When Jesus Wept - By Bodie Page 0,82

around; failed. I tried to raise my hand to hold it in front of my face; failed again.

A dearly beloved countenance, almost as familiar as my own, bent over me. What was her name? Part of my mind wrestled with the problem. I knew I should know her name. Why couldn’t I remember it?

A cloth dipped in warm water appeared. Gentle motions scrubbed my eyes, nose, and mouth. When it was lifted away from me, I saw it was stained red. Was I bleeding? It did not seem to matter.

“Poor, poor dear,” a tender voice crooned.

Mary! That was the name. I vowed to remember it.

A spoon was inserted between my lips, and some liquid dribbled in. Where did she think the fluid would go? I could not recognize much, but I knew my tongue was now swollen until it completely filled the cavity of my mouth and throat.

No room! I wanted to shout. You’re going to choke me!

“Come on, lamb, just a little more.”

I clamped my lips shut. The wooden spoon clunked against my teeth. Some broth or soup or water dribbled on my chest.

Mary tried again to insert the spoon between my teeth.

By rolling my shoulders and flinging my emaciated frame to the left I managed to knock the spoon from her hand. Leave me alone, I felt like screaming.

Even thinking about screaming made my head ache.

“David? Brother? We must … must … send for Jesus. Now. Today.”

A burst of coughing shook me from my head to my toes. Summoning all my reserve of breath and strength, I managed to croak: “No! Not safe! Don’t!”

Then, like a crushed grape skin after the juice has been pressed, I folded back into the bed, lying flatter and stiller than I had before. “Promise!” I demanded.

I was barely conscious of the ongoing efforts of my sisters and the physician, Sosthenes, to save me. I had no sense of time moving at all. I lived in a kind of perpetual suspense, waiting for something without knowing what.

I no longer opened my eyes. If I swallowed water or broth, it was without my knowledge, or perhaps in spite of it.

Only a few moments registered with me as taking place outside my mind.

The doctor, belatedly called to my bedside, forced open my mouth. He jammed a device in place to hold my jaws apart. Holding an oil lamp so close to my face I writhed away from the heat, he painted my throat with something far more foul and gagging than phytolacca.

I heard or perhaps dreamed Mary pleading with Marcus Longinus. “Go find Jesus!” she begged. “Tell him we need him to come. For the sake of one he loves, he must come! Beg him to intercede!”

Such urgency was no longer relevant to me or my life.

Like spiders aimlessly wandering, my fingers plucked at the covers or at my beard. I scratched my own arms in the torments of trying to draw in air, but I was mercifully unaware of the struggle.

Chapter 28

Darkness. Silence. The sudden absence of pain.

I heard my sister Mary weeping. Calling my name. “David! Oh, David! Don’t leave us! Don’t leave … ”

I stood above her as she bent over the ashen body of a man. Who was he, lying there? Why did she weep for the stranger? She threw herself upon the chest of his empty shell. Her shoulders trembled with sobs.

I tried to speak to her. Reached out, but my hand could not touch solid flesh. I floated above the scene as others charged into the room. Martha shrieked and clapped her hands over her mouth.

I floated just above them. I studied the face of the dead man. I knew he had once been me. Strange that I did not recognize the face that had been my face in life. The thought came to me that I had gone through the days of my existence without seeing myself as I appeared to others on earth. My eyes had looked out upon others, but I had not seen myself as I was. I had smiled, and my sisters had returned smiles. I had frowned, and their faces reflected my unhappiness. But as I looked at my empty self, I did not recognize what I had been.

Martha rocked and beat her breast. “Oh, my brother! My brother! You have flown away.”

I wanted to tell her that I had not yet flown. I still hovered in the room.

Mary picked up my dead self’s hand and kissed it. I leaned close to look