The nurse insisted on wheeling me down to the family viewing room that was attached to the morgue. I wanted to walk and went to tell her as much, but Alex picked me up before I got the chance and deposited me into the wheelchair, then pushed me toward the elevator himself.
I expected to be led into a dark basement room where the walls were lined with steel cubbies for bodies. I wasn’t prepared for a quiet room with two metal chairs and an altar for praying. One of the orderlies wheeled in a metal gurney, the still body underneath it covered with a plain blue sheet. Funny, I thought the sheet would be white and starchy, and have PROPERTY OF CRANSTON GENERAL emblazoned on it, but I guess it didn’t make a difference either way.
The orderly looked at me, then to Alex, before handing the nurse a clipboard and a pen. She signed her name on the form, pausing once to check the time on her watch before logging it on the paper.
“Do you need anything else?” the guy asked, and I shook my head. “Then I will … uh … give you some privacy.”
The room was silent. Too silent. The nurse was still there, tucked in the corner watching … waiting. I couldn’t move, couldn’t bring myself to get up from the wheelchair and take those few steps to where Ella’s dead body lay. I had begged the nurse to bring me here, and now I wanted to leave.
“Maddy?” Alex questioned as he knelt in front of me. “You don’t have to do this. Nobody expects you to do this.”
I could hear the offer in his voice, the hope that I would change my mind and retreat to my hospital room and the promise of more mind-numbing drugs.
“I’m fine,” I said as I got up and willed myself to take that first step and then another until I stood next to the steel bed, staring down at the impossibly still form.
“You ready?” the nurse asked.
I nodded and she reached for the corner of the sheet, easing it down to where my sister’s shoulders met her neck. Even staring at the floor, I could feel her there, as if she was calling to me, daring me to look at her. My hands started shaking, my entire body drenched in a sweat that contradicted the chilled air of the room. I steeled my resolve, had to count to five three times before I found the courage to look up.
“Where are her clothes?” I don’t know why I asked that. I knew her clothes were probably bloodstained and covered in glass. But I thought perhaps seeing them—the color, the brand, something as simple as whether she wore tank tops or bras would jar my memory and connect me to her in some way.
Alex shrugged. “Don’t know. I guess they probably gave them to your parents.”
“Do you know what she was wearing? Did you see her when they brought us in?”
“No,” he said, and looked away. His answer was curt and filled with an anxious quality I hadn’t heard from him before. I briefly wondered what he was hiding, what he was afraid to tell me. “Your clothes were gone by the time I got here. They’d cut everything off to get to your injuries.”
I nodded. It made sense, I guess.
“She had one of her shoes on. Blue sneakers, I think, if that helps.”
It did, actually. I could picture them. They were light blue with gray laces. There was writing on the side, like somebody had signed them with a black Sharpie. And comfortable. “What was I wearing?”
“Nothing. You left your shoes at my house. I found them on the lawn next to a chair. Why?”
“No reason,” I said, and stared down at my sister. Her eyes were closed, the skin surrounding them a dusty blue. Maybe it was bruising from the accident. More likely that’s the way dead eyes looked.