by Claire Adams
Sienna was gone. My perfect sister with her flawless beauty and driving ambition was gone.
I sank to the floor, unsure gravity could keep me from spinning away. I clung to the rug with both hands – Sienna's outrageously-priced woven rug she had begged our parents for last Christmas. I gritted my teeth and swallowed hard. Sienna would never forgive me if I threw up on her rug.
#
Sienna's dorm room was not more than a small box. The forensic photographer worked around me while two police officers joined the detective. They spoke at a regular volume, fully aware that shock had rendered me deaf to their words. I could not understand what they were saying.
"Everything seems to line up: high pressure major, friends say she was very focused, her schedule is intense. There's no major event, no tipping point so far," one of the uniformed officers said.
"Pretty typical," the detective agreed.
I gripped the rug so hard I felt my knuckles creak. The tears were building, a hard pressure pounding in my head, but they would not come. Only ragged breaths escaped, and each one hurt my throat. I wanted to cry, I had no idea what else to do, but I could not.
Sienna always knew what to do next. I always joked she would have made an excellent cruise director. At home, she had all of us scheduled down to the next five minutes during the holidays. I needed her to tell me what to do now.
I gasped for air. The detective stepped to the door of the dorm room and waved an arm down the hallway. In a moment, one of the EMTs sat on the floor next to me.
"Here," he said. "Take this. It’s a low dose anti-anxiety pill. It'll help calm you down."
It was something to do, some small action to get me off the rug and standing on shaking legs. I took the pill and let the EMT help me up. He stood firmly between me and the bathroom and held out his arms to usher me out the dorm room. Two men and a black stretcher waited in the hallway.
They were going to take Sienna's body away.
"Can I go with? I want to go with," I asked the EMT.
He shook his head. "Stop talking like that or you'll be overnight in the psych ward. You're going back to your dorm room to call your family."
A warm numbness spread through my body as the EMT escorted me downstairs to the campus security guards. Everything seemed far away and soft. I imagined my life becoming a video game, the origin story of some dark superhero. The flashing lights of the police cars, the open doors of the ambulance, the arrival of the coroner's van, they were all on a screen. I was safe on the couch in my dorm room, dozing as I watched the introduction.
If only it had all been a bad dream.
And then, I was on my dorm room couch. My roommate paced the floor in front of me. Her long, delicate fingers weaving together and squeezing with nervous energy. She spoke to me, occasionally sat next to me and tried to talk, but I could not hear anything she said.
"It's all over campus by now. I'm not sure you should stay here. People are going to be coming by and now's not the time. Right? Quinn?" she asked.
Darla kept going to the door. She never opened it, just called through, but the knocks kept coming at regular intervals. I could feel Darla's nervousness growing. She wrung her hands and stood exhausted in the middle of our small room. In my hazy mind, she became the gatekeeper. Was I a prisoner or the hidden princess?
Sienna had been the princess. My father called her Princess all the time. There was no way she would be sitting in a fog during a crisis like this one. She would have had everything organized by now.
I felt like I could not even blink without a colossal effort.
The next knock on the door was a rapid, insistent rap. Darla leapt to answer it and this time she pulled the door open. Alice Bonton slipped in our dorm room and locked the door behind her.
"She hasn't called her parents yet. She hasn't even moved," Darla told Alice.
"Quinn, honey, we need to call your parents. Let's do it now so they can come here and get you," my advisor said.
I shook my head. Somehow this was all my advisor's fault. If I had not answered the phone call from her, none of this ever would have happened. Sienna would still be alive and studying her night away. And, I would be slipping into the world of Dark Flag with Darla at the gamer party.
"I'm going to dial the phone and hand it to you, alright?" Ms. Alice asked.
"What I am supposed to say?" I croaked. "They are never going to believe me."
"Believe you?" she and Darla both asked at the same time.
"Sienna would never do something like that," I said. The images came back to me and the room in front of me faded away to darkness. Every time I tried to think of why, how Sienna could do that to herself, a giant chasm opened in my mind.
"Do you want me to tell them?" my advisor asked.
The phone was ringing and my mouth went dry. I nodded just as I heard my father's voice.
"Hello, Mr. Thomas? I'm sorry to be calling so late. This is Alice Bonton from UCLA. I'm your daughter Quinn's advisor. What? No, she hasn't done anything. Quinn is fine. I'm actually calling about Sienna."
There was a long pause on our end. I assumed my father had launched into a righteous lecture about the rudeness of the late night phone call. He was a busy man, probably due in court early the next morning, and he did not put up with such thoughtlessness from people.
If I had called, the lecture would have been the same.
"Yes, I did say I was calling about Sienna," Ms. Alice said.
And that was the difference. When it registered the phone call was about my sister, my father changed completely. I could almost hear him politely giving my advisor leave to speak, even though she stood a few feet away from me.
"There is no easy way to tell you this, but there has been an accident and Sienna Thomas is dead," Ms. Alice said. She looked as if she had fumbled a live hand grenade. "No, you're right, I should be more specific. Your daughter was found in her dorm room bathtub. She had cut her wrists. She was pronounced dead at the scene."
My father was a lawyer and must have switched into default mode because Ms. Alice spent the next ten minutes giving short, factual answers to his questions.
Finally, she cleared her throat. "Sir, I have your other daughter here. Wouldn't you like to speak with her?" Ms. Alice did not wait, she just handed me the phone with a barely disguised expression of relief.
He was still talking when I took the phone. "I'm going to need the name of the detective and the uniformed officers. I have her roommate's contact information somewhere."
"Daddy?" I asked.
"I'm going to have to lie to your mother until this is all cleared up. She can't handle news like this. We'll tell her Sienna was hurt in a car accident. I'll be there in the morning, Quinn. 8 am sharp in your lobby," he said.
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 suic
ide," 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.
"Oh, Quinn, dear, Daddy said you were home. He told me you've been skipping classes lately," my mother said.
I poured a hefty shot of vodka into a tall glass and mixed my own Bloody Mary. My mother stabbed radishes onto toothpicks and affixed them to a celery stalk, a makeshift rose garnish. She hesitated as she handed me one, forgetting for the moment that I was of drinking age.
"It’s your sister that doesn't like these," my mother said.
"She's not, I mean, she was not a big drinker," I observed. I held the glass to my lips, unable to drink for the lump in my throat.
"And yet she's forever going to parties. How does she manage it?" my mother asked. "I still don't understand how that girl can balance her surgical studies, a busy social life, and that boyfriend of hers."
"Maybe she couldn’t handle it," I said, my voice wavering. "Maybe it was too much for her and someone should have told her to slow down, take it easy, and not put so much pressure on herself."
"Please, I know you don't spend a lot of time with your sister, but you know what Sienna's like. She can handle anything." My mother brushed back her blonde hair and took a long, satisfied sip.
"Daddy said you weren't feeling well," I said.
Her eyes went dim, deflecting the question. "Oh, you know, I just felt a little out of sorts, but now I'm fine."
I eyed the drink in her hand. "Did you take something?"
"Quinn, please, what kind of question is that? I didn't need to take anything. I just feel better. Now, enough talk about me. When are you going to find yourself a boyfriend? I'm sure your sister's boyfriend knows lots of eligible guys," my mother said.
"It’s not like we can go on double dates," I said. The drink was suddenly too heavy. I set it down on the counter and slumped into one of the swiveling bar stools next to the kitchen island.
"Why not? I know Sienna's busy, but she can make time to set you up. You need someone. I'll give her a call," my mother said.
As she reached for her phone, the realization crashed over me: my father had not yet told her. I was so frozen with dread that I sat dumbfounded as she called Sienna's number.
"Hello, dear, I know you're busy, but take just a minute to listen to a message from your mommy. I've got Quinn here and she is moping around. Honestly, she looks as if someone's died. I'm hoping you have time for one of your wonderful sister make-overs. Maybe Owen could find her a date for this weekend? You could double for dinner and then split up? Think about it, darling. You know how she depends on you. Love! Kisses!"
I still could not move when my father walked into the kitchen. He was just as shocked as I was when my mother bounced over and kissed him on the cheek. "Barbara, I thought you were still upstairs. You're feeling better? Did you take something?"
"Why does everyone ask me that? So I slept in a little this morning and wasn't a ray of sunshine. I'm fine."
"Daddy?" I asked. The rest of the words stuck in my throat.
My father turned to me with a hard look. "Your mother's right, she's fine. Let her enjoy her drink."
"You can't, you can't make me be the one that does it," I said. "You have to tell her now."
"Tel
l me what?" my mother asked with a bright smile.
"You just want everyone to be as miserable as you, don't you, Quinn?" my father asked. "Ever since you were young, you did just as you pleased. Your sister was the one that knew how to take responsibility. She knew how to live up to expectations and be grateful for every opportunity she got."
"Tell her or I will!"
"Now, Barbara, why don't you sit down?" my father said in his best soothing voice. "There's some bad news about Sienna. I can hardly believe it myself. I didn't know how to tell you and I wanted to wait until you felt better."
"Sienna? Is she alright?" my mother shoved her empty glass onto the counter and hung on to the edge with both hands.
My father struggled to get his voice to work. "Sienna…Sienna committed suicide last night."
My mother sank to the floor as a keening wail rose from her lips. I jumped down from my stool and ran around the counter to sit with her on the floor. She bumped her head back against the cupboard, her eyes screwed shut tightly.
"I didn't believe it at first," my father said. "I still don't believe it. How could she do that? How could she throw away all her accomplishments, all her goals?"
"Oh, my sweet girl, oh, my sweet, sweet girl. I know. I know how it feels," my mother whispered to herself.
"Mommy?" I took her hand.
She yanked it away. "You don't understand, poor Quinn, you're like him. Sienna was always like me. She felt things the same way – felt the burning, felt the falling, felt the soaring."
"Can we talk about that?" I asked. "I think we need to talk about that."
My mother scrambled to her feet and flung herself at my father. "You promised she would be okay. You promised me she could handle it. Everything was fine, Sienna was always fine. Lies! Now, I know you lied. It's all my fault. My beautiful, sweet girl," my mother cried.
I stayed on the floor, cringing as my mother flailed her manicured fists at my father's chest.
"Barbara, you need to go lie down. You've had a shock."