The Reprieve

My sister Annick fixed me, locked me in, with cold, blue eyes as she sat down slowly next to me at the table. “I’m a surgeon,” she said, not quite casually, “a board certified surgeon.” I give her a questioning look. “I could take your steak knife,” she says, eyeing it, “plunge it into your neck - and oh, sure, there’d be a question or two but in the end - I’d walk away clean.” “I don’t think,” I start saying… Tears well to near overflowing in her turquoise eyes. “I came in - officer” she says, sounding stunned and surreal. “She was having a convulsion, she exhibited severe cyanosis, I couldn’t clear her airway, it was a classic tonic-clonic seizure.” she goes on, her voice rising to near panic with the diagnosis. “You’d never…” I start to interrupt but she gently covers my mouth with her left hand while gathering the handle of the serrated silver steak knife, expertly, into her right hand. “I attempted to perform a tracheostomy,” she continues in a traumatized but professional voice. “but as I began a transverse incision above the sternal notch,” *a tear rolls down her cheek*, “Anais suffered a severe generalized-onset seizure and convulsed, forcefully into the knife” “IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!” I confess suddenly, as if under oath, in court. There’s a moment of still silence. “And when,” she asked, wiping away the tear and turning the knife for a downward thrust. “Were you going to mention it?!” “NOW! - before dinner!” I look around the empty room - for help - for a sympathetic jury. “It was an ACCIDENT! - I’m SORRRRYYYY!” I plead. My sister slowly sets down the knife and says deliberately, purposefully - like a death sentence: “My Valentino sheer floral-lace top is STAINED.” ”I can Fix it!” I insist in a rush. “Keep out of my room - and my stuff.” she grumbles, “And REMEMBER what I said,” she adds as she pats the knife before getting up and leaving the room. “I WILL’” I promise to her back. A second later, my mom sweeps in from the opposite direction. “What’s up” she asks. “Nothing” I almost whisper, head down.