31Thanks for the reviews as always, apologies for having to upset all of you.
It was pretty unanimous that you guys wanted to see the others' reactions. I just wasn't sure how to write it, but a long coach ride back from London gave me time to think.
Thanks a billion to Dark Heart 945 for designing the cover for this story!
Anyways, here it is, the third and final chapter of And I Feel Them Drown My Name.
Warnings: Contains mentions of anxiety, panic attacks, past self-harming and freezing to death.
It was Bailey who spotted him first.
The boy had no clue of what had befallen his rival, so he was up and out of bed by 7 a.m. The weather outside was wet, grey and dreary after the storm that had taken Ryan's life, but Bailey was still eager to burn off some footie urges before breakfast.
Since Ryan had chosen to lie off to one side near the bushes to die, Bailey didn't notice him until long after he started kicking around. It was only when a curveball had managed to knock into Ryan's body - which by now, just under six hours after he died, was as stiff and cold as a stone statue - did Bailey notice the Scouse boy.
Usually, Bailey took no notice of Ryan. But the thing that had him perplexed this time was not only that Ryan was lying on the cold, wet grass, but also that he hadn't reacted at all to Bailey's football hitting him in the solar plexus. Bailey though this looked very suspicious, so he went over to investigate.
"Ryan, you idiot, why are you lying down on the-"
Bailey was cut off at that point, because he had opted to kick Ryan in the stomach in an unsuccessful attempt to wake him, but that kick had made it clear to him that Ryan was stiff. Very stiff. But why ...
Oh no.
Bailey stopped kicking Ryan and knelt down beside him, the pale boy's lack of reaction adding to his dread. He bent down, glad that no one else was around to see him, and placed his ear near to Ryan's face.
No breathing.
He felt for a pulse in the boy's neck.
No pulse - and he was cold. Icy cold, like he'd been out in the rain all night ...
Oh no.
No.
This wasn't happening.
It couldn't be.
Could it?
The proof is in the pudding, said a brutal little voice in his head.
Bailey shot up and sprinted back to the house, screaming for Mike and May-Li at the top of his lungs.
Just fifteen minutes later, the coroner's van was parked in the Ashdene Ridge driveway, with several coroners inspecting Ryan's dead body and a few others asking Mike and May-Li several questions about Ryan's whereabouts and activity the previous day and night. The care workers were answering on autopilot - their brains were too busy trying to process their reality to think properly about their answers.
"Hypothermia," concluded the head coroner, Dr Louisa Hollis. "He's been dead for roughly three to six hours - long enough for rigor mortis to set in. No signs of a struggle or any other people involved."
Dr Hollis paused when she saw the looks on Mike and May-Li's faces. She hated this part of the job, but she never minced words.
"I'm terribly sorry, but the only explanation is that he did this intentionally."
Mike could scarcely take it in. Ryan ... commit suicide?! By hypothermia?! But why?!
May-Li gasped, her eyes wide as she struggled to comprehend the whole thing.
"What's going on?" Tee's voice asked from behind the two adults, but she was cut off when she saw Ryan's stiff corpse lying on the ground, being inspected by some assistant coroners.
Mike and May-Li couldn't provide an answer, they were struck speechless by Dr Hollis's verdict. A small crowd consisting of the other young people had formed just behind her.
Dr Hollis continued for them. "He had his phone in his hands, his earphones in his ears. He was listening to a song on loop."
"Which song?" May-Li asked dumbly.
"'Grace', by Jeff Buckley," Hollis informed them.
Mike blinked sharply - he knew that song. It was about not being afraid to die.
He badly didn't want Ryan's death to be suicide, but all the omens were pointing to just that.
"Maybe I should leave you to take care of this?" Dr Hollis proposed, nodding to the intrigued children.
Mike found himself nodding, his body acting on autopilot while his brain was temporarily paralysed.
Dr Hollis gave them a nod, before gesturing to her team to take the body for a full post mortem examination. The coroners lifted Ryan, though it was awkward due to his body being stuck in the foetal position. His phone was still jammed in his frozen fingers, the song still playing.
"Is he ... dead?" Kazima asked fearfully.
The kids didn't need an answer - the looks on Mike and May-Li's faces said it all.
"What?! Why?!" Tee yelled.
"How can he be dead?!" Sasha shouted.
Mike and May-Li looked at each other, having a silent conversation. They were debating whether they should tell the kids the truth - especially with the younger kids there.
"Just tell us already!" Carmen demanded.
The care workers collected themselves before looking straight at the children.
Mike took a deep breath. "The coroner decided he killed himself."
Carmen and Tyler both gasped, Kazima clapped her hand over her mouth, Sasha and Tee looked at each other with wide eyes, Bailey looked down at his shoes, Mo's expression turned to a look of horror and confusion, Finn simply looked totally devastated, the twins looked like they were about to cry, even Floss had been rendered utterly speechless by the news they'd been struck with.
Harry had already started sobbing into Jody's shoulder, while she made unbelievably poor attempts to comfort him, even though she couldn't take it in herself.
"Wouldn't there be a note?" Tyler asked suddenly, which surprised everyone. "My mum says that people who commit suicide leave notes saying why they did it."
Before anyone else could say anything to that, Tee was dashing back to the house, Sasha in pursuit.
Tee bounded up the stairs, bursting into Ryan's room. She could hear the others catching up behind her, but that wasn't the main object of her attention.
Instead, it was the piece of lined paper lying on Ryan's desk, covered all over in his uneven but legible handwriting. But even more than that was the bottle of pills sitting on top of that.
Tee picked up the pill bottle first, looking closely at the label.
"Xanax?" Tee said aloud.
Mike sighed, covering his hand with his face. The kids looked at him questioningly.
"Anti-anxiety medication," Mike clarified in exasperation - how could he not know?
"He had anxiety?!" Carmen yelled in surprise.
"And you didn't know about it?!" Jody accused Mike and May-Li, the looks on their faces betraying the fact that they hadn't known.
"We were never told!" May-Li defended.
Mike sighed. "We should've known though. How is it that we never found out?"
"Maybe his note will say why," Sasha suggested.
"I'll read it out loud," Carmen proposed, picking up the suicide note - which she now realised was over two whole pages long, even using both sides of the paper!
"Let's hear it then," Jody said, as Carmen took a seat on the bed, the others sitting around and behind her. Mike and May-Li stayed standing.
Carmen began reading ...
"So, yeah, things were looking pretty shi- okay, he's written a swear word here, should I go on?" Carmen asked, just a little way through the note.
"Why would he swear anyway?!" Billie asked, still upset about the whole situation.
Jody did her best to explain it to her. "Because these are his last words ever, he said exactly what he wanted to say."
"Just use a synonym, Carmen," Mike told her.
"So, yeah, things were looking pretty bad for us ..."
"So, she pinned the blame for Chloe's fall on him?!" Mo asked. "She can't get away with that!"
"We can't find her," May-Li said regretfully. "She's in America."
"But surely we can-" Tee was cut off by Mike.
"We'll deal with everything of that sort later, just keep reading, Carmen," Mike sighed.
Carmen had to pause after reading out Ryan's description of a panic attack, inducing a moment of sympathetic silence.
"Poor Ryan," Floss murmured suddenly. "That sounds horrible!"
Carmen carried on. "And that was just one of many panic attacks I ended up having. When you have generalised anxiety disorder when you're less than ten years old, and said mental disorder is caused by your own mother, you know your situation is ... terrible."
Mike was struck utterly unable to speak. Generalised Anxiety Disorder?! And they were never told?!
"What's that?!" Harry asked tearfully.
"It means ..." Kazima tried to explain it to him, "it means that he has - had - panic attacks more often than we do."
Harry gasped. Jody wrapped her arm around him once again.
Mike and the others there that knew decided not to twist the knife by telling him that Ryan having Xanax for his anxiety spoke for itself, as prescribing drugs for anxiety disorders was a last resort, when nothing else worked.
Carmen thought it best to carry on after that, though she had to stop again after Ryan's description of the 'special home' he was sent to.
Tee looked at Mike and May-Li. "That's probably why he never told anyone - if you knew, you would've had to send him back there!"
Mike sighed deeply and facepalmed.
"Wait a minute," Sasha interjected. "Read aloud his description of the home again?"
Carmen did. "I hated it there. The whole point of being sent there is be supported through your mental illness, so you know something is off when a kid with anxiety is self-harming because of him having to live there ..."
"He was self-harming?!" Jody shouted.
"It doesn't say that he was self-harming," Kazima pointed out. "It could've been a different kid with anxiety."
May-Li sighed. "I hope you're right, Jody."
Carmen carried on. "They had a dog. I don't remember what breed it was, but I know that it was huge and it'd probably scare the- it'd probably scare even Bailey - hell, it'd probably terrify Mischief himself! That dog led to ingrained cynophobia. I can't get over it, and now I never will."
"I'd like to see this big scary dog," Bailey boasted, which surprised everyone as he'd been silent ever since he screamed for Mike and May-Li upon coming across Ryan's corpse. After the adults had come running, Bailey had been unable to get the words out and had simply pointed in Ryan's direction.
"A boy has just committed suicide and that's your main focus?!" Carmen shouted.
"I found the body!" Bailey retorted, his voice containing surprising anguish. "I had to report it!"
"Guys!" May-Li intervened. "There's a time for arguing, and now is most definitely not that time!"
Carmen and Bailey sighed, and Carmen carried on.
"It was a relief ..."
"... should've kept an eye on her. Stopped her from getting so close."
Mike sighed deeply, rubbing his face. "Ryan was in no way to blame for what happened to Chloe," he informed the others. "He'd just turned five that day and his mother had left them home alone - how can you expect that of a five-year-old?!"
"Clearly he didn't think so," Sasha murmured.
Carmen had read ahead. "He was self-harming. Listen - 'I don't want to live like this anymore. Sometimes I still find myself relying on the knife to help me cope with myself and all the things that I've done.'"
Mike had to sit down then, burying his face in his hands. This just kept getting worse - how long had Ryan been hiding this?
He didn't even process Carmen reading out the next few words until she suddenly passed it to him.
"Mike, he's written something for you."
Reluctantly, Mike took the note and read Ryan's last short words to him.
Those who got the chance to glance at those words simply assumed that Ryan was apologising for taking his own life. They didn't know the true meaning behind them, or the whole meaning of the Ninth Circle of Hell and why Ryan believed he would end up there.
"You're next," Mike said shortly, passing Carmen the note so she could read her note.
Instead, Carmen took the liberty of reading out everyone's messages from Ryan, though she paused after reading out Tee's message to glare at her, along with everyone else.
Tee held her hands up. "I-If I had known he had anxiety ... I-I would've never-"
"Save it," Jody interrupted, her voice hard. "What's done is done."
"You can't seriously be blaming me for-"
"Tee," Mike interjected, "we'll talk about this later."
Carmen simply rolled her eyes and continued reading.
"Wait," May-Li interrupted, just after Carmen had read out Sasha's message. "How did you and Tee come to the conclusion that Ryan paralysed Chloe to begin with?"
Sasha sighed. Everyone hated her now Ryan had gone and committed suicide on them - she had nothing to lose. "Tee and I eavesdropped when Ryan was talking with his sister."
"And why would you do that?" Mike asked sternly.
"We wanted to find out why he was so scared of seeing her," Tee admitted. "But we didn't know it would cause him to have an anxiety attack!"
"Eavesdropping on private conversations is out of order, anxiety disorder or not!" Mike scolded.
"Harry, he's written this next bit to you," Carmen coaxed gently, as said boy was burrowed into Jody. He wasn't sobbing anymore, but he was visibly distraught. Carmen passed the note to Jody to give to Harry.
Harry stayed pressed into Jody. He was scared to read the last words Ryan had written before killing himself. What if he blamed Harry for making him feel so low that he believed his life wasn't worth living anymore? He should've helped Ryan more, then maybe none of this would've happened.
"Read it, Harry," Jody encouraged. "You'll like it, I promise."
Harry reluctantly pulled away from Jody, wiped his face and took the note. Jody pointed out the small section Ryan dedicated to Harry so he could read it.
When Harry had finished reading it, he felt tears coming to his eyes again. "What did he mean when he said that it had to be done?"
"I think he meant that he felt he had to kill himself," May-Li explained. "He was wrong, though - he didn't have to die."
Jody pulled Harry close to her, trying to support him through this terrible time.
"He's written this next bit to his mum," Jody reported, glancing ahead. "And ... I'm not gonna read it out."
Mike took the note and looked at Ryan's final words to his mother, grimacing at his profanity, before sighing as he read on. "Oh God, how are we gonna tell her?!"
"His mother?!" Tyler asked incredulously.
"No, Chloe," May-Li replied, sitting down.
It was just 24 hours later when Mike received a call from the coroner, telling him to come and receive the results of the post-mortem examination.
Mike arrived there and was led to his destination, with Ryan's now limp corpse lying creepily on the examination table, his skin pale. Dr Hollis was standing mournfully over him. She turned to Mike and didn't beat about the bush.
"The primary cause of death was hypothermia," she reported. "The PM revealed no signs of a struggle or any evidence to show that he was forced against his will to lie in a rainstorm until he froze to death. The blood tests revealed that there was no alcohol or anything of the sort in his system - except for alprazolam, or in layman's terms Xanax, which has never been known to cause such behaviour."
"We know he committed suicide," Mike sighed sadly, interrupting Dr Hollis's report. "Not long after you left here yesterday, we found his suicide note in his room, his Xanax on his desk."
Dr Hollis patted his arm in a poor attempt to console the man. She briefly wondered how on Earth she was going to deliver her next news to him. She had gone through this scenario several times, but it never once got any easier, and this boy's suicide was unlike any that she had seen before.
But she had promised to herself upon getting her Ph.D. that she would never sugar coat the truth. Grieving relatives deserved the whole truth, no matter how painful it was to receive or deliver.
"I was just about to tell you ..." she trailed off. This was harder than she imagined. She simply made sure that Mike was watching closely, before she carefully lifted Ryan's ice-cold wrist and showed the man his forearm.
Mike had been preparing himself to see the self-inflicted cuts that Ryan had talked about in his suicide note, but he still couldn't help flinching at the sight of them. They looked alarmingly red on Ryan's ghostly-white skin, with every fifth cut being slashed straight across the previous four in a tally.
"The cuts appear to be just a couple of days old," Dr Hollis told him sadly. "They opened and started bleeding out due to the rainwater, speeding up his death."
Mike didn't realise he was trembling until he reached a hand out to trace the angry red gashes. Dr Hollis noticed - this she was used to.
"Sir, I believe you should sit down," she said gently, guiding him to a chair.
"How could I ... I should've known ... oh God, Ryan," Mike breathed, burying his face in his trembling hands.
Dr Hollis patted his back, trying best she could to console him. "Sir ... Mike ... I've dealt with a thousand cases like yours and Ryan's, and I know that right now you are blaming yourself, thinking that you should've got him proper help, and that it's your fault he took his own life."
Mike blinked at her owlishly, tears in his eyes.
"It's not your fault," Dr Hollis said, as firmly as she could muster. "His time of death was placed at 1:20 a.m, with his body temperature starting to drop at 1:05. You couldn't have stopped it happening."
Mike stared straight ahead, not looking her in the eye. "He was smart, you know. Doing it at night, so that no one would notice him until it was too late. Typical Ryan, that's exactly how he would do it."
Dr Hollis gave him a quick hug. "Should I deliver the news to Ryan's other relatives, or do you feel up to doing it yourself?"
"I'll be fine," came Mike's automatic response. "Thank you, for everything."
"It's the least I can do," Dr Hollis replied.
Mike decided to leave right then, yet no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get the image of Ryan's peaceful expression contrasting so strongly with the angry cuts on his arms out of his mind. He sat down in his car but didn't have the motivation to drive back to Ashdene Ridge yet. Instead, he simply called May-Li.
"Mike?"
"It's true," Mike said shortly. "Ryan froze to death just after 1 a.m the night before last. He did it intentionally knowing that he would die, and yes, he was self-harming."
"Do you want to talk about it?" May-Li asked him gently, as they sat in the office together later that day.
Mike sighed. "May-Li ... I think I'm gonna resign."
"Resign?!" May-Li repeated, her eyebrows shooting up so high that Mike would've laughed if the situation hadn't been more unfitting for laughter.
Mike nodded. "It's our job to look after and protect children. It's what I've done for as long as I can remember ... I failed, May-Li. I failed to protect Ryan. Good God, how on Earth did I not know about his mental health issues? And after finding out how he felt about what happened with Chloe ... oh, May-Li, why did I not force him to get counselling? Social Services are going to be all over this, and I'll have to face the consequences."
"Don't be like that," May-Li offered up lamely. "Ryan said so in his note - he doesn't blame you for what he's done. He was the one feeling he needed to apologise to us - to you. You came close enough to losing your job a month ago, there's no need for you to walk into it. These kids rely on you, they need you, now more than ever. Are you going to desert them in their time of need?"
Mike briefly wondered telling the whole truth about Ryan and the file, but he couldn't trample on a boy's grave.
May-Li continued. "And even if you did fail Ryan, which you didn't, that doesn't at all mean you should fail all these other kids by resigning. Ryan wouldn't want you to resign - he'd want you to support everyone. Imagine how poor Harry feels! He could never manage without you."
Mike sighed, and sat down at the computer. "I'm gonna clean out my inbox. Give me something to do."
May-Li left, and Mike set out the repetitive but calming task of checking which emails he needed to keep and which were just taking up memory. When he was done with that, he went through the deleted items folder, checking he hadn't deleted anything important by accident. God, he shouldn't have left it this long - he had emails going back to 2014!
He had reached the start of 2015 when something caught his eye - an email with the subject of RYAN REEVES Confidential, sent from Sutton West Children's Services. How had he never noticed this? And how in the name of all things holy had it gotten deleted?!
Mike opened it, and the contents very nearly knocked the wind out of him:
Dear Mr Milligan,
With reference to Ryan Reeves,
The purpose of our inspection and assessment is to comment upon the suitability of a child or children placed into care taking into account physical and mental health issues.
Mike's eyes blinked more times in a second than a video camera. His mind flashed back to the day when Ryan first arrived at Ashdene Ridge, how he'd reported a man trying to rob a car, only to come back to a destroyed computer keyboard.
The words from Ryan's suicide note replayed in his head for the umpteenth time. How he'd kept quiet about his mental health issues to avoid being sent back to the special home he'd been sent to.
It all made sense now.
Maybe ... just maybe ... this wasn't his fault.
Just one day later, many miles away from Ashdene Ridge, Chloe Reeves lay in her bed, staring straight up at the ceiling. It was 2 o'clock in the morning, and yet she couldn't nod off at all. Her social worker's words kept replaying over and over in her head:
"Your brother committed suicide three nights ago."
Chloe had spent the next three hours in such a state that was a mixture of denial, grief and devastation. Her brother killed himself?! By freezing to death?!
She had been given Ryan's suicide note once she'd regained her bearings, and she had read his words to her several times. The only letter her brother would ever send her. She tried replaying his words instead of her social worker's but found they did nothing to help.
He had told her that she didn't deserve him, that she deserved the world, and she could get it.
Only she didn't want the world.
She didn't want to go with her Mum to America once she sent for her - if she sent for her.
She wanted her big brother.
Hot tears formed in her eyes.
He crept through the corridors of the care home in Scotland. It didn't stick out to him at all but for it being the residence of his little sister Chloe Reeves.
He had been told that he would only ever get one visit to Earth, as those who take their own lives do, and he had opted to use it immediately, knowing for certain what he would use it for.
He was told that he could travel through solid matter, but it had felt too uncomfortable for a novice like him, so he only did so when needed to traverse closed doors.
He found Chloe's room in not very long. She was lying down on her bed, wheelchair next to her, his own suicide note on her bedside table. Her eyes were wide open and bloodshot.
He doubted she could detect him at all, but still, no one could say he didn't try.
Ryan's phantom fingers stroked Chloe's dark hair, and he bent down to place his ghostly lips against her forehead.
"I love you, Chloe," he whispered. Or rather, tried to whisper. Ghosts couldn't make noises, but he tried his damned hardest to communicate. "I love you so, so much."
Chloe started. She swore that ... but how ... he was dead!
Chloe Reeves could've bet her wheelchair at that moment that her big brother Ryan had been in the room with her, stroked her hair, kissed her and told her that he loved her.
Ryan placed his hand over her heart. "I'll be right here."
Chloe rubbed her sore eyes.
Ryan wasn't there.
So why was her heart so full?
Whew, this chapter was long!
This was actually quite draining to write, I've spent far longer on it than the other two, mostly because I wasn't quite sure how to get the words out.
I had the idea for a fic like this for a long time, as well as specific words and sentences in my head. However, that idea didn't include a reaction chapter. I dare say it's not my best work, but I hope you are satisfied regardless.
Review!