by Anna Roberts
Roach is the long suffering boss who has to somehow run a publishing company with Ana as its editor. At this point he probably has some kind of bingo card pinned up on the wall of his office listing all the stupid reasons Ana has used to skip work in the past.
Ana then spends a page explaining to her assistant all the things they have to do while she’s away in Portland. Her assistant assures her that they’ll ‘muddle through’ – which is hilarious considering all Ana ever does at work is e-mail Captain Tantrum and talk about her crotch.
Then she meets Sawyer and explains to him about her Dad being in a car-crash...wait, no. Is this whole section just Ana going round explaining to everyone who has been in the book for more than five minutes that her Dad has been in a car-crash? A quick skim ahead reveals that yes, this is indeed the case.
She calls her walking shitfit of a husband and he calls her back.
“Sorry, baby – I can be there in about three hours. I have business I need to finish here. I’ll fly down.”
Did you get that? This is the same man who made an unscheduled flight back from New York because his wife went out for drinks when he wanted her to stay in. The same guy who drops everything, drives across town and harrasses her at work over her using her maiden name in an e-mail. And now he’s busy?
Every time I think this guy can’t get any more terrible he goes and proves me wrong.
On the other hand, Ana is also pretty terrible. The thought of Christian flying his stupid dick-extension helicopter sends her into a panic, because the last time he did so it crashed for about five incredibly melodramatic pages.
They get to the hospital and Ana, in the depths of fear and grief, still takes time out to be unpleasant to random strangers who don’t remotely deserve it.
The elevator is agonisingly slow, stopping on each floor. Come on...come on! I will it to move faster, scowling at the people strolling in and out and preventing me from getting to my dad.
Then she complains the nurse on the desk is ‘officious’ and ‘myopic’ and is led to the waiting room to meet José and Bosé. Bosé has a badly broken leg and is in a wheelchair, which makes no sense in the light of everything you thought you knew about orthopedic surgery. However, it makes all kinds of sense when you remember that he used to be Jacob’s paraplegic dad from Twilight.
José tells his dad to calm down in Spanish, in case you weren’t clear he was Mexican, and Ana takes up neurology again, which is fun, because she hasn’t done that since book one when she got everything-you-can-learn-about-the-medulla-oblongata-on-Wikipedia completely and hilariously wrong.
You’ll be pleased to know E.L. James writes anguish and worry almost as well as she writes...well, anything really.
Oh no, no...Panic swamps my limbic system again. No, no, no. My body shudders and chills...
We learn that Rarlie is still in surgery, having been on the passenger side of the vehicle when it was hit by a drunk driver. They were driving to a fishing trip, because nobody in this book ever goes to work, except for Christian Grey, and he can’t be relied upon to stay there unless his father-in-law is in a near fatal traffic accident.
José puts his jacket around Ana’s shoulders because her immediate response to anything bad happening is to start shaking like a shitting dog. Do you remember how often we’re told she’s ‘brave’? Yeah, good times.
“Why were you fishing in Astoria?” I ask.
Um...because I’m guessing there are fish there? Is this some kind of zen koan? I don’t get it. Ana, have you interacted with another person ever?
Sawyer reenters, bearing a paper cup of hot water and a separate tea bag. He knows how how I take my tea!
Given that you assholes conduct your noisy, meaningless existence with all the discretion and good taste of a clinically depressed primate smearing poop all over its living quarters, Sawyer probably intimately knows the shape of your o-face and the size of your favourite buttplug by now.
I dunk my tea bag in the water and, rising shakily, dispose of the used tea bag in a small trashcan.
I’ve said it once before but it bears repeating – this is so not the kind of teabagging I should be reading about in a so-called dirty book.
Just in case you weren’t bored enough hearing about the tea bag...
I slowly sip my tea. It’s not Twinings, but some cheap nasty brand, and it tastes disgusting.
What? You mean it tastes like hot water that’s been briefly introduced to a tea bag? Well, I never.
I glance at my watch. 2.15pm. He should be here soon. My tea is cold...Ugh.
You can tell Ana is a deep and nuanced character, can’t you?
Time crawls so slowly.
Tell me about it.
Christian strides in. His face darkens momentarily when he notices my hand in José’s.
Once again, Christian Grey ups the hateful ante. I don’t get it. If anyone can please explain the appeal of this man I would love to know. He is dreadful in every imaginable way.
A doctor comes in and tells them that Rarlie is out of surgery. Christian continues to behave like a fucking infant.
“I’m his daughter, Ana.”
“Miss Steele - ”
“Mrs. Grey,” Christian interrupts him.
“My apologies,” the doctor stammers, and for a moment I want to kick Christian.
Get in line, lady. Get in line.
“I’m Dr. Crowe. You father is stable, but in critical condition.”
What does that mean?
It means your father is stable, but in critical condition.
Rarlie is in an induced coma. I wish I was.
José goes off to get some rest and Ana curls up in Christian’s lap and starts smooching all over him in the middle of a hospital waiting area. Am I being overly English by thinking this is gross? Then they moo about The Philadelphia Story, which is Grace’s favourite film, although at this point you may be forgiven for asking ‘Who’s Grace?’ Then they go up to the ICU.
The ICU on the sixth floor is a stark, sterile, functional ward with whispered voices and bleeping machinery.
As opposed to a busy, cluttered gingham-trimmed space where people spill their coffee and yell at the top of their voices. Seriously – even if you’re lucky enough to have never seen the inside of an ICU you’ve probably seen one on television, right? I think we can furnish our own descriptions here.
[The noise of the ventilator] is weaving with the beep, beep, beep of his heart monitor into a percussive, rhythmic beat. Sucking, expelling, sucking, expelling, sucking, expelling in time with the beeps.
This is possibly the best paragraph in the entire book. It sums up the whole experience of reading it – it sucks and it makes me want to expel things, usually my last meal.
There’s more. Oh God, kill me. Why is there more? Why is there always more?
Weirdly Ana has always called Rarlie by his first name whenever she mentioned him before (rarely) but now he’s her Daddy Daddy Dearest and her heart belongs to Daddy forever. This kind of goes to the heart of why I hate Ana – every damn crisis is a drama in which she must take the starring role. She has no empathy for others because her pain, her fear, her love, must always be bigger and better than anyone else’s. She doesn’t even empathise with Christian; her tearful ruminations on his Dave Peltzer infancy are nothing more than shallow projections. In fact on one occasion she actually shuts him down for pointing out that after the age of four years old his childhood was one of unrelenting happiness and privilege.
The nurse is, predictably, ogling Christian. Because he’s the most beautiful man in the world and all women swoon at his approach. It’s not like beauty is in the eye of the beholder or that different women might have different types or anything.
She smiles at me, her cheeks pink from a telltale blush. Incongruously, I find myself thinking blonde is not her true colour.
Ana, there is nothing ‘incongruous’ about you revelling in mean-spirited criticisms of other women – you do it
all the fucking time.
True to form, she’s currently wallowing greedily in her own picturesque pain. She flops down at her darling Daddy’s bedside and starts coughing out clichés.
...it’s only now when he’s unconscious and can’t hear me that I really want to tell him how much I love him. This man has been my constant. My rock.
Has he?
And I’ve never thought about it until now.
Or mentioned him much at all, actually.
Very quietly, so as not to disturb anyone, I tell him about our weekend in Aspen and about last weekend when we were soaring and sailing aboard The Grace. I tell him about our new house, our plans, about how we hope to make it ecologically sustainable...
At this point my notes say ‘lol BEEEEEEEEEP’. Can you imagine? You’re lying there in a coma with holes in your spleen and a busted left kidney and more metal in one leg than you see at the average BodyMod convention, and then Ana comes and sits down at your bedside and starts talking about herself?
On the bright side, I’ve stopped envying Rarlie. The poor, poor bastard.
Then Ana and Christian go to the Heathman. Remember the Heathman from book one? Sure you do.
How often have I thought about that first night and morning I spent with Christian Grey...
Yeah. I’ve thought about it a lot too. I’m sure if law enforcement agencies knew about it they’d also have found plenty of food for thought, not to mention several grounds for criminal prosecution.
Ana once again starts mentally mooing about how her husband is sheltered and a ‘lost boy’ and contemplating how the events of the last chapter must have affected him. Meanwhile Dad’s still in a coma but ho hum...
“Oh Ana,” Christian murmurs. “I’ve not seen you like this. You’re normally so brave and strong.”
Notes just say ‘LOL’. I have nothing to add.
They take a bath together and then Ana says this;
“You didn’t get into the bath with Leila, did you? That time you bathed her?”
Really? Really, Ana? We’re still on this? Now?
Then they talk shit about his other ex-girlfriends – you know. Them. The poor, sad losers who were just disposable objects to Christian, not like Ana, who is different and special. Apparently one of the former submissives has just qualified to be a doctor, which is a sorry second place to being Mrs. Christian Grey. We can only hope that saving the odd human life now and again might remind her that her sad failure of an existence still has some residual meaning.
Meanwhile Taylor (remember him?) has been out shopping for them.
...[he’s] bought a whole weekend’s worth of clothes, and he knows what I like. I smile, remembering the first time he’s shopped for clothes for me at the Heathman.
Ana, that is nothing to smile about. Holy shit. If you haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey, there’s a scene early in the book where Christian ‘rescues’ a puke-drunk Ana from a nightclub. She is unconscious when he bundles her into his car and takes her to his hotel suite at the Heathman, thus constituting a major felony which nobody seems to notice.
Are you creeped out? Well, hang on tight, folks. Because there’s more.
He takes off her vomit-stained clothes – while she’s unconscious – and puts her in bed with him. At this point in the book they have spoken to one another three whole times.
I will never stop shuddering over this.
Anyway, it’s Ana’s birthday tomorrow, and like everything they manage to be really, really annoying about it.
“You look so young,” Christian says softly, glancing up, his eyes glowing. “And to think you’ll be a whole year older tomorrow.” His voice is wistful. I give him a sad smile.
Yes, you’ll be a grizzled and world weary twenty-two year old. Cry me a fucking river, you whiny little neonate.
They go back to the hospital and Ana praises Christian for ‘not frothing at the mouth’ in José’s presence. Yes, well done, Christian - you didn’t punch a guy for looking at your wife while her Dad was in a coma.
It turns out that Grace, Christian’s mother, has come to the hospital too because she is a doctor and we can’t have Rarlie being treated by someone outside the cult family. Apparently while Christian didn’t ask her to come she knew anyway, because she was probably telepathic back when she used to be Esme ‘Stepford’ Cullen. I can’t remember what Esme’s vampire power was – knowing Stephenie Meyer’s unreconstructed views on women it was probably ‘Being supernaturally good at interior design’ or ‘Having really nice hair’.
Then they go back to the hotel and go to bed, because it’s time for the chapter to end, but not before Christian has given us some extra special bedtime creepiness.
“Being here makes me think of how far we’ve come. And the night I first slept with you...”
...when you kidnapped her.
“...what a night that was...”
...when you bundled her drunk, unconscious ass into your car, drove her to your hotel, partially undressed her and put her in bed with you like she was some kind of novelty teddy bear.
“...I watched you for hours.”
Oh yeah. Good night, sleep tight, don’t have nightmares. I’ll just be over here rocking back and forth in the corner. You creepy, creepy fuck.
Chapter Eighteen – It’s A Shame About Ray
Since the previous chapter began with Ana actually conscious, it’s probably about time we had another chapter that starts with Ana waking up. All of the books are like this, by the way. It gives them a strange, Groundhog Day quality that at first led me to wonder if my Kindle was malfunctioning and returning to the same page over and over.
“Shit! Daddy!” I gasp out loud, recalling with a gut-wrenching surge of apprehension that twists my heart and starts it pounding why I’m in Portland.
Why is this sentence? How are words? This what is?
Right. No. Don’t wake up and utter things like that, Ana. Please. I went numb for a moment and thought I could smell burning toast.
So, yeah – Rarlie is not dead, which is nice. He’s still in a coma but had a good night, and now it’s Ana’s birthday. Hurrah! Another opportunity to make everything in the sodding world all about her.
Christian gives her a gift and a card which reads ‘For all our firsts on your first birthday as my beloved wife’. Seems I'm not the only one who resents Ana being the centre of attention on her birthday - her needy dipshit husband is at it too. Anyway - if you cared, and you so didn't, I know - the gift is a Cartier charm-bracelet commemorating the various sights of Europe that they didn’t see on their honeymoon because they were too busy shaving one another’s junk.
Then there’s some crying. Because what this book needs is more crying.
I sniff in a rather unladylike way. “I’m sorry. I’m just so happy and sad and anxious at the same time. It’s bittersweet.”
I don’t think I can take much more of this writing.
Then they have breakfast. Then they brush their teeth. Are you excited? I’m excited. I’m so excited I could just shit.
Holding up my wrist, I shake it, and the charms on my bracelet give a satisfying rattle. How does my sweet Fifty always know exactly the right thing to give me?
Like the time he bought you a publishing company.
I feel lighter than I did yesterday. Perhaps because it’s morning and the world always seems a more hopeful place than it does in the dead of night. Or maybe it’s my husband’s sweet wake-up. Or maybe it’s knowing that Ray is no worse.
Poor Rarlie. Whether he’s Ray or Charlie Swan, he will always be an afterthought to his hellspawned daughter.
They get into the elevator and at this point it’s so inevitable it’s practically Pavlovian.
He groans into my mouth and cups my head, crading me as we kiss – really kiss, our tongues exploring the oh-so-familiar but still oh-so-new, oh-so-exciting territory that is the other’s mouth. My inner goddess swoons, bringing my libido back from purdah.
In o
ther news the writing is still oh-so-terrible and the whole inner goddess thing is still oh-so-fucking-stupid.
Then they go outside and oh look, he’s bought her a sports car for her birthday, and she’s even allowed to drive it. And it’s the happiest day that ever did gambol and prance and happy it up like a happy thing in the joyous autumn sunshine. Except for her Dad being in a coma after a life-threatening car accident, but let’s not rain on her parade here.
