The line went dead. I dropped the phone on the floor and lay down on the couch. Darla pulled my comforter off my bed and laid it over me as I curled up in a ball.
Somehow, my body woke up at 7:30 am. On autopilot, I showered and dressed and walked downstairs to meet my father.
He was early and impatiently waiting. "Did you talk to her roommate last night?"
"No."
"But you went to her room? The detective said you were there," my father asked.
"Yes. I saw, I saw…" I stopped and clung to the mailboxes in the foyer.
My father pulled open the front door. He then grabbed my elbow and escorted me out in front of him. "We're going to the coroner's. Didn't you tell me you went there with your class? That's my girl, never flinching when there's something useful to learn."
"That was Sienna," I said.
My father scowled as he opened the car’s passenger side door for me. He scowled all the way to the county coroner's office. He wiped it away when the coroner met us at the door. The two men shook hands.
"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.