Chapter 17
Lying to your wife on your honeymoon probably wasn’t the most auspicious start to a marriage.
As an adult, Frederick had always been able to admit when he was sick, though sometimes he would take whatever medications necessary and power through. A king was never supposed to be sick and canceling events or meetings because of a head cold simply wasn’t done.
But this time…
The doctor said he wasn’t running a fever, but by the time he made it upstairs to the room his mother kept ready for guests, he felt like he’d been run over by a truck.
Without taking time to turn the covers back, he managed to grab the quilt from the nearby chair and control his flop onto the bed. Pulling it up around his shoulders, he struggled to keep from falling back asleep.
Kings did not nap.
“Where did you get that idea?”
Had he said that aloud?
Frederick didn’t open his eyes at his mother’s voice.
“Kings can nap.” She sat on the edge of the bed next to him. “And they can be sick, too.” Her fingers gently brushed his hair back off his forehead. “Your father napped. He got sick. You’re hardly the first king to be under the weather.”
“I know.” He kept his eyes closed, but rolled onto his back.
“Please let the doctor take you to his office in the resort and do a few tests, just to be sure it’s nothing serious.” She used her gentle mom voice, the one that almost always worked.
“If I don’t feel better tomorrow, I will.” He didn’t even want to promise that much, but he was certain it wouldn’t be necessary. A day of rest and another good night’s sleep, and he would feel much better.
Frederick could sense hesitation on his mother’s part, but when she patted his leg, he knew she’d acquiesced.
“Very well, but you be certain to let me or Elise know if you need anything.” He felt her stand and then a soft kiss on his temple, the same as she’d done for his entire life. “Get some rest.”
The snick of the door closing was barely audible, but it gave a sharp stab to the same temple she’d kissed.
Maybe he did need to get the doctor to run some tests. A noise that soft shouldn’t have that result.
Before Frederick could decide if he wanted to call her back, his limbs began to feel the heavy pull of sleep.
When he woke, he knew three things.
A significant amount of time had passed.
The pain in his abdomen had returned with a vengeance.
And he was burning up.
He tried to call for someone, but his voice hadn’t quite woken up yet.
It took some effort, but he managed to get to the en suite bath under his own power, just in time to empty the meager contents of his stomach into the bowl.
Even as he tried to control the roiling, the irony struck him.
Once it felt safe, he sat back leaning against the cabinet until he could gather the strength to stand.
His phone would come in handy, but it had been left downstairs.
That alone was a testament to how poorly he’d been feeling - he was never without his phone.
It took even more out of him to grab the quilt to wrap around himself then walk downstairs.
“Ricky!” The use of his nickname shock in Elise’s voice told him what he must look like even more than the shocked tone. “Call the doctor!” In seconds, she stood in front of him as he leaned on her.
Her hand felt cool on his forehead confirming his suspicion about his temperature.
“You’re burning up!” Elise wrapped an arm around his waist and steered him toward the sofa.
Frederick started to shiver. “So cold.”
She tucked the quilt more tightly around him.
“The doctor is on his way.” His mum sat across from him. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.”
He let his head fall backward with his eyes closed against the brightness of the lights.
Elise stood, and he felt her absence, but a few seconds later, the light on the other side of his eyelids began to dim and he could relax just a bit.
He heard the outer door open and quiet voices in the distance.
“You should have called me last night.”
The voice wasn’t the local doctor, but his usual one. Someone must have decided to contact him.
“Fortunately, for you, I was staying at the resort on holiday.”
Frederick managed to open his eyes. “Thank you for interrupting your time away.”
“It is, quite literally, my job, young man.”
Very few people could get away with calling him that.
“But not on holiday.”
“If you were at the palace, that would be true, and someone else would fill in. However, since you’re not and I’m nearby, I came as soon as your team reached out.”
While he spoke, the same nurse from earlier took Frederick’s vitals. She wrote them down then showed them to the doctor.
He listened to Frederick’s heart and lungs then asked, “Do you have a place on this floor where he can lay down properly?”
His mum shook her head. “All of the bedrooms are upstairs.”
With a groan, Frederick managed to lay down on the sofa. His feet didn’t quite fit, but close enough.
The doctor pressed gently on Frederick’s abdomen. “Tell me if it hurts.”
He winced a little bit at the first couple of palpations, but it wasn’t truly painful.
But when he pressed on Frederick’s lower right abdomen, Frederick couldn’t stop a sound somewhere between a groan and a sob from escaping.
“That’s what I was afraid of.” The doctor sighed and sat back.
“We’ll need to do an ultrasound as soon as the portable one is here, but I feel certain you are about to lose your appendix.
We’ll need to get you back to the palace as soon as possible.
Your plane will be on it’s way momentarily.
Normally, even if you needed fly, we’d take a helicopter, but I don’t want to risk it. ”
“Is there an airport on the island?” Elise asked the question.
“Not really. It’s a paved landing strip and can only be used during the day under excellent weather conditions, but it’s long enough for your plane to land, turn around, and take off again.” The doctor sent a quick text.
“How long is the flight?” The question again came from Elise.
“Not long,” the doctor answered with a chuckle. “We need to get everyone to the tarmac fairly soon.”
“Your things will be moved from the yacht to the plane.” Fredrick’s head of security entered the conversation. “It’s already being taken care of.”
“Thank you, Cap.” Elise handled the gratitude for both of them.
“We’ll have the surgical suite at the palace prepared,” the doctor went on. “This is a routine surgery, and you shouldn’t be under anesthesia very long, but you will need to make the necessary arrangements before we get there.”
Necessary arrangements.
Appoint someone to act on his behalf while he couldn’t.
The odds that anything would need to be done were incredibly small, but it had to be done.
Frederick ran a hand down his faced and sighed.
The biggest question was who it would be.
It wasn’t technically a medical flight. For that Elise found herself very grateful.
But the mood on the plane was still quite tense.
Frederick had to be helped to the bedroom in the back. The doctor and nurse stayed with him. Elise sat in one of the front seats. Her mother-in-law sat across from her.
Frederick’s assistant sat with them for take-off then went back to the bedroom.
“There’s paperwork that must be done,” the Queen Mother explained. “Since Frederick will be under anesthesia, arrangements must be made for someone to make decisions should a situation arise.”
On one level, that didn’t surprise her. “How long will he be out? Do they really expect something to happen?”
“Probably no more than a couple of hours. It’s highly unlikely that decisions will need to be made, ones that can’t wait a few hours, that is.
However, it must be done. The possibility of complications always exists.
” The Queen Mother glanced at her watch.
“We won’t even make it to a reasonable cruising height.
Rarely are planes used for such short trips. ”
That concerned Elise. “Will it be noticed? Show up in the media before Frederick is ready to make an announcement?”
“It is a possibility,” the other woman admitted. “It’s the wrong time of day to go unnoticed. If Frederick can make it to the car mostly under his own power, I think it will be okay.”
Before she could reply, Elise realized they’d already begun to descend.
Frederick did manage to make it down the stairs and into the vehicle waiting for him. He was whisked away with the doctor, nurse, and George while Elise and the rest followed separately a few minutes later.
They were delivered to the same underground entrance she’d come to the first time she was brought to the palace. Once there, she was taken to a part of the palace she’d never visited before.
As soon as they went through the door, the scent of disinfectant told her they’d entered the medical wing.
The portable ultrasound had confirmed appendicitis before leaving the Queen Mother’s home. By the time they saw Frederick, he was ready for surgery.
Elise hung back, letting his mum spend a moment with him before he was taken to the surgery suite.
The doctor talked quietly with them, making both of them laugh. Elise could make out most of the words, but clearly the conversation involved things she knew nothing about.
“Elise?”
She looked up to see her mother-in-law had moved to the side, giving her space to move to Frederick’s side. Giving them all a small smile, she took the spot offered and sat on the edge of Frederick’s bed.
“Hey.” He held up his hand, an IV tube coming out of the back of it, to tuck her hair behind her ear.
“How are you feeling?” She hadn’t talked to him since his doctor arrived a couple of hours earlier.
“I’m on medications, so that helps. They’ll be putting me to sleep in a few minutes.” He did look a bit more out of it than he had earlier, but like he wasn’t in as much pain.
“I’m glad.” She took his hand in hers, being careful not to tug on the IV.
“I’ll see you soon.” He pulled lightly on her hand and kissed the back of it.
“See you soon.”
Elise moved to the back corner of the room to give the staff enough space to maneuver Frederick’s bed out of the room and toward the surgery suite.
“There’s a room we can wait in.” The Queen Mother stood near the door of the now empty room. “Come on.”
Following her out of the room that didn’t look much different than any other hospital room, Elise blew out a breath. He would be all right. It was just an appendectomy. Hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions were done a year. The mortality rate had to be vanishingly small.
“He’s going to be fine,” the Queen Mother reassured her again.
“I know.” The waiting room was significantly more comfortable than any she’d ever seen for families of patients having surgery. She could take a nap on that couch.
“This isn’t exactly the honeymoon you had planned. It won’t be as scenic as the yacht, but the Monarch’s Suite will be familiar at least.”
Could this be an opening? Would Frederick be annoyed if she brought it up with his mum?
“What’s wrong?”
Elise shook herself out of the reverie. “I haven’t seen Frederick’s suite. Is there something that makes it stand out as the Monarch’s Suite? What makes it different? Better security?”
The other woman shook her head. “Not particularly. As far as I know, it’s been the Monarch’s Suite since the palace was completed.” She frowned. “Is Frederick not happy with it?”
Elise needed to answer carefully. “A couple of things he said made me think he might prefer to have a choice of where he wants to live.”
The Queen Mother remained quiet for a moment. “Is it because he moved in so quickly after his father passed?”
“I honestly don’t know.” Elise suspected that might be part of it, but she truly wasn’t certain.
“Was it even redecorated?” The Queen Mother seemed to be talking to herself more than Elise. “I had other things on my mind and have no idea.” She looked back at Elise. “Is there anything else I should know?”
Once again, Elise hesitated.
“There is, but you’re not sure you should tell me.”
Elise gave a nod. “He mentioned something to me once that I think he should talk to you about, but he only mentioned it that once, and we haven’t talked about it again.
” She couldn’t be the one to tell her mother-in-law that her husband missed getting hugs from his mum.
“When he’s feeling better, I’ll talk to him.
It’s nothing you should be concerned about though. ”
She suspected his mum wouldn’t feel that way exactly.
Silence fell between the two of them.
George entered looking more stressed than Elise had ever seen him, though she hadn’t been around him much.
“Your Majesties.” He bowed slightly from the waist then looked between them as though he wasn’t sure which one of them he should report to. “The prince is on stand-by, though he won’t depart the States unless it becomes necessary.”
Prince? Probably Frederick’s younger brother, the older of the twins, who would be his stand in if anything were to go wrong - and his heir if anything went very, very wrong.
Unless she had a child in the next nine months.
Possible, but unlikely.
“Thank you, George.” The Queen Mother answered for both of them.
Before anyone could say anything else, the doctor appeared, pulling his cap off. “Your Majesties, everything went well. The king is resting. You should be able to see him shortly.”
Elise’s shoulders slumped in relief. He was going to be okay.