The Prince's Choice (Book 3)

Chapter 16

I spend as much time with the queen that is humanly possible. After all the meetings I must attend, I make a beeline for the hospital wing and sit until its time for bed. 

Rose and I will go in there together sometimes and just talk and laugh. I feel that during the selection, I didn't spend as much time with the royal family as I should I have. I understand that the selection is for mainly Daxton and not for Daxton and his family but I would have liked to have known his parents better. 

I walk into the hospital wing now, my head throbbing thanks to the monotonous meeting I had to sit through. If-when Daxton wakes up, I'm going to beat his butt for making me go to all these meetings because they absolutely suck. How did he and his father manage to do this? Did Isabelle have to go through meetings? Because if she did-and if they sucked as bad as my meetings-then I'm definitely firing all of my advisers and hiring new, interesting ones.  

"Good afternoon, dear," Isabelle says as I walk into her hospital room. Well it's more of hers and the kings and Daxton's. When they'd tried to move her a couple weeks ago, she wouldn't have it saying she wanted to be close to her boys. 

I smile. "Good afternoon, Isabelle."

"And how has your day been?"

I give her a flat look. "I think my heads about to explode. I don't understand why we have to talk about all these different things. You want to know the topic of today's conversation? Grass. We were talking about grass and if it was too yellow and what finances we should spend to make it greener. Why are we talking about grass? Shouldn't there be more important things to talk about?"

Isabelle pursed her lips and I know she knows something I don't. "What?" I ask.

"It's just that they might not trust you enough to talk about truly serious issues with you."

I frown. "But I'm going to be their queen soon. Why wouldn't they trust me? And, unlike other girls, I didn't run off when all of you were hurt, I saw that this kingdom needed someone to run it without it turning into a dictatorship and stepped up." I sigh. "I'm sorry, I'm just tired of talking about grass."

Isabelle gives me a knowing smile but it's quickly replaced with a look of pain. "Are you alright?" I ask, worry flaring up inside me.

She nods, going for her handkerchief that lies next to her bed. She coughs into it and when she pulls back, I grimace. The handkerchief is coating in splotches of blood, old and new. Isabelle dabs at her mouth and then smiles again, pretending everything to be okay. 

That's how its been. She'll either hack up her guts or cough up some blood but the second she's done, she pretends everything is fine. Sometimes I believe everything is fine because when she smiles, she looks genuinely okay. There's a certain spark in her eyes that lets me know she's okay, even if she isn't.

And she's excepted her fate which makes things all the more dreary. That's why she acts like everything's fine. Isabelle's not one to lay around moaning and groaning when she knows there's nothing to be done to save her.

Which absolutely crushes Rose and I. 

Though she's given up, I haven't. In between meetings and seeing her, I've talked with the doctors and researched ways to heal the hole in her lung. But to no avail because there's seems to be nothing that can be done.

I have some of the best scientist on this continent work on it as we speak but every time I check up with them, their news is the same. They say its impossible at the moment to actually heal her lung or the surgery they would have to perform would be too dangerous and could kill her. So either way, she's not going to make it.