Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online Page B

anything yet.” He glances in the rearview mirror. "I don't want to keep talking about this, in front of him.
    "
    “Do you think that'll make it go away?”
    Caleb doesn't respond, and there is my answer. “The next exit's ours,” I say sti ffly, because Caleb is still driving in the left lane.
    “I know where I'm going, Nina.” He brings the car to the right, signals at the exit sign. But a minute later, he misses the turnoff.
    “You just-” The accusation dies as I see his face, striped by grief. I don't think he even knows he's crying. “Oh, Caleb.” I reach out to touch him, but that goddamned elephant is in the way. Caleb throws the car into park and g ets out, walking along the road's shoulder, drawing huge breaths that make h is chest swell.
    A moment later, he returns. “I'll turn around and go back,” he announces-t o me? To Nathaniel? To himself?
    I nod. And think, If only it were that easy.
    Nathaniel bites down hard on his back teeth so that the hum of the road goes right through him. He isn't asleep, but he is pretending to be, which is almo st as good. His parents are talking, the words so soft at the corners that he can't quite hear. Maybe he will never sleep again. Maybe he will just be lik e a dolphin, and stay half-asleep.
    Miss Lydia taught them about dolphins last year, after they'd turned the cla ssroom into an ocean of blue crepe paper and glitter-glue starfish. So Natha niel knows these things: that dolphins shut an eye and half their brain, sle eping on one side, while the other side watches out for danger. He knows tha t mommy dolphins swim for their resting babies, pulling them along in an und erwater current, as if they are attached by invisible threads. He knows that the plastic rings which rope six-packs of Coke can hurt dolphins, make them wash up weak onshore. And that even though they breathe air, they'll die th ere.
    Nathaniel also knows that if he could, he would roll down the window and jum p out, so far that he'd cross the highway barrier and the tall fence to plum met along the rocky cliff, landing in the ocean below. He'd have sleek silve r skin and a smile curved permanently on his mouth. He'd have a special body part-like a heart, but different-filled with oil and called a melon, just l ike the thing you eat in the summertime. Except this would be in the front of his head and would help him find his way even in the blackest ocean, on the blackest night.
    Nathaniel imagines swimming off the coast of Maine toward the other end of the world, where it already feels like summer. He squinches his eyes as tig ht as he can, concentrates on making a joyful noise, of navigating by those notes, of hearing them bounce back to him.
    Although Martin Toscher, MD, is considered an authority in his field, he wo uld gladly trade his laurels to completely eliminate his area of expertise. Examining one child for evidence of sexual abuse is more than enough; the fact that he's logged hundreds of cases in Maine is phenomenally disturbing. The subject of the examination lies on the OR table, anesthetized. It would be his suggestion, given the traumatic nature of the exam, but before he had even proposed it to the parents, the mother asked if it could be done that way. Now, Martin walks through the procedure, speaking aloud as he works so that his findings can be recorded. “The glans penis appears normal, Tanner 0 .“ He repositions the child. ”Looking at the anal verge . . . there are mult iple obvious healing abrasions, about one to one and a half centimeters up, that are approximately one centimeter in diameter, on average.“ He takes an anal speculum from the table nearby. Chances are if there are ad ditional mucosal tears higher up in the bowel wall, they'd know-the child w ould be physically ill by now. But he lubricates the instrument and gently i nserts it, attaches the light source, and cleans out the rectum with a long cotton swab. Well, thank God for that, Martin thinks. ”The