When Jesus Wept - By Bodie Page 0,78

the ill. In the morning I penned a note appealing to my sisters for help. I did not know what they could do, but I was at my wits’ end.

The help that came in response to my note was more than I could ever have imagined. The day after I sent Peniel to Bethany with my appeal, my sister Mary and her servant Tavita appeared at the hospital. Within moments of taking in the situation, they also took charge.

“We will not risk asking Rabbi Jesus to return,” Tavita said.

“And didn’t Rabboni tell us to ask whatever we needed in his name and his Father would hear us?” added Mary. “So, we’re asking! Almighty Father, we are not worthy that you should do anything for us, but in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and by his direction, we do ask. Help us save these boys!”

Then Tavita added, “And we’re going to keep on asking too!”

Mary whispered to me, “Putting the Almighty on notice is a new achievement, even for Tavita.”

“She has always intimidated me,” I confessed.

“Now that we’re here you must sleep,” Mary urged.

“But the next round of treatments—”

“Can wait for one hour,” Mary replied. “You nap, and we’ll organize. That’s it. Off to the quietest corner with the cleanest blanket. There you go.”

Truthfully, I did not require much urging. I think I was asleep while my feet were still moving toward my pallet.

I drifted off, listening to Mary stating her plans and Tavita barking orders. The last comment I remember before slumber claimed me was Mary observing to Rapha: “You will obey everything Tavita tells you to do, and you will do it immediately and without complaint. Or do you know what? I will see that you are returned to the prison as inmates for pilfering supplies! And you’ll be confined in the lowest, coldest cell.”

“Actually, you’ll be thrown in with the prisoners you abused before you came here,” Tavita added. “Wonder how that will turn out for you.”

I slept with a smile …

When I awoke it was dark outside. I bolted upright in a panic: the medicine! The throat treatments! I was failing in my duty!

Mary reassured me otherwise: “Once Tavita got things organized, the rest was easy.”

I scanned the warehouse. Before I slept, the patients had been arranged in long rows. Some were comfortably near the fires but others were chilled at too great a distance,

Now the boys were arranged in circles, like the spokes of a wheel, with a charcoal brazier at the center of each.

“Tavita, Peniel, and I have made the rounds with the medicine. We’re starting with the throat painting now. You can help, if you’re up to it.”

I nodded, overwhelmed with generosity and hope.

“And they’ve all been fed,” Mary added. “Rapha and her crew saw to that.”

“How?”

“Let’s just say Tavita found the right encouragement.”

I mixed the phytolacca and prepared to show Mary and Tavita how to apply it. The boy I used for my demonstration was named Lamech. When I sat down next to him, his eyes were clearer than in days and his voice sounded stronger. “Please, sir. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather the lady dosed me,” he said, pointing at Mary. “She told me part of a story when she gave me my tonic. I’d like to hear a bit more, if you don’t mind.”

Soon enough I was wrapped again in both a blanket and in slumber, confident that with Mary and Tavita in charge, my boys—I thought of them that way—were in better hands than in the previous week I had been caring for them. And that notion did not injure my feelings one bit.

Telltale barking coughs still ricocheted around the ward of Jerusalem Sparrows. The plague would not lightly give up its grip on my boys.

What changed was the atmosphere in the hospital, meaning both the air we breathed and the spiritual sense too.

With only the prison matrons to assist us, Peniel and I had felt like drowning men. No task was ever completed; no dosage or feeding gave satisfaction.

We had been holding our own, but that was all.

When Mary and Tavita took charge, they insisted that any old, filthy rags be taken out and burned. The cheap charcoal we had been using was discarded; higher quality coals burned with more heat and less smoke. The crones were set to work sweeping and scrubbing floors with the steaming lemon water under Tavita’s watchful eye.

The boys were bathed. The straw of their pallets was turned every