Say Nothing: A Novel

Welcome to Say Nothing, the podcast bringing you a revised serialisation of a novel I wrote and self-published a decade ago. This is the eighteenth chapter of the story and has been recorded using AI and Speechify software.

You can purchase a full copy of the original novel at https://amzn.to/4gAEwnB.

***

CHAPTER 18

The awkwardness weighed heavy in the air. As the two strangers stood face to face, neither knew what to say to the other. Instead, it was left to their mutual acquaintance to break the silence, and her voice cut through the atmosphere in a way that startled both men.

“So,” began Eloise. “Jack, this is Owen, Sarah’s husband. Owen, this is... well…”

The elder of the two reached out a hand in greeting, a gesture which was duly accepted by the exhausted man opposite. “Good to… er… meet you, I guess.”

“And you. Look…”

“No, please,” Owen held up his hands to pause the conversation. “Can we do this later? It’s been a hell of a morning and, while I appreciate you coming all this way, I need to get back home quickly.”

Unsure of how to gauge this first meeting, Jack could say little. “No, of course. I understand.”

With that, Owen continued through the waiting area and out into the midday sun. It was brisk but sunny, the first glimpse of sunshine Paris had enjoyed in weeks. The cold air, meanwhile, was invigorating. The stale atmosphere of the hospital and the emotional effect of the day’s events had left him feeling exasperated. And now, having crossed paths with Sarah’s estranged father for the first time, he had experienced an unusual sense of panic unlike anything he’d felt before, a feeling akin to claustrophobia. Simply being able to breathe the fresh, cold air helped him feel human once more.

“I guess I should’ve expected such a welcome,” said Jack. He took a look around the empty waiting room and smiled at the thought of the hectic surgery back home packed with the ‘dead and dying’. As he sat down on the hard chair, his smile quickly faded. His body was stiff and he ached all over. As he lowered himself slowly, he emitted the sounds of old age and creaking limbs. It was difficult to admit that age was catching up with him, but the combination of age and Parkinson’s left him under no illusions that his body was becoming less reliable every day.

“Don’t worry,” replied Eloise. “Owen is fantastic. She picked a good one there. Trust me.” As she motioned to sit down beside him, her attention was caught by the nurse coming towards her. Correcting her stance, she edged closer and asked, “Pouvons-nous entrer? ”

A simple nod of the head was enough to indicate that they were able to see Sarah. From his position on the chair, Jack was aware of what this meant. The nerves that had been suppressed throughout his journey and his lunch with the younger Sarah suddenly struck him. This would be the first time in a decade that he had seen his daughter. She didn’t even know he was here, and in a few moments he was to walk into her room. His heart pounded and his head was swimming. He could barely hear Eloise as she spoke, her voice muffled as though communicating under water.

“Jack, are you ok?”

“I… I don’t know if I can,” he stammered. “What am I supposed to say?”

“What do you mean? Tell her what you told me. Look, there’s no point planning anything now. I’m sure the perfect thing to say will come to you the moment you walk through the door.”

Though the memories of Jack during her teenage years had faded somewhat, Eloise couldn’t help but notice how the man before her was totally different from the character she had in her mind. There was a frailty about him, and an uncertainty about his actions that she would never have imagined. Growing up, she knew all about the work he’d done, with Sarah being proud that her father played an integral role in the safety of others. Sure, as the years passed and he became more distant, that pride turned to resentment, but the responsibility he held, and the importance of his role, never wavered. It was why the man before her seemed so unusual. Where had the confident investigator disappeared to, and what had happened to make him into the bag of nerves she saw today?

As she puzzled over the change in character, she realised he needed reassurance. “Jack, it’s going to be ok. We’ll just go in there now and see how she is.”

Eloise watched as Jack struggled to get to his feet. It hadn’t dawned on her when he sat down that anything untoward was wrong, but seeing him slowly push himself to his feet made it clear that something wasn’t right. She felt an obligation to assist him in getting up from his chair but, as she edged closer, he raised his head and caught her eye. He felt ashamed. Ashamed that his physical being was compromised and that he was weak at a time he needed to be strong. He slumped back down in the chair and made the decision to be honest.

“I’m… it’s Parkinson’s. I’ve got advanced stage Parkinson’s,” he said, turning his head away from her and looking at the ground. “Once I get going I’m fine. Sometimes I just struggle to… well, you can see. I was only diagnosed recently, but it had apparently been affecting me the past couple of years. Can… can we just not mention this to Sarah now?”

His voice was weak, like a child asking permission from a parent. Though Eloise felt great sympathy for Jack, she knew that the priority right now was Sarah and the baby. As much as she wanted to be open about everything, particularly the tumultuous relationship Sarah had endured with her father, there was a time and a place. The only sensible thing was to agree to the request. “Of course,” she said. “We should really go in though. Here, let me give you a hand.”

As Eloise reached out a hand to Jack, the signs of the illness were apparent and she was overcome with sadness. Taking his trembling, cold hand in her own, she could feel the unsteadiness he had to endure simply to rise to his feet. She noticed that he was right about one thing, though: as soon as he was up, he was able to move with enough freedom for his condition to go almost unnoticed.

***

Stepping through the doorway brought a huge sense of relief. It was like entering the warm, comforting arms of a loved one, with the safety and security it brought relieving any tension in his body. Owen knew that he couldn’t stay for long. He headed straight up the stairs to the bathroom, turned on the shower, then headed to the bedroom, peeling off his jumper and t-shirt as he went.

The room remained a disaster area; the bedsheets were covered in blood, and there were clothes strewn over the floor. In the rush to the hospital, it was as though a tornado had ripped through the room. Continuing to remove his clothes, Owen felt the hard block in his pocket. His mobile phone had ran out of battery not long after arriving at the hospital, so he moved to plug it into the charger he kept beside the bed. Phone charging, he returned to the bathroom, and jumped into the hot shower, head bowed, body still.

It took but an instant for a charge to pass into the handset. As Owen showered, his phone sparked into life, and the mobile phone entered its launch sequence. In the seconds that followed, his phone vibrated; during its dormancy, Owen had been in receipt of both text and answerphone messages.

On his return from the revitalising shower, the man that had spent the early morning hours waiting to learn the fate of his wife and unborn child would be faced with a dilemma that could rupture any hope of success in the future.

***

“Hey,” he said gently, unsure of precisely what to say. “How are you doing?”

In the time since her scan, the painkillers and the tiredness had made Sarah enter a deep sleep. Though it had been only a short slumber, it left her feeling disorientated and confused. There was a sense of déjà vu from earlier in the day, with Eloise standing to one side of her ready to caress her brow, and Owen to the other, rousing her from her daze with words of comfort. Only something had changed. His voice was deeper, and the Irish accent had disappeared. It took a moment for the realisation to kick in that this wasn’t Owen. As her eyes focused on the shapes in the dimly-lit room, she knew that the man beside her side was a familiar figure. There was disbelief when she realised that it was her father standing at her bedside, asking after her. “Dad?”

Hearing his daughter use that word was indescribable to Jack. He wanted to capture that moment and replay it over and again until his dying days. “Yes, Sarah. It’s me.” The nerves he felt compared only to those he felt the day he married Judy. It was a big decision to visit her in hospital and, with his own condition hindering his day-to-day life, it was one that was far from easy. But being here now, he thought, was worth it. He hoped more than anything that she would welcome his visit.

“What… what are you doing here?” Her voice was weak and tired, and she was struggling to project. He passed her a glass of water, and watched as she drank the entire glass in one. “Thanks.”

Jack looked down on his daughter and could do nothing but lament the distance, both figurative and literal, that had separated them for so long. She had changed so much, but remained exactly the same. All those years he had missed could never be replaced, but simply being here now felt right.

“I called your dad,” came the voice from across the bed. “I thought he should be here in case… well…” Eloise tailed off, the meaning of her words clear to all. The events of the day had left her looking - and feeling - completely drained; her lack of energy recognisable in the sound of her voice.

“It was my choice to come,” Jack continued, doing his best to justify his surprising presence. “Ellie didn’t know I was coming, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself had I not been here.”

“It’s ok,” Sarah replied, gradually becoming more lucid. She turned and looked at Eloise, gripping her hand for support. “You look like shit,” she smiled.

“Charming as ever,” retorted Eloise. “Everything ok though? Owen mentioned they’re going to keep you in today, but that it should be alright?”

Sarah nodded in the affirmative.

“Home tomorrow?”

“Let’s hope so.”

Jack shuffled on the spot, his hands digging deeper and deeper into his pockets. He watched as the two stared at each other, sensing that his presence was making the atmosphere uncomfortable, with Sarah trying hard to look anywhere but him. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The last time the two of them had been in a room together ended in a full blown argument with Sarah proclaiming her desire that it was he who had been lost in the accident, not Judy. Shortly after, as he left the house to calm his thoughts, Sarah packed a bag and moved in with Eloise. It was Eloise’s mother that relayed information to Jack about the well-being of his daughter, with his own attempts at communication gradually eroding over the following weeks and months. Finally, with Sarah in halls at the University of London, contact was severed for good. That was, until earlier in this week. And now, here he stood at her hospital bedside.

There was so much to be said, and so many apologies to be made. Where and when could he start? How could he start? This was clearly not the time, but his psyche was racked with confusion, and all he wanted was to get close to his daughter. It was a struggle with himself, and one he didn’t know he could win. The voice in his head kept pushing him to interrupt the moment, to admit culpability for the years of absence, simply to establish a new relationship that would pacify any festering resentment at the earliest opportunity. But the voice was wrong, and another part of his mind hated him for such selfishness. As the battle raged, his penchant for flight kicked in.

“Shall I grab a coffee for us? I’m going to grab a coffee for us.” Each wall in that room seemed to be closing in on him. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, he thought. Both Sarah and Eloise turned and looked at him, his awkwardness apparent in the way he picked at his fingertips with his opposite hand. Eloise pursed her lips into an agreeable smile. Jack turned his eyes onto Sarah. As he looked on at her lying on the hospital bed, resplendent in pregnancy despite the trauma of the day, he felt a fourth person in the room and he knew; wherever Sarah was, she carried Judy with her.

Emotional at the thought of his wife and the happiness at being here with Sarah, he turned and left the room in search of an escape. The two friends watched as the middle-aged man slowly left the room.

“Sarah,” began Eloise. “I’m…”

“It’s ok. I promise.”

“He’s trying, you know. I was scared and, well, I didn’t really know what to do.” She was intent on justifying her actions.

“Ellie, shut up. It’s fine. Just a surprise.” Sarah was fully awake and clear in thought, the deep sleep a distant memory. “I just don’t quite know what to say to him right now.”

“You don’t need to say anything. I was chatting to him outside, and he’s feeling exactly the same. I never realised how alike the two of you were.”

“Shut up,” Sarah joked.

“You are,” exclaimed Eloise through laughter. “Get the impression I’m going to have to do all the work here. You should know that he met Owen outside though. It was a bit tense and a bit surreal, so you should probably talk to Owen when he’s back.”

Sarah’s expression changed from one of relief to one of concern. She knew that she had never so much as mentioned her father to Owen, and had now been thrown in at the deep end. It was going to be a trying couple of days and, trapped in this hospital bed, she could do little to affect things.