-two years.
“Hey, what about me? Untie me!”
yells his brother. I look at Taylor.
“I’ll let the PI do it,” he says
and holds the door open for me.
***** ❦ ♡ ❧ *****
The ride back to the hotel isn’t
rushed. I don’t want to go just yet. I don’t want to accidentally hurt Ana, or
say something I will regret.
“Drive me around for a while,
Taylor.” I take a deep breath, take out my phone and dial. The voice I haven’t
heard in a very long-time, answers.
“I thought you dropped me,” the
voice answers. I take a deep breath.
“I need your help,” I say finally,
fully exasperated.
“I recognize the tone. It must be
about Ana, then.”
“Ya think?” my voice is mocking but
it’s ignored.
“Tell me what happened. Better yet,
come over.”
“I can’t, I’m in Detroit,” I say
disappointed.
“How about Ana and Teddy?”
“They’re in Detroit as well. She…”
I take a deep breath not knowing where to begin. “She did something kind. At
first… You know about my fucking nightmares.” Only three people are well aware
of them: Elena, Flynn and Ana. But only Elena and Ana had seen them in action
and both of them had drastically different approaches to help me out, save me
from them. Well, Elena helped me to control them, Ana, I suppose is trying to
eliminate them.
“Will I see you when you get back
to Seattle?”
“Yes, of course, as soon as I get
back tomorrow,” I say anxiously. “But I need your help right now. I’m
completely ambivalent about how I should feel right now. In one hand I feel
complete and utter betrayal and for that I really want to punish Ana. On the
other hand, she has done some amazing acts of kindness, and what she did today
may be just the continuation of that and if that’s the case, I want to worship
her at her feet. But then she put herself in danger and I’m close to firing
Sawyer, so I’m leaning more towards punishing her. She made me lose control and
I nearly killed him!” Taylor’s eyes briefly meet with mine on the rearview
mirror, concern written all over it.
“Christian, I need you to slow
down, because it sounds like we were having a conversation but I only joined
you in the tail end of it. So, start from the beginning.” I exhale out my
exasperation.
I retell the story from the
beginning. Aside from uh huh, hmmm, okay, I get no reaction that tells me that
she or I did something right or wrong for that matter.
“What do you think you should do?”
That annoying question again.
“Really? Is this a shrink’s go to
question to avoid any form of thought process? Why am I paying a truckload of
money if you aren’t giving me your expert
opinion, Flynn?” I spew.
“You know the reason. If I tell you
what to do, then you are not training your mind to think in the constructive
way to better your relationship,” he explains patiently. “So, tell me what you
should do.”
I inhale deeply. “I’m too
conflicted to form an opinion or decide on a course of action. As it is, if I
allow my instincts to kick in, you know the way it will go and that will be bad
for Ana, and I will release the pent-up rage but then I’ll feel terrible at the
end, because she’ll first enjoy it and then hate it! Then hate me for it!”
“Well then, it’s a conundrum and
you already know the answer.” He says.
“I don’t know any of the answers!” My
frustration is at the tipping point as Flynn talks to me the way I would Teddy.
“Your biological mother’s choices
and this man whom you’ve witnessed abuse her, consequently abuse you have been
the single biggest negative contributor to your psyche. I can give you some
textbook answers, but you already know all of those. Ana is deeply in love with
you and you with her. Is there anything you wouldn’t do for her? Why is it such
a big stretch of imagination that she wouldn’t go to such lengths to free you
from your nightmares? Wouldn’t that count that she’d do anything for you?
Didn’t she prove that to you with Jack Hyde?” he asks with a hint of
chastising.
“That’s my point! It nearly killed
her and she almost lost the baby! How could she put herself in danger with that
pimp?”
I’m too angry and too focused on what
Taylor is trying to do to get my attention. Finally, he clears his throat and raises
his voice to get my attention, “Mr. Grey?”
“What!?!” I snap.
“Sawyer called. Mrs. Grey took
Teddy and is going to take a commercial flight back to Seattle.”
“What the fuck!?!” I shout into the
phone.
“I didn’t say anything,” Flynn
erroneously assumes that I yelled at him.
“I’ll talk to you later!
Emergency!” I hang up on him before he can get a word edgewise.
“Head to the fucking airport!”
As I try to fumble on my phone to
speed dial Ana’s number, I see texts from her.
*Teddy and I are going back home.
Commercial. You are angry. As am I. There are things I wanted to speak to you
about, but, guess we’ll see about that. We or rather I need to cool down.*
What the fuck does that mean? Is
she running away from me? Is my wife leaving me with our child? Did the pimp say something that made her disgusted of
me? My eyes are clouded with mist while the enormous boulder that just formed
in my throat is blocking my airways. With numb fingers, I dial her number immediately.
She answers after the fourth ring.
“I can’t talk to right now,
Christian,” her voice sound weepy.
“Where the fuck are you going?” I
hiss my anger, hurt and disappointment in one single breath.
“Home. Didn’t your cronies tell you
that already?” I guess she means Sawyer. I can imagine his face reddening.
“Anastasia Rose Grey! You will give
me and all of our staff a collective heart attack! You know that’s not fair to
any one of us!” I hear her take a regretful breath.
“I’m sorry,” she finally mutters.
“I still need to cool down by myself.”
“Do you really want to leave me
alone in this state? Leave me a mess?” I find myself pleading.
The Pretty Reckless - Make me Wanna Die
“You dismissed me!” she whispers.
“You don’t let me protect you. You push me away!” That’s a load of crap.
My gaze meets with Taylor’s in the
mirror.
“Sawyer’s stalling,” he mouths, as
he speeds through the freeway.
“I am your husband! It’s my job to
protect you and our son! Do you have any idea what state you put me in when I
heard that you were in the hospital? Worse than finding you with that fucking
pimp who epitomized everything evil during my entire existence! And now that
you found out how a terrible kid I was, you’re running for the hills! Was it
worse than the adult Christian?” I whisper. I’m losing it. My life is crumbling
around me and I can’t do anything about it.
“Noooo! No, Christian, no! There
was nothing wrong with you back then, and nothing wrong with you now! Can’t I
just be mad at my overprotective, jealous, dismissive husband without finding
him terrible?” I hear Teddy cry in the background. I immediately want to take
him to my arms and soothe him, but she’s taking him home.
“Just come back,” I plead.
“I’m only going to our
home,” she responds gently. Taylor’s gaze meets with mine again, and he nods as
he exits the freeway. I hang up the phone without answering her as Taylor comes
to a stop behind another SUV. I exit the SUV I’m riding in and run to the
passenger door of the other vehicle, flinging it open.
“Wherever you go, I go. We don’t do
it alone,” I say to the bewildered face of my wife. She bores accusatory holes
in Sawyer and Melissa’s backs. Her lips are a tight line.
“I harrowed my personal hell for you
this week. The least you can do is to help me get through it. Not run away when
going gets tough,” I murmur. “I thought you remembered all your wedding vows.”
Teddy’s contorted face cries harder when he hears my voice and his little hands
reach to me to comfort him. Ana melts and she too starts crying as she lets me
pick him up from his car seat. Tears force their way down my cheeks silently as
I coo my son to make him feel safe. At this moment, all three of us are crying,
all for very different reasons.
“Take us home, Christian,” Ana
whispers coming to my side, and hugging us both.
“Yes, let’s go home.”
Angelina Jordan - Fly Me to the Moon
