Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online Page A

private joke. One reached into his pocket for a set of keys, and as he turned toward the parking lot, his face was lit by the glow of a passing car.
    I should have put the pieces together earlier—the electric razor in the medicine cabinet, when my dad always used a blade; the detour my father made to stop for coffee every day to and from work at Greg’s store; the way he had left my mother all those years ago without explanation; the fact that my grandfather had never liked him. I tugged my black cap down lower and yanked up the fleece neck warmer Raine had given me, so that I wouldn’t be recognized.
    Panting, Raine delivered another kick to his victim and then let the guy scurry into the night. He straightened, smiled at me, and cocked his head, waiting for me to take the lead. Which is how I realized that even if I’d been totally clueless, Raine had known about my father all along.
    When I was six, the boiler in our house exploded at a time that no one was home. I remember asking the insurance adjuster who came to assess the damage what went wrong. He said something about safety valves and corrosion, and then he rocked back on his heels and said that when there’s too much steam, and a structure is not strong enough to hold it, something like this is bound to happen. For sixteen years, I’d been building up steam, because I wasn’t my dead brother and never would be; because I couldn’t keep my parents together; because I wasn’t the grandson my grandfather had wanted; because I was too stupid or angry or weird. When I think back on that moment, it’s white hot: grabbing my father by the throat and smacking his forehead against the pavement; wrenching his arm up behind his back and kicking him in the back till he spit out blood. Flipping his limp body over, and calling him a faggot, as I drove my fist into his face again and again. Struggling against Raine as he dragged me to safety when the sirens grew louder and blue and red lights flooded the parking lot.
    The story spread, the way stories do, and as it did, it swelled and morphed: the newest member of the North American Death Squad—namely,
me
—had jumped six guys at once. I had a lead pipe in one hand and a knife in the other. I ripped off a guy’s ear with my teeth and swallowed the lobe.
    None of that, of course, was true. But this was: I had beaten my own father up so badly that he was hospitalized, and had to be fed through a straw for months.
    And for that, I became mythic.
    —
    “ W E WANT THE other nurse back,” I tell Mary or Marie, whatever the charge nurse’s name is. “The one who was here last night.”
    She asks the black nurse to leave, so that it’s just us. I’ve pushed down my sleeves again, but her eyes still flicker to my forearm.
    “I can assure you that Ruth has more than twenty years of experience here,” she says.
    “I think you and I both know I’m not objecting to her experience,” I reply.
    “We can’t remove a provider from care because of race. It’s discriminatory.”
    “If I asked for a female OB instead of a male one, would that be discriminatory?” Brit asks. “Or a doctor instead of a medical student? You make those allowances all the time.”
    “That’s different,” the nurse says.
    “How, exactly?” I ask. “From what I can tell, you’re in a customer service business, and I’m the customer. And you do what makes the customer feel comfortable.” I stand up and take a deep breath, towering over her, intimidating by design. “I can’t imagine how upsetting it would be to all those other moms and dads here if, you know, things got out of control. If instead of this nice, calm conversation we’re having, our voices were raised. If the other patients started to think that maybe
their
rights would be ignored too.”
    The nurse presses her lips together. “Are you threatening me, Mr. Bauer?”
    “I don’t think that’s necessary,” I answer. “Do you?”
    There is a hierarchy to hate, and