Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online Page B

slurred, “are a fucking nightingale!”
    “You don’t swear in front of a lady,” Max said, and he punched the guy. The drunk collapsed against a shrieking cotillion of bridesmaids, their long gowns breaking his fall to the floor.
    In an instant, a tuxedoed behemoth grabbed Max and spun him around. “This here’s for beatin’ on my daddy,” he said, and he knocked Max unconscious.
    It was pandemonium—Hatfields versus McCoys, tables being overturned, old ladies tearing ribbons off each other’s hats. The band grabbed up their instruments, trying to keep the fray from destroying their equipment. I leaped off the stage and crouched over Max. He was bleeding from his mouth and nose, and also from a cut on his forehead where he’d struck the stage as he fell. I pulled his head onto my lap and huddled over him, shielding him from the rest of the commotion. “That,” I said, as soon as his eyes fluttered open, “was idiotic.”
    He grinned. “I don’t know about that,” Max said. “It got your arms around me.”
    He was bleeding so much that I insisted he go to the emergency room. He gave me the keys to his truck and let me drive while he pressed a napkin to his forehead. “Guess no one’s ever going to forget Reid’s wedding,” he mused.
    I didn’t answer.
    “You’re mad at me,” Max said.
    “It was a compliment,” I said finally. “You punched a guy for giving me a compliment.”
    He hesitated. “You’re right. I should have let him tear your dress off.”
    “He wouldn’t have torn my dress off. The guys in the band would have stopped him before—”
    “I wanted to be the one to save you,” Max said simply, and I stared at him in the green glow of the dashboard.
    At the hospital, I waited with Max in a cubicle. “You’re going to need stitches,” I told him.
    “I’m going to need a lot more than that,” he said. “For starters, I’m pretty sure my brother will never speak to me again.”
    Before I could respond, a doctor pulled aside the curtain and entered, introducing himself. He snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and asked what had happened. “I ran into something,” Max said.
    He winced as the doctor probed the scalp wound. “Into what?”
    “A fist?”
    The doctor took a penlight from his pocket and instructed Max to follow the tiny beam. I watched his eyes roll up, then from side to side. He caught my glance and winked at me.
    “You’re going to need stitches,” the doctor echoed. “You don’t seem to have a concussion, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make sure someone stays with you tonight.” He pulled aside the curtains of the cubicle. “I’ll be back with the suture tray.”
    Max looked up at me, a question in his eyes.
    “Of course I’ll stay,” I said. “Doctor’s orders.”
    One week later, I go back to work at the burn unit of the hospital. The first patient I see is Serena, a fourteen-year-old girl from the Dominican Republic who is one of my regulars. Burned severely in a house fire, she was treated locally and wound up disfigured and scarred. She hid in the dark in her family home for two years before coming to Rhode Island to have reconstructive skin grafts. I’ve met with her for an hour each time I am scheduled to be at the hospital, although at first, no one really understood what good music therapy could do for Serena. She was blind because of cataracts that developed when her scarred eyelids wouldn’t shut, and has limited movement in her hands. At first I just sang to her until she began to sing along with me. Eventually, I modified a guitar for her, tuning it to an open chord and then fitting it with a slide so that she could play. I put Velcro patches on the back of the neck of the guitar so that she could literally feel her way into the chords she was learning to play.
    “Hi, Serena,” I say, as I knock on the door to her room.
    “Hey, stranger,” she answers. I can hear the smile in her voice.
    I am grateful, selfishly, for her