"Has the death certificate been finished?" my father asked.
"Yes, sir. My findings corroborate with the detective's conclusion. Her death has been ruled a suicide," the coroner said.
For once, all the air seemed to be sucked from my father. I noticed how he had lost weight. There was more gray in his hair. The normal command he had over any room was gone and he followed the coroner without another word.
We stood in front of a plated glass window and stared aimlessly into a small room. White tiles reached halfway up the wall before giving over to an institutional gray color. Two orderlies pushed a gurney into the room. On the coroner's signal, one lifted back the white sheet.
There was Sienna, gray against the bleached white of the sheet. Her golden hair was combed back from her face and still damp from the medical examiner's administrations.
"Sir?" the coroner called as I swayed.
My father clamped onto my arm to steady me. "She was going to be a surgeon. She never flinched, never fainted." His eyes never left Sienna's face. "Her sister was going to follow in her footsteps but no one could catch up to her."
"You've had a terrible shock," the coroner said to me. "Would you like to sit down?"
"You're not going to faint are you? Surgeons don't faint," my father said.
"I'm in the nursing program."
He snorted. "Sienna was going to be a surgeon."
I wrenched my arm free from my father's grip and sat on the bench the coroner had shown me. Anger burned in my chest, and I rubbed at the pain. My father had decided when we were still toddlers that his daughters would be doctors. Sienna had thrived under the challenge, basking in my father's approval as she excelled.
I had always felt constricted, the square peg in a round hole. There was the pressure of his imperial expectations, the way he discussed it with everyone as if it was a foregone conclusion and not a hard achievement.
Had the pressure finally been too much for Sienna? I wondered.
My older sister had her ups and downs. Black rages and immobilizing bouts of depression. Sunny cheerfulness that lit up entire worlds and an infectious joy in her work. My father said it was a sign of a brilliant and passionate mind. Sienna worked hard, then needed to recover. Then, her love of the medical field would pull her back up.
It had always been strange to me that Sienna never recognized her own symptoms. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I pushed it away. There were certain topics that were never touched in our house.
"Did you tell Mother?" I asked.
My father finally turned away from the window. "No. She was not feeling well this morning. I told her you needed my help and that I would be back this afternoon."
My mother would never have believed it was Sienna that needed help.
The orderlies pulled the curtains on the small room. The coroner led my father to a counter to fill out the remaining paperwork. I sat on the bench and stared at the box of tissues left on the opposite end. It had barely been touched.
Did they replace it often or were most people that sat here like me? I wondered. The tears still would not come; they couldn't fight past the numbness. Somehow this was a joke, a prank. Sienna was not dead. She was going to burst through the door at any moment and make me admit I hated my major.
After all, nurses don't faint at the sight of dead bodies.
#
We did not say a word the nearly four-hour drive home. My parents lived about fifteen minutes away from the Las Vegas Strip in an affluent neighborhood called Summerlin. I felt the weight of exhaustion and grief the entire drive, but I could not take my eyes off the arid and flat landscape.
My father pulled into the driveway of our six-bedroom house. The Juliet balcony overlooked the driveway and behind the window, I saw the shadow of my mother. She disappeared back into her bedroom suite. I knew she would not meet us at the door, full of concern. If she was not feeling well it might be 24 hours before she appeared downstairs.
Once inside, I headed straight for my bedroom and curled up in the middle of my four poster bed. For a moment, I felt like the time in high school when I got sick at camp and had to get picked up early. Sienna was still there having fun, and I was stuck in our thick-carpeted, quiet house by myself. I clung to that bittersweet memory, the idea that Sienna would be home soon with fun summer stories to tell.
When I woke up, the light was a hot glow, but I could tell by the shadows that it was late afternoon. I lay still and wished the nightmare would end. Now, awake felt like the bad dream and asleep was my only relief.
I could not hide out forever, so I brushed my hair, tied it back in a loose ponytail, and headed downstairs. I reached the last step and heard my mother call from the kitchen.
"Darling, have you seen the Bloody Mary mix? Oh, never mind, I found it," she trilled.
I walked into the kitchen to find her dancing around the kitchen island, mixing a dark red Bloody Mary and filling it with an array of vegetables. "A light snack?" I asked.