THREE NIGHTS AFTER the banquet, Andreas was enjoying a highly erotic dream featuring his favourite nurse when he was roughly awoken by the intercom buzzer.
‘Andreas, it’s Clara. I need to speak to you.’ The urgency of her voice shot panic through his system.
He jolted into a sitting position. ‘Come in.’
He disarmed the door lock and reached for his prosthesis. His pulse bounded with surges of familiar adrenaline. He was used to being woken in the middle of the night by a pager, but never here, at home.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked as she appeared in his bedroom seconds later. He moved his eyes over her from head to toe. ‘Are you hurt?’ Why else would she come to him in the middle of the night, her voice carrying a desperate edge that made his teeth grind?
She shook her head. ‘I’m concerned for Prince Henrik. I need a second opinion. It’s snowing a blizzard outside, and the prince’s personal physician is stuck in a snow drift.’ She wrung her hands, wearing a deep frown of worry. ‘I’ve left the prince with the other nurse on duty tonight because I wanted to be the one to wake you.’
Andreas stood and shrugged on his robe, too distracted by concern for his father to enjoy the way Clara flicked her stare over his nakedness before he tied the belt.
‘You did the right thing in coming to me, sötnos.’ He gripped her upper arms, deeply touched that she’d sought out his help. ‘I’ll come right away.’
He scrubbed a hand over his face to clear the last fog of sleep and reached for the medical bag he kept on hand at all times. What could be wrong with his father?
He recalled the last conversation he’d had with the prince. His father had been a little tired, but otherwise seemed in good health. They’d talked mainly of business: the upcoming visit of the Swedish prime minister; the plans for the annual staff Christmas party; the list of new charities seeking royal patronage. But Andreas trusted Clara’s clinical judgement and she wouldn’t have woken him lightly.
‘Tell me what your concerns are,’ he said as they left the suite.
‘Prince Henrik became acutely breathless a short while ago,’ Clara said. ‘His temperature is normal, pulse and blood pressure elevated. No history of chest pain, but obviously I’m worried about pneumonia or a pulmonary embolus, although I’ve listened to his chest and can’t hear any evidence of consolidation.’
Concealing his own concern, Andreas placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezing for both their comfort.
‘What are his oxygen saturations?’ he asked as they rushed from the guest wing towards his father’s suite, fear now a metallic taste in his mouth.
‘Ninety-seven,’ she answered.
Andreas breathed a small sigh of relief.
‘Someone has taken a motor sled to fetch the doctor,’ Clara said, keeping pace with his longer strides. ‘But it could take an hour. I know it’s not strictly ethical for you to treat your father,’ she continued as they entered the family wing of the palace, ‘But I figured it was okay in such urgent and unusual circumstances.’
Andreas sent her a grateful smile, wishing he could drag her into his arms, but his father needed help. ‘Thank you for taking such good care of the prince.’
There would be time later to tell her how he valued her inspiring dedication. How humbled he was that she’d come to him for advice. How privileged he felt because Clara was so fiercely independent, she demanded nothing from him.
Outside the prince’s suite, Clara rested her hand on his arm. ‘Andreas, are you sure you are okay to see Prince Henrik like this? He’s quite distressed.’
For a second, she looked as if she might say more, but then she blinked and the moment passed.
‘I appreciate your consideration of my feelings. Thank you.’
Of course she saw and understood him. Of course a nurse of her calibre would grasp the complex emotions pounding through him. Seeing a parent incapacitated was upsetting for anyone, even more so when that man was also your ruler, someone Andreas had always seen as a larger-than-life figure.
What she couldn’t know was how the fear for his father chilling him to the bone was amplified by what had happened to Oscar. The last time Andreas had tried to medically help a family member, he’d failed, with devastating consequences for him, his family and the nation. He’d tried everything he could to treat and then revive his brother, but his efforts hadn’t been enough.
But he couldn’t think about his failings now. He needed to stay calm and objective. He rapped on the door once out of observance of royal protocol, urgency driving him to enter the suite of rooms without waiting to be admitted.
The prince’s butler greeted them, the older man’s face stricken and pale. ‘The doctor is still thirty minutes away, Your Royal Highness. Should I call for the helicopter, sir?’
‘Of course not, Møller. There’s a blizzard raging outside,’ Andreas said, fighting the sickening trepidation twisting his gut. ‘I will assess the prince so we know what we’re dealing with.’
The butler stood aside and Andreas and Clara entered his father’s bedroom, a room he hadn’t been in since he’d been a young boy.
No matter how hard he’d tried to prepare, given his training and Clara’s words of warning, shock lashed at Andreas like the icy rain pelting the windows outside. His father was seated on the edge of the bed, another nurse at his side. He wore an oxygen mask, but his hands were braced on his thighs and his breathing was fast and laboured.
Fear and compassion tugged at Andreas’s heart as he approached. ‘Pappa, I need to listen to your chest.’
If he focussed on his training, treated the man before him like any other patient, he could keep the waves of panic at bay. Only this wasn’t any patient. This was his father, his ruler, a proud and unemotional man much beloved by their nation, and something was wrong.
He reached for his father’s radial pulse, noting it was elevated but regular.
‘Do you have any chest pain?’ His mind trawled the same differential diagnoses for acute shortness of breath that Clara had considered.
Prince Henrik shook his head, his eyes wild with distress, sweat beading on his forehead.
‘Dizzy,’ he gasped, gripping Andreas’s hand with vice-like force.
Clara handed Andreas a stethoscope. He listened to the breath sounds, searching Clara’s concerned expression for clues, because something was off. He felt as if he was the last person to know some sort of well-kept secret, his sense of isolation flaring anew. Yes, he belonged here, as Clara had pointed out, but he’d spent so long away pursuing his career that there was no one at the palace he could confide in.
Only Clara.
He focussed on the whoosh of air transmitted through the stethoscope, swallowing down his rising sense of apprehension. His father’s office had given little away when it came to the ‘brief illness’ rendering the normally fit and active prince indisposed. But was there something more medically sinister going on than Andreas had been led to believe?
He should have pushed for more information on the prince’s health when he’d returned. He didn’t blame Clara, or any of the medical staff who were loyal to the prince, respectful of his privacy and duty-bound to keep his medical information confidential. But had Andreas, a doctor, failed to see something that had been right under his nose? And, if there was something serious going on, why hadn’t his father confided in him?
That familiar feeling of inadequacy settled like a stone in his stomach. Would he ever be good enough in his father’s eyes or would he always be the less important son? They hadn’t been close for years, but they were the only family each other had left. Except now it seemed that Prince Henrik couldn’t even trust his doctor son with potentially important information.
Something in Clara’s stare, something she could no longer hide from him because of their growing emotional closeness, told Andreas that, unlike him, she knew the full story.
Guilt lashed him. Since his return to Varborg, he’d been self-absorbed with his struggles to reconcile the demands of his two roles, doctor and heir, because being Prince Andreas had forced him to confront his greatest failure—losing Oscar. But instinct told him this was more than a ‘brief illness’. As his son and as his heir, Andreas had a right to know if his father’s health was in danger.
‘You’re right,’ he said to Clara, removing the earpieces of the stethoscope. ‘Breath sounds are completely normal.’
He beckoned her a short distance away so they could talk. ‘There’s no sign of infection or acute heart failure. No obvious pneumothorax or pleural effusion. But without a chest X-ray or a scan to exclude anything more subtle but sinister our diagnostic abilities are limited.’
Clara frowned, glancing at Prince Henrik. ‘So what do we do?’ she whispered, looking up at him with absolute faith.
At least she believed in him, even if no one else did.
Remembering that he was good at his job, Andreas dragged in a shuddering breath, grateful for Clara’s presence.
‘I think the most likely diagnosis of exclusion is a panic attack,’ he said, hoping for his father’s sake that he was right, because they could easily treat that here and now. ‘It’s worth a shot; if we can slow down his breathing, then we’ll know.’
She nodded, her expression staying impressively neutral. Andreas wasn’t the prince’s doctor. It wasn’t Clara’s place to inform him of his father’s medical history. But none of that helped with his feelings of inadequacy.
Andreas sat on the bed at his father’s side and took the older man’s warm and capable hand. ‘Pappa, you’re breathing too fast. We need to slow that down. Purse your lips like you’re going to blow out a candle...that’s it. Now breathe nice and slowly. In, two, three and out, two, three, four, five.’
While Andreas repeated the instructions in as calm a voice as he could muster, given the sickening, doubt-fuelled lurch of his stomach, Clara stooped in front of the prince and pursed her lips, demonstrating the slower breathing technique in time to Andreas’s voice.
It took a few minutes of synchronised breathing, but eventually his father calmed, his grip on Andreas’s hand reassuringly strong and unwavering, reminding Andreas of the proud statesman who’d ruled Varborg steadfastly for fifty years.
Hot with shame, he wondered how they’d ended up so estranged. The chasm between them had been so wide for so long, they knew little about each other’s personal lives, fears and dreams.
‘Give the prince some privacy, please.’ Andreas instructed the butler and other nurse to vacate the room. ‘Would you like Clara to stay so we can make you comfortable, Pappa?’
Taking some slow, shuddering breaths, his father nodded, slowly recovering his strength and composure.
Clara plumped the pillows and together they repositioned Prince Henrik back into bed.
‘I think you had a panic attack, Pappa,’ Andreas said, the doctor in him needing to understand why just as much as the son. ‘Your physician is on his way, and I’m sure he’ll organise some tests, in case we’re missing something.’
‘Thank you, son,’ Prince Henrik said, shakily. ‘That was...alarming. I’m grateful that you were here. I’m not sure what came over me.’
Andreas startled, glancing away from the man he’d looked up to his whole life. He couldn’t recall a single time when Prince Henrik had relied on him emotionally. Not after Andreas’s mother had died, when Prince Henrik had become focussed on Oscar as the heir, nor after the accident that had stolen the life of his eldest son. They’d grieved differently, separately, never seeing eye to eye.
‘No need to thank me, Pappa. I’m always here for you. I’ll stay until your doctor arrives.’ He needed to understand what might have caused his father’s acute distress tonight.
Clara placed a fresh glass of water next to the bed. ‘Can I get you anything else, sir?’
‘No, thank you, dear,’ his father said with a fond smile that spoke not only of his immediate recovery, but also their close relationship. Of course Prince Henrik respected Clara. She was an exceptional nurse: gifted and smart, humble and empathetic. And, maybe most importantly, loyal.
Clara glanced at Andreas. ‘I’ll leave you two alone. Call if you need me.’
Her stare brimmed with empathy that filled Andreas with fresh dread. Before she could leave the room, he caught up with her, resting his hand on her arm. ‘Thank you for coming to me for help,’ he said, wishing he could crush her in his arms and escape into their passion. ‘The prince is lucky to have you on his staff.’
‘He’s lucky to have you as a son,’ she replied, her compassionate stare leaving him exposed and raw, feelings he would prefer to conceal from the woman he was trying to seduce. ‘Why don’t you sit with him a while, perhaps talk?’
With his throat tight with confusion and fear, Andreas nodded and re-joined his father. The alarming realisations of tonight proved that there were conversations long overdue. Seeing his father incapacitated had brought home the reality of Andreas’s situation. Even if there was no sinister explanation for his father’s current state of health, no one lived for ever. Like Andreas, the prince was human, as vulnerable to illness, weakness and scars, both physical and emotional, as the next man.
Prince Henrik would one day die, as was the natural order of the world, and Andreas would take his place on Varborg’s throne. His days of freedom to pursue the career he loved, a career that gave him a deep sense of pride, achievement and validation, were numbered. His personal freedoms too, such as his fling with Clara. Like it or not, prepared or not, Andreas would one day need to make these sacrifices and commit fully to the role he would inherit.
It might even be sooner than he’d imagined.