I had for him. I walk to him and I say his name and I start crying very hard and it hurts my body and hurts me inside like I am destroyed and I kneel by his bed and I can’t touch him or look at him, I just say to him over and over I am sorry, I am sorry. There are no other words, and even those words aren’t enough for my feelings. There are never words for the strongest of our feelings. There is just the pain that we cannot share. Pain we must all feel alone.
I stay at his bed for the whole of the night and when the sun comes up I sit in a chair next to his bed and I hold his hand and I tell him about the years he has been gone and what has happened in our life. I hold his hand and it’s cold and there are scars on his wrist and his hand and he does not move except for breathing which is faint, and sometimes labored, and sometimes he twitches or shakes a little amount. At one point many doctors come in and ask me who I am and I tell them and they say the chart still says John Doe and it makes me cry to think of how long my son has been lying here alone being called John Doe. One of the doctors calls someone on the telephone on the wall and more people come but they are not doctors. Some of them work for the hospital and some of them are police and I tell them his name and where he is from and I tell how long it has been since I have seen him. They ask for my ID and I tell them my son does not let me have ID or driver’s license because he does not believe in any authority other than God. They take me to a room where they say I must stay until they confirm me as who I say I am.
It is a long time, many hours I sit alone. When the door opens, it is Jacob and he says to come with him. I ask him what happened and he say he talked to police and tell them everything and show them the driver’s license he has for himself and they say I can go. We go to Ben Zion’s room and Esther is waiting outside the door for us and we go in together and we kneel and spend the day praying together for the health of Ben Zion. And for many days that is what we do. We kneel by the bed and together we pray for the health of Ben Zion. Jacob and Esther go back to Queens sometimes because they both have many responsibilities at church but I do not ever leave the hospital. I stay with my son. And I wait for him. And I know in my heart, because I have known all my life, and I have known all of his life, what he will become when he returns. I wait for him.
JEREMIAH
Jacob was like a brother to me and a father to me and a spiritual guide to me and a true inspiration to me. He saved me and believed he cured me and I loved him and admired him, and in many ways I wished I was him. When the MSM descended after Ben’s real identity was made public, he asked me to stay in the hospital with his mother and help protect them from the reporters and their tape recorders and their cameras and their lies. He also wanted me to take notes whenever the doctors were there so he could have them for lawsuits he planned to file on Ben’s behalf against the city, the construction company, the real estate developers, and the hospital, which he hoped would provide him with financial security and help to expand the facilities and the teachings of the church. I was truly and greatly honored, and I promised him I would take the job very seriously and lay down my life if necessary. Jacob said he knew, and that was why he chose me. The hospital’s policy was that only family was allowed to stay, so Jacob told them I was his brother, his real brother. And we believed that in the eyes of God, the Holy Spirit, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we were telling the truth, and that because our aims were righteous, the sin of lying was not actually a sin. We did what people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong. We told ourselves God would allow it, but not because of the Laws of God, but because we wanted to do it.
I met Jacob when he was protesting deviant lifestyles outside a club where I went to meet men. I had seen him a few times before standing with three or four other people, all holding signs that said God Hates Fags, or Fags Will Rot in Hell, or AIDS is God’s Cure for Faggots, and he would yell verses from the Bible at people smoking outside the club and hand out pamphlets about his church. My story was the same as a million others in New York. I grew up in a small town, liked boys and dresses, got teased and beaten at home and at school, ran away to New York at seventeen to be a model or a singer or an actor or whatever I could be that was fun and easy and would make me famous. It didn’t work, and I got addicted to drugs and sex and clubs and lived a sad empty life that I pretended was fun and exciting. I always felt I had a hole in my heart, this big black hole that made me feel lonely and empty and worthless. I tried to fill it, everybody tries in some way, and it just got bigger and bigger. The night Jacob approached me I was on a date with a man who gave me certain things and expected certain things in return. He lived in the Midwest and was in town for three or four days a month. It was my second night out with him and I was hurting really bad. The man wanted me to get some meth, and on my way out of the club Jacob said I can cure you as I walked past him. I stopped and asked him what he would cure me of, and he said the vile, soul-damning lifestyle of sodomy and homosexuality. I asked him how, and he said the Bible offers a message of love and hope, and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will save you and show you the way. I started crying. I was surprised. I hated religion because of its treatment of me, and its absoluteness, and I never would have believed I would believe in it, but something opened inside of me, the Holy Spirit opened inside of me, and it was lovely and fantastic and the most powerful thing I’d ever felt, a sense of joy and peace and love, and I believed at that moment that for whatever reason God was calling to me and telling me to follow this man. Two hours later I was baptized and born again. The next day I moved into a basement apartment in Queens in the house of one of the church elders. It felt right and true and good to me, and it was lovely and joyful and secure and strong. To have the Holy Spirit inside of me and to cultivate a personal relationship with the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To have friends who called me brother and wanted to take care of me instead of use me. It was all I ever wanted in my life, all anyone ever wants. To have someone love you. To have someone tell you that they know the way and want to share it with you.
I spent most of my time in a chair near the door of Ben’s room. We kept the door closed, and if it started to open I would stand and ask whoever it was what business they had in the room. It annoyed the doctors and nurses because I made all of them show me their credentials, even if I had met them before or had seen their credentials before. Twice MSM reporters tried to sneak in as doctors. One of them even tried to show me bogus credentials. Everyone wanted to see the Miracle Man who had disappeared into thin air for sixteen years and survived what he never should have survived. Aside from the reporters, there were lawyers, photographers, psychics, healers, and women. I took the lawyers’ business cards, but had everyone else removed as quickly as possible. And I couldn’t believe how many women wanted to see him or touch him or marry him. He wasn’t even awake and they didn’t know what he would be like if he did wake up, if he’d even be able to speak or move or walk. I handed each of those women a pamphlet and said maybe the void they were feeling in their heart could be filled with the love of God and the love of his Son, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
For the first ten days I was there, nothing happened. Mrs. Avrohom prayed by Ben’s bed and I read the Bible. I went to the gift shop or cafeteria for food. We both slept in fold-down chairs, hers next to the bed, mine near the door. Jacob and Esther came by after breakfast and usually stayed until just before dinner. They spent most of their time kneeling by the side of the bed, praying, though Jacob often stepped into the hall to speak with the doctors, and on a couple of occasions with attorneys. Nobody seemed to know what kind of condition Ben was in. The machines they hooked up to his brain would give them all sorts of different results, and sometimes they were happy and said he seemed normal and sometimes they said he was going to be a vegetable and sometimes they said they were seeing things they had never seen before, extraordinary activity as one doctor called it, and most of the time they had no idea what was happening. When they took the breathing tube out of his throat, it was a big deal. They made everyone leave except for Jacob, who refused to leave, and they were really worried he wouldn’t be able to breathe on his own. I waited outside the room with Mrs. Avrohom and Esther, and we were all praying to Jesus to give Ben the strength to live. We were praying really hard, and when we heard the doctors and nurses clap and Jacob yell Hallelujah, Lord, we knew our prayers had been answered.
For the next five or six days, nothing good happened. Ben was able to breathe, but he didn’t move, and all the brain monitors indicated that there was absolutely no activity, and the doctors were saying that he was going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life. The timing was terrible because Jacob was finishing the church fundraising drive and was going to announce plans for the expansion of the church’s facilities. He asked me to take notes on everything the doctors and nurses said and he’d come by at the end of the day and review them. He also asked me to pray extra hard, and I told him I’d pray my hardest, but I knew my connection to God wasn’t nearly as strong as his was, and I was worried that I didn’t have enough strength, and wasn’t holy enough, to make a difference.
