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The next hour lasts an eternity. I can barely focus during my change of shift report to the night nurse.
I walk quickly out of the building when my shift ends. I speed walk home, bobbing and weaving around pedestrians, dropping down and stepping into the street to get around slower foot traffic. I try calling Sienna three times but she never answers. Her phone is often on silent because, if it wasn’t, it would go off all day with the deluge of friends’ texts, but her phone is almost always in her hands too, which means that if she was looking at it, she would see that I was calling.
I race down Sheffield, cutting the corner when I come to our street. I see the three flat in the distance, but I can’t get there fast enough. My legs don’t move as quickly as I would like.
I run my eyes over the exterior of the building. From the outside, the living room is completely black and I don’t understand why it would be. The light should be on. Sienna and Nat should be in there, eating dinner together in the living room and getting to know one another.
I feel it in my gut.
Something is wrong.
I dash up the outside steps. I jam the key in and let myself into the building. I climb the stairs toward the third floor. Somewhere just beyond the second floor, I get a view of our front door, which is open. My heart starts to race. I walk somehow faster, taking the steps two at a time now, rounding the top of the stairs and pressing the door open with my hand. I come in to the sound of Sienna’s music, which is loud.
“Sienna!” I call out but she says nothing back.
It’s dark in most of the apartment. But in her bedroom at the center of it, Sienna’s desk lamp is on, the light from it weak.
I drop my purse just inside the front door, hearing the contents spill. I leave them. I make my way to her room, finding Sienna standing at the edge of her bed with her back to me, unpacking her overnight bag. Relief overwhelms me. She’s here. She’s fine.
I take a breath, letting my heart settle before I speak.
“What time did you get home?” I ask, rapping on the door with my knuckles.
Sienna spins around. “What the—” she asks, dropping the shirt that she was holding to the floor. I’ve startled her. She didn’t hear me come in over the sound of her music.
“Sorry,” I say, holding my hands up as a sign of peace. I make my way to her Bluetooth speaker to turn the volume down. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you heard me come in. We have neighbors you know. I’m not sure they’re as big of fans of Beyoncé as you.”
She rolls her eyes. It takes a second for her to catch her breath.
“I thought I was about to be murdered,” she says, that word—murdered—taking on a whole new meaning in light of everything that’s been happening.
“That’s not something to joke about, Sienna,” I scold. “You left the front door open by the way.”
“No I didn’t,” she says, defiant as always, as if I didn’t just see the open front door.
“Yes, you did. You have to make sure it’s closed and locked,” I say, which reminds me to send another note to the landlord to have it fixed. “I texted you over two hours ago. Why didn’t you reply?”
“I didn’t see it,” she says. She looks at her phone and, only now, sees my text. “Sorry. I fell asleep after school. I got like three hours sleep last night.” Of course she did. The show would have gone late. Ben, she tells me, took her out to eat after the show. By the time they made it back to his place, it could have been approaching midnight.
But I can’t think about that now.
“Where is Nat?” I ask, watching as Sienna’s face clouds over in confusion. “My friend,” I prompt. “The one who is staying with us. Is she not home yet?”
Sienna shakes her head. “I didn’t see her. She never came.” I worry Sienna is wrong. I worry that Nat did come but that Sienna was asleep and Nat couldn’t get in downstairs. Nat might have buzzed to be let in. Sienna might have slept through it.
I want to be angry. But I can’t be, not yet. My first priority is finding Nat, figuring out where she went when she couldn’t get into the apartment.
I race back out to the living room for my phone so I can check Facebook to see if Nat messaged. It’s still dark in the living room and so I go to the lamp and turn it on, twisting the switch. Light fills the room.
And that’s when I see, in the glow of the floor lamp, that the sofa bed has been remade, the cushions and throw pillows replaced on the seat. The coffee table has been slid back into place and Nat’s large duffel bag, which has taken up residence in front of the TV for over two days, is gone, the only proof it was ever there the matted section of rug.
My hand rises to my mouth. I lower myself to the arm of the sofa.
I think back to my patient, Anne, whose husband beat her to death. I followed the murder trial. I went to it one day, sitting at the back of the courtroom because I wanted to see his face. The day that I went, there was a homicide detective on the stand. He described how Anne’s husband left her to bleed out internally after the beating. I know from my own work that bleeding out internally can be sudden, painful and severe, or it can be slow—a silent, sly death, a trickle of blood until the total blood loss is so severe it’s beyond hope. I deliberated for days after the trial and then for weeks about which way Anne died—sudden and painful, or slow.
Did she go into shock? Did her organs fail? Did her children watch?
I think about Ben’s decree when I first heard about Anne’s murder, how I can’t save them all. Maybe he was right. Maybe I should have listened. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried.
