Page 32 of Trapped with the Undercover Prince

“Stay there,” she said to Marc when he tried to get up. “Rest and catch your breath while you can.”

He glanced at Zar, who nodded.

Zar stood.

Anna pointed a finger at him. “You, sit down and don’t move until I’ve taken a look at your back.” She pulled out her stethoscope from her backpack. Thank God she hadn’t lost it. “I need to check Charles first.”

Zar sat, a faint smile flicking across his face.

Anna listened to Charles’s lungs and didn’t like the gurgling and bubbling noises she heard. His respirations were also too fast and too shallow.

“Charles?” she asked, trying to make eye contact with him. “Are you breathing okay, or is it difficult?”

He blinked at her and didn’t respond immediately. It took him several seconds before he finally said, “What? Who are you?” His voice sounded raspy, and it seemed to trigger a coughing spell. His coughs racked his body, and every time he sucked in a breath, the wheezing sound told her his throat was too swollen for the amount of air he was trying to draw in.

All signs of severe smoke inhalation, and she had nothing with which to treat him. The first-aid kit she carried was geared for sharp force trauma, not internal soft tissue damage like this.

“Any idea how long it will take for emergency personnel to reach us?” she asked Zar.

“From the moment the alarms went off, forty-five minutes.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I’m not sure. Ten to fifteen minutes?”

A wait of at least thirty minutes was much too long.

She rolled Charles onto his side and kept a hand on his shoulder to keep him in that position. The last thing he needed was to choke on his own spit.

“Anna?” Zar asked several questions at once.

“Marc,” she said. “Can you stay with Charles and make sure he stays in this position.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the younger man said, scooting over so he could keep Charles in place.

Anna moved a few feet away, then waved her hand at Zar to sit on the concrete floor so she could look at his back.

“Anna?” Zar asked again, the weight of her name pressing down on her shoulders.

She helped him remove the remains of his jacket and shirt to reveal a four-inch, sluggishly bleeding cut down the edge of his left shoulder blade.

“If this were any deeper, you’d need stitches. Luckily...” Nothing about this was lucky. “I’ve got some liquid stitches glue that should do the trick. I’m going to clean this first, though, so be ready for the sting.”

“Anna,” Zar said, his voice quiet. “is Charles that bad?”

She paused for a moment before pulling out some cleansing wipes from her bag. “He’s showing all the signs of severe smoke inhalation.”

Charles continued to cough, sounding weaker and weaker. Next to him, Marc watched his friend with a face gone pale, his eyes wide with fear.

“So, he needs oxygen?”

“Yes, his lungs are full of fluid. He likely breathed in air that was so hot it burned the tissues of his throat and lungs. It’s causing a lot of swelling. He’s also coughing and confused.” She paused, then continued in a quieter tone, “He needs immediate, advanced medical attention. Without it...” The cold knot of powerlessness killed her voice.

She’d saved a lot of people over the years, but some injuries were beyond help. Not everyone could be saved or cured.

She cleared her throat and very deliberately straightened her posture. There was no room for doubt or time to grieve. Too many people were counting on her. Zar was counting on her. “There’s not much I can do.”

Anna kept working on Zar’s back. Cleaning his wound, gluing the cut together, then covering the whole thing with a long self-adhesive bandage.

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