The Best I Could

The Best I Could

By R.K. Ryals

Copyright © 2016, Regina K. Ryals Smashwords Edition This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This project was such a hard one to write for
me. It was personal and real. It was gut-wrenching and raw. Because
of this, I have an entire list of people to thank for not only
being there for me while writing this, but for braving this
journey. To my husband, who held me when I needed to cry. This book
took me into my head in a deep way. It touched my heart and soul,
and you weathered the cracks in my emotions. To my sisters, who
have not only been there for me, but who have weathered some of
these personal issues in their own lives. To Audrey Welch, who took
a lot of bookstore trips with me so I could escape my head when I
needed to step away. To Christina Silcox, I don’t even know where
to start to thank you. Not only were you an ear during this
project, you were an anchor. You helped this book be more, and for
that I can’t thank you enough. Thank you for being my roof on this
one. I love you. To Melissa Ringsted, because you aren’t just an
editor, you are a friend. A dear, amazing friend who took on this
project knowing the issues it touched on, and the emotional depths
it sank into. To Melissa Wright, because I’m not sure when this
journey became so personal for us, but it’s created a lasting
friendship I couldn’t live without. No thanks will ever be enough.
To Cora Graphics for the cover of this book. You brought Eli and
Tansy to life in a truly beautiful and emotional way. To everyone
who supports these books, I love you. To Bree High, Elizabeth
Kirke, Ashley Morgan, Alicia Lane Kirke, Jessica Johnson, Lisa
Markson, Nanette Bradford, Katherine Eccleston, Ashley Ubinger,
Vicky Walters, Amy McCool, Julia Roop, Pyxi Rose, Alexis O’Shell,
Anne Nelson, Jessie de Schepper, Derinda Love, Tina Donnelly,
Jessica Leonard, Lynn Shaw, Leah Davis, Tangerine Oliver, Christi
Durbin, and so many, many more. All of you inspire me! To the fans:
I love you. Thank you always for taking these journeys with me.

To anyone who has ever fought personal
demons. To anyone who has ever been touched by someone else’s
personal demons. To anyone who has ever been afraid to love. To
anyone who has ever been touched by grief. May you find the
strength you need in yourself. May you remember that you are not
alone.

Warning: This book contains self-injurious
behavior

When the end came …

Stories aren’t always told
from the beginning. Sometimes, they’re told
after
the beginning. People are born.
People die. People exist in the in-between. It’s funny the things
we learn in our darkest hours, when we feel like we’re dying, but
we’re not. Maybe if Death was a person, he’d say something like,
“What’s so important about me? What is it about me that causes
people to disappear from themselves? What is it about me that
confuses them so much they forget who they are in the first
place?”

Death is a friend and an enemy, a beginning
and an end. We are either comfortable with him or we’re not. I
think that’s where our lowest moments lie. In that place where
we’re trying to decide which it is: comfortable or intolerable.

People avoid Death. When confronted by him,
they spout off condolences and leave because they fear him. They
fear Death’s face. They fear people who have been touched by
him.

Death is life’s most poignant author. Because
when Death finishes a story, the characters left standing are the
ones who were meant to stay.

Tansy

I was standing next to my dad’s hospital bed,
blood soaking a pad beneath his body, the day he died. It was the
end of June and hot, but my flip-flop covered feet were cold from
the recycled air in the building. Moisture splashed against my
toes, and I glanced down, my eyes widening in horror.

“Nurse,” I croaked.

There was blood on my foot,
my
father’s
blood.
Warm, wet, and
wrong
.

“Oh, honey,” the pretty, dark-skinned ICU
nurse tossed me a clean, white towel, “here.”

I didn’t catch it. I watched it fall like an
open parachute gliding to the ground, covering my toes, cloaking
the sight but not erasing the memory. The blood burned, carving
itself into my foot, my heart, and my brain.

Nana Hetty howled, sobs shaking her thin
shoulders. “No one should die like this!”

Dad bled out because his
body had quit functioning. Emergency surgery—a last ditch effort to
save his life—had failed. His chest rose and fell, machines
breathing for him. All very sterile, cold, and loud in that way
machines always were. Even if there’d been no noise, the machines
would still be screaming.
Time’s
up
, they screeched.
Time’s up.

Blood leaked from closed eyes down Dad’s
swollen cheeks. Crimson teardrops. Beads of it clung to his nose
and ears.

Leaning over him, my brother, Jet, whispered,
“Can you hear me, Dad?”

At nineteen, Jet had two
years on me. His long brown hair was oily from two days sitting in
a hospital waiting room, and strands curled against his forehead.
Whiskers shadowed his jaw. His appearance yelled as loud as the
machines. It yelled forgotten things. In life, in grief, and in
death,
we’d
been
forgotten. Death made people forget other people.

“Of course he can’t hear you!” my sister
cried, throwing him a disgusted look. “He’s freaking bleeding to
death!”

“Deena!” Hetty admonished.

At fourteen, Deena was too young to have lost
both of her parents, too young to depend on a college-aged brother
with no real ambitions and a seventeen-year-old sister who’d
dropped out of high school and gotten her GED because going to
school while your depressed father wasted away just seemed
wrong.

“It’s time,” the nurse announced.

Dad hadn’t wanted to remain on life
support.

Jet glanced at her name tag. “A little longer
please, Brenna?”

Her gaze fell to the bed,
soft and sympathetic. She was caving, drawn in by the haunting
anguish in Jet’s eyes. He was so much like Dad, pitiful in the kind
of way that begged,
“Save me.”

“No.” My hardened gaze found Jet’s face.
“He’s suffering.”

“He
should
,” Deena sneered.

Nana glared, her reddened face a sea of
swollen fire from all of the tears. “He did the best he could for
all of you.”

Moving past us, the nurse touched the tubing
connected to Dad. “Just being here is enough.”

Deena scowled. “Yeah, whatev—”

“Shut up, Deena,” Jet snarled.

We had turned into beasts, all of us.
Snarling beasts pulling against choking chains.

Brenna unhooked the machines. Eerie silence
fell, our gazes locked on the monitor as it counted down. Dad never
moved. The machines flatlined.

Collectively, we held our breaths, our chests
as still as Dad’s. If I inhaled now, would he inhale, too? Despite
the blood. Despite everything.

When we finally breathed, Dad didn’t. He was
frozen, a blood-covered sleeping tragedy inside of a hospital time
capsule.

People fluttered around us. Time of death was
noted and marked. Voices rose and fell.

“I need air,” I whispered
frantically, because seeing Dad
not
breathing made it suddenly hard to remember how to
do it.

Stumbling away from the bed, I ran, my
flip-flops slapping the floor. My vision blurred, turning the
hallway into a tunnel of haloed lights.

Slap, slap.

Cold, worm-like tendrils
invaded my gut, making me ill. There should be tears. I
should
be crying, but I
couldn’t. There was simply cold worms and lost time; this weird
‘the world has moved on without me’ feeling.

My hand pressed against an exit door. Stairs
led in two directions. I climbed, gasping. When I reached the roof,
I stopped short, the sight of a person startling me.

Wind pressed against my cheeks, feathering my
short, dark hair. The sky was navy with streaks of lighter blue,
the dawn clawing at the atmosphere. Steam rose from somewhere down
below, sending cloud puffs flying.

A tall figure leaned against the roof’s stone
parapet, a young man gazing over the city, a cigarette dangling
from his mouth. A fire-breathing intruder.

The door slammed shut.

He glanced up. Brilliant, disconcerting blue
eyes met mine. A burgundy T-shirt with words I couldn’t make out
hung over loose dark blue jeans. Light brown hair, a little long in
the front so that the breeze lifted it, saluted me.

“This spot is taken,” he growled, smoke
rising from his lips. Red lips. Like blood. Smashing his cigarette
against the stone, he threw it over the side of the building. When
I didn’t leave, he frowned at me. “You heard me, right?”

Dazed, I stepped forward, my gaze on the
horizon, my mind too crowded to care about the interloper, my chest
an inferno of unshed, sleep deprived tears. I needed to remember
how to breathe.

“Hey,” the guy said, “you okay? You didn’t
come up here to jump or anything, did you?”

Fingers of yellow crept into the blue world,
snuffing out the lights in the buildings before us. Like candles
with pinched flames.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” I asked. I wasn’t
talking to the stranger, I was talking to the universe. My dad’s
dead body was lying in the building beneath my feet, and I felt
like I was a million miles away across the world trying to figure
out how to get back to this day, this moment, and this roof.

“Seriously, do I need to get someone?” the
boy asked. “I’m not qualified for this kind of shit.”

Ignoring him, I stared at the pink merging
with the yellow and then seeping into the blue. Like a lava lamp.
“I’ve heard people liken the dawn to rebirth and the sunset to
death. It’s messed up how wrong they all are.”

If the dawn was rebirth, then wouldn’t my
parents rise again? Wouldn’t they stumble forth into the world and
start over like happy little zombies giving my siblings and I back
our lives? Without the whole brain eating thing … or maybe with it.
Did it matter?

The guy backed away from the roof’s
perimeter. “Yeah … I think I’m done here. It’s all yours,
sweetheart.” He skirted around me, his gaze falling to my feet. He
froze. “You have blood on your toes.”

Thank you, captain
obvious
.

“It’s not mine,” I said aloud.

He was close, so close I could smell the
nicotine on his breath. His head was down, his hair waving, and I
found myself asking, “Are you here for someone? You know, in the
hospital? Did you lose someone?”

“The fuck?” His head shot up. Catching my
expression, he cleared his throat and offered me his hands, palms
out. “Look, I don’t know what kind of story you have, and I don’t
care. So I’ll give you the short version. I’m a spoiled rich kid
who got arrested for driving under the influence, was forced into
detox, and just spent God knows how many days listening to pitiful
stories in group therapy. All while being told how thankful I
should be that I didn’t kill someone. I’ve been released, and I’m
waiting on my ride. That’s it.”

I stared, the pain in my chest intensifying.
“You know yourself that well?”

“What?”

“Spoiled rich kid who drinks too much? That’s
all there is to you?”

He scowled. “Look, you don’t know me—”

“I’m Tansy,” I introduced.

He paused, his gaze roaming my face before
dropping once more to my blood-spattered foot. Inhaling, he looked
up. “Eli,” he offered.

My body felt cold despite the muggy warmth,
my arms hugging my frame. He was right. I didn’t know him, but
words kept spilling out of me, the sentences chugging locomotives
destined to crash and burn.

“You shouldn’t do that, you know, Eli.”

“Do what?”

“Drink.”

He laughed. “What are you? A self-righteous
volunteer here?”

His eyes. My feet. His face scrunching in
confusion.

“No,” I whispered, “but I just watched my
father die because drowning himself in drugs and alcohol was easier
than dealing with life.”

His eyes widened, filling with horror and
other things. “Shit. How do I get dragged into this kind of crap?”
Breath rushed out of him. In and out. In and out. How easy
breathing came for him, when below us, Dad was frozen. “Look, it’s
sad about your father and all. I’m sorry. I’ll … uh … keep you in
my thoughts and stuff.”