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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
Part 6
“Any existence deprived of freedom is a kind of death.”
General Michael Aoun
Dying
May 29, 2000
41 weeks to go.
Jarod lay on the bed, uncaring of the commotion around him. He was conscious only of the need to keep breathing, drawing the air in and pushing it out. Somehow, suddenly, it was an effort. The guards had noticed it and, finally, the prison doctor had been called in. He finished checking his patient and then left the room, the small trapdoor allowing the discussion to filter through.
“So what is it?”
“Nothing medical.”
“What?”
The doctor paused. “This sort of thing generally happens in people who need freedom, like you or I need air. Often this results from abuse or some other form of torment that they’ve managed to escape from. The jail begins to seem like a return to that life and they decide that it’s not worth fighting to keep living.”
“And so he’s...”
“...given up living.” There was a deep sigh. “It’s a tragedy because it so often happens in the young, the fit and the strong who have so much to contribute and throw it away for some chance or event that seems like such a good idea at the time.”
“Will he live?”
“How much longer does he have?”
“About ten months.”
After another long pause, the doctor spoke again. “I doubt he’ll survive until the end of that time. In fact, I’d be very surprised to see him walk out of here. Either he’ll be wheeled out to die in a hospital, or else leave in a coffin.
Does he have any family?”
“We don’t have any contact details, but I’ll keep searching.”
June 7, 2000
Not even a speck of dust remained on the floor. She spent hours in here, just walking around and trying to find a trace of the father she had loved. Somehow it was easier to remember what she didn’t like about him, now when he wasn’t there to make her respect him. Love him. There was a difference, but she could only see it from a distance. The closer she came, the more the feelings meshed together until she couldn’t tell them apart. But she knew that she still needed to believe in him, to trust him.
“How can you still trust him?”
The words came back, taunting her and making her think about the person that she didn’t want to be reminded of. Suddenly she turned and abruptly left the room, with the other, unseen, occupant still continuing to hide in his corner. She walked down the brightly lit corridor to the one door of the Centre that she had only entered once in her life, a few weeks after Jarod had first escaped. She didn’t know what she expected to find in the room - there was no way that a clue could be hidden in there. She had no idea what impulse had made her come to this corridor and enter this particular place. Only that, suddenly, painfully, she had to be there.
June 7, 2000
Sydney stared at the photo on his desk. The words that Broots had spoken several weeks earlier had finally exposed and laid bare to Sydney the feelings that he had been fighting to hide since Jarod had first disappeared. He knew, and the knowledge brought a twisted smile to his face, how Raines had felt when Annie had been kidnapped and there had been no sign. Sydney had tried for so many months, and particularly since Michelle had been returned to his life, bringing to son Sydney had never know with her, Sydney had tried to deny what he had felt for Jarod. It was natural, he had argued with himself, that a child who was scared and alone should have roused his pity.
But it had never been pity, and Broots’ words had forced Sydney to finally admit that to himself, painful though it had been. A struggle to get over a wall that had been built over forty years of denial and self-deceit. And it was a fight Sydney had always known, at the back of his mind, would have to be fought that way. But how cruel that it should have to come now, when he was least ready and least able to fight it…
