Antonio pointed to the correct room number, although Carlos would have known from the fresh pair of heavily armed sentinels. Enrique never relaxed security. Ever. Even when at death’s door.
Duarte stopped Carlos with a hand to the arm. “We’ll wait out here so you can have time to visit him on your own first. Call when you’re ready for us to join you.”
Carlos nodded his gratitude, words stuck in his throat underneath the wad of emotion. Bracing himself, he stepped inside the hospital room.
The former king hadn’t requested any special accommodations beyond privacy. There were no flowers or balloons or even cards to add color to the sterile space. Just an assortment of machines and IVs and other medical equipment all too familiar to Carlos, but somehow alien in the context of keeping Enrique Medina alive.
His powerful father was confined to a single bed.
Wearing paisley pajamas, Enrique needed a shave. That alone relayed how ill the old man was even more than his pallor. Even on a secluded island with no kingdom to rule, the deposed monarch had always been meticulous about his appearance.
His father had also lost weight since Carlos’s brief visit a couple of months ago for Antonio’s wedding. Still stinging from his screwup with Lilah, Carlos hadn’t been much in the mood for making merry at a wedding. He’d done his family duty then promptly left with the excuse of a patient in need.
“Mi hijo.” A sigh rattled Enrique’s chest, and he adjusted the plastic tubes feeding oxygen into his nose. His voice was frail, with only a hint of the authority he’d once carried in booming tones.
“Padre.” He swapped to Spanish effortlessly. His father had always spoken their native language with Carlos most often of his sons.
Carlos unhooked the chart from the foot of his father’s bed and thumbed through it. “What is this nonsense I hear about you rejecting surgery?”
“I will not survive the operation.” Enrique waved dismissively, IV clanking against the metal pole. “I will not put anyone’s, most especially my child’s, life at risk on such a remote chance.”
Looking up from the dire vital stats in front of him in black-and-white, he met his father’s eyes unflinchingly. “You’re quitting?”
“You are a doctor,” he said with a pride Carlos couldn’t remember hearing before. Their father had railed at each of his sons for leaving the safety of the island for a wide-open world where any nutcase could assassinate them too. “You have read my chart. You can see how weakened I am. I do not have the will to fight any longer.”
Carlos hung the chart carefully on the bed, suppressing the urge to fling the lot across the room in rage. “Listen to me, old man,” he bit out carefully. “When I begged you to let me end the pain, you refused. You added more nurses and guards to watch me, to push more treatments and physical therapy and any extreme measures you could find to keep me alive, then get me on my feet again.”
Memories of this place, of the torturous rehab sessions he’d endured bombarded him. Of the months in body casts and traction. Of surgery after surgery, pins and steel rods implanted inside him only to be replaced again the next time he grew. And always, the pain, which he could have handled had it not been for the pity stamped on the faces of his caregivers.
He’d finally insisted on solitude whenever possible, gritting through one minute at a time.
“So I will say to you now what you said to me then in the room just next door.” He leaned in until they were nearly nose to nose. “You will not give up. A Medina does not surrender.”
His father didn’t even blink. “It is out of my hands.”
“Idiota,” Carlos exploded, spinning away and damn near falling on his ass in the process. He grabbed a utility sink for balance, dragging in heaving breaths.
“Carlos,” his father’s voice ordered with threads of the younger ruler resonating. “I did not bring you up to be disrespectful.”
“According to your timetable, I am only days away from becoming the head of this family.” The king of nowhere. “So who is going to stop me from saying what I think? Certainly not you.”
His father nodded with approval. “You have become tougher over the years.”
“I am like you, then.”
“Actually, your mother was the truly strong one. But even she could not push me to change my mind.”
Mentions of his dead mother stabbed through the last of Carlos’s shaky control. “Your plan now isn’t any better than your plan then.”
“My intent now is as it was then.” Enrique’s voice faltered. “To protect my children.”
Carlos clutched the bed rail in a death grip. “Then don’t make us bury another parent prematurely.”
The hospital room went silent as his father’s pale face turned downright chalky. But damn it all, Carlos would do whatever it took to make his father agree to that transplant.
This life had already stolen too much from their family too early. Unless he persuaded his father to fight, no surgery would stand even a chance of saving him.
A way to tether their father’s will more firmly into this world whispered through his brain, a way to have it all. And, yes, he would be manipulating his father in order to keep Lilah, but if that protected both of them? Safeguarded both his father and Lilah? The choice was obvious.
“Stick around and you’ll get to meet your grandchild. Your heir.”
Regret creased Enrique’s weary, weathered face. “Eloisa—”
“I am not talking about her child.” He cut his father short. “You’ll have to hang on longer than a few weeks for the baby I’m referring to.” He took a deep breath in preparation for making that final step and found it easier than he expected. “I’ve brought someone to the island to meet you—Lilah. She and I are expecting a baby.”
Shock, then a deep sadness creased his father’s face. “Son, I am not so ill that I have forgotten your medical history.”
“Doctors can be wrong in their dire predictions and hopeless odds.” The possibility did exist. Regardless, he would raise her child as his. “And I am living proof. My child is living proof.”
He only had to convince Lilah to marry him.
His father’s eyes went wide—then watery with emotion. Carlos gathered up his tattered self-control, angry with himself for losing it earlier. Everything was too close to the surface in this place—the island, the clinic.