When Jesus Wept

Chapter 27



Was it morning or evening? Dawn or twilight? I could not tell. The light in the cottage was dim, but it seemed to neither increase nor decrease. I tried to lift my head to look 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.