Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult

bowel is clean to eight centimeters.”
    He strips off his gloves and mask, washes up, and leaves the nurses to fuss o ver the child in recovery. It's a light anesthesia, it will wear off quickly. The moment he walks out of the operating room, he is approached by the paren ts.
    “How is he?” asks the father.
    “Nathaniel's doing well,” Martin replies, the words everyone wants to hear. “ He may be a little drowsy this afternoon, but that's perfectly normal.” The mother pushes past all these platitudes. “Were there any findings?”
    “There did seem to be evidence consistent with an assault,” the doctor says g ently. “Some rectal abrasions that are healing. It's hard to say when they we re incurred, but they're certainly not fresh. Maybe a week or so's gone by.”
    “Is the evidence consistent with penetration?” Nina Frost demands. Martin nods. “It's not from falling down on a bicycle, for example.”
    “Can we see him?” This from the boy's father.
    “Soon. The nurses will page you when he's awake in recovery.” He starts to leave, but Mrs. Frost stops him with a hand on his arm. “Can you tell if it was penile penetration? Digital? Or some foreign object?” Parents ask whether their children still feel the pain from the assault. If t he scar is something that will affect them later on. If they will remember, i n the long term, what happened to them. But these questions, well, they make him feel as if he is being cross-examined.
    “There's no way to know that level of detail,” the doctor says. “All we can s ay at this point is, yes, something happened.”
    She turns away and stumbles against the wall. Wilts. Within seconds she is a small, keening ball on the floor, her husband's arms wrapped around her for s upport. As Martin heads back to the operating suite, he realizes it's the fir st time that day he has seen her act like a mother.
    It's foolish, I know, but I've lived my life believing in superstitions. Not throwing spilled salt over my shoulder or wishing on eyelashes or wearing luc ky shoes to trials-instead, I've considered my own good luck directly correla ted to the misfortunes of others. Starting out as a lawyer, I begged for the sexual assaults and molestations, the horrors no one wants to face. I told my self that if I faced the problems of strangers on a daily basis, it would mag ically keep me from having to face my own.
    Visiting violence repeatedly, you become inured to atrocity. You can look a t blood without blinking, you can say the word rape and not wince. It turns out, though, that this shield is a plastic one. That all defenses break do wn when the nightmare happens in your own bed.
    On the floor of his bedroom, Nathaniel is playing quietly, still groggy from the anesthesia. He guides Matchbox cars around a track. They zoom to a cert ain spot, a booster, and suddenly shoot with great speed up a ramp through t he jaws of a python. If the car is just the tiniest bit too slow, the snake snaps its mouth shut. Nathaniel's car passes through with flying colors every time.
    My ears are filled with all the things Nathaniel is not saying: What's for di nner; can I play on the computer; did you see how fast that car went? His han ds close around the Matchbox like the claw of a giant; in this make-believe w orld he is the one calling the shots.
    The python's jaws ratchet shut, so loud in this silence that it makes me jum p. And then I feel it, the softest jelly-roll along my leg, the bumping up m y spine. Nathaniel is holding the Matchbox car, running it up the avenue of my arm. He parks in the hollow of my collarbone, then touches one finger to the tears on my cheek.
    Nathaniel puts the car onto the track and climbs into my lap. His breath is hot and wet on my collar as he burrows close. This makes me feel sick-that h e should choose me to keep him safe, when I have already failed miserably. W e stay like this for a long time, until evening comes and stars fall onto hi s carpet,