The doctors came and went. I heard terms like severe brain damage, without detectable awareness, Apallic syndrome, post-coma unresponsiveness, continuing vegetative state, permanent vegetative state. They tested his response to stimuli and there was no reaction. They tried to get him to track things with his eyes but he just stared at the ceiling, though I don’t think he could really see anything at all. One of the doctors suggested something called bifocal extradural cortical stimulation, which sounded scary and evil, and I told Jacob that I believed that particular doctor, who looked like a Jew and had a hooked nose, might be in legion with the Devil.
On the seventh night, I sat reading my Bible. This particular evening I was reading Revelations 12. It is a powerful chapter, one of the most powerful in the New Testament, and one with a great amount of truth. It’s about the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and the crown of twelve stars on her head, and the great red dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns who draws the third part of the stars of Heaven with his tail, and how as the dragon prepares to devour the child of the woman, the child who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron, the woman is drawn into the wilderness of God for 1,260 days while the archangel Michael and his army of angels make war on the dragon. I had read the chapter many times, and I believed that the events of it were going to happen soon, as they had been foretold to occur in the End Times, and I knew the End Times were coming, and that I would bear witness to them, and that I would be one of the 144,000 of the Lord’s anointed who would be saved and raised up into Heaven. Mrs. Avrohom was kneeling next to Ben, same as she did every night. This night, though, this seventh night, she started praying in Hebrew. Jacob told me she might do it, and he wanted to know if she did because he had forbidden Jewish teachings, law, words, and language in his home, and he would punish her accordingly for violating his rules. I didn’t know what she was saying, but I thought I should put down my Bible and try to write down anything I heard. As she was praying, Ben’s mouth started moving. She didn’t see it, but I did. There wasn’t any noise coming out, but he was mouthing the words, the exact same words she was saying in her prayers. And then his eyes opened, and not like when the doctors opened them for their tests, this time they opened and they were clear and focused and alive, and there was something about them, something pure and heavenly, as if they were the eyes of the Savior himself, and I was entranced by them. Mrs. Avrohom was still praying, and didn’t know Ben was with her, and she was quietly saying the Hebrew verses, and Ben started saying them with her, softly, in a voice that sounded very old and strong, and he matched her word for word, like he knew what she was going to say before she said it, and it sent chills down my spine. I tried to write what I was seeing, and feeling, and what Mrs. Avrohom was saying, and what Ben was saying, but I was paralyzed, paralyzed with joy and freedom and a lightness of spirit that felt like the moment I was saved, when the Holy Ghost was so powerfully alive inside of me.
Mrs. Avrohom became aware of Ben when he reached out and put his hand on her forehead. I watched it happen like it was in slow motion. His fingers started moving slowly, slightly, each of them on its own, like they were dancing. And then his hand and arm lifted off the white sheet and his fingers stopped moving and looked like they were stretching, like the fingers of Adam reaching towards God. Mrs. Avrohom was still praying, and Ben with her, and the sound of their words in synchronization was simple and ancient and had a beautiful rhythm to it and as his arm moved towards her forehead he turned and looked at her and it seemed like it took a million years for him to reach her and it seemed like there was nothing else happening anywhere else in the world, there was just this one thing, this one moment, this lost, damaged son reaching for his mother as they prayed to the Lord Almighty.
When he did finally touch her, she gasped audibly. I don’t know if it was because she was surprised or because of something she felt, but she looked like she had had a huge bolt of electricity pass through her. His hand was firmly on her forehead, and she looked up, her jaw dropped, her body went limp, her eyes were full of joy and peace and contentment. And they both continued praying, there was no lapse, no stopping, the words just kept coming. Ben smiled, turned and started to sit up, and as he did, the various monitors and IVs that were attached to his body started coming off, and those that didn’t he pulled off with his free arm. The alarms started dinging, shrieking, but he and his mother didn’t seem to notice. He sat all the way up and smiled, and it was a beautiful peaceful smile, similar to so many of the smiling images I’ve seen of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and his mother was staring up at him, and he moved his legs off the bed, and they were both still praying, almost singing, and his hand was still on her forehead, and he stood up. He was wearing a white robe. His body was hideously and terribly scarred, you could see the scars running along his arms and legs and on his face. His skin was so white, and so pale. And there were alarms screaming. And it was beautiful. He was so beautiful. If only I could somehow communicate the feelings it inspired in me. But that is the way it is with all of the important feelings and emotions and moments we have in our lives, words fail and don’t express even a fraction of what we actually feel. All I can say is it truly did feel like I was in the presence of divinity, in the presence of God himself. And I couldn’t move or speak or write or do anything but stare at him and feel love, and awe, and humility. He was just so beautiful.
The door flew open and a team of nurses and doctors rushed into the room, though they stopped as soon as they saw what was happening. Ben didn’t turn towards them or acknowledge them in any way. He stared down at his mother, who was staring up at him, and then he closed his eyes and lifted his hand away from her forehead and raised it to the level of his chest and held it there and stopped saying the Hebrew prayers and took a deep breath and smiled to himself as he exhaled. And as soon as he was finished with the exhale, he collapsed onto the floor and had a seizure.
I got pulled from the room, but what I saw of the seizure was hideous. Ben shook, his whole body violently shook, and fluids immediately started coming out of his mouth and nose, and he made these awful guttural noises. His mother stood up and started screaming. The doctors and nurses immediately tried to hold him down and grab his tongue, but he was strong, shockingly and unbelievably strong, especially given that he had been in a coma for the last several weeks, and it took two of them on each of his arms and legs to hold him down. As I stood in the hall, I could hear him struggling, he sounded like an animal, like he was possessed by Satan himself, and I could hear the nurses and orderlies yelling for more help, and I could hear Mrs. Avrohom, who was backed into a corner of the room when I left it, screaming at the top of her lungs.
I don’t know how long it was or what it took, because it seemed like hours and hours and hours, but Ben’s seizure ended and everything calmed down and I was allowed back in the room. Ben was on the bed, either asleep or sedated, and his arms and legs were in straps attached to the sides of the bed in case he had another seizure. Mrs. Avrohom was in the corner, quietly sobbing into her hands. I wasn’t sure what to do, but decided that if Jacob considered me a family member, I should comfort his mother as if I truly were one, and that things that might normally matter for a Christian man, that I was a single man and she was a widowed woman, that she had been using Hebrew in prayer, that she had been raised a Jew, didn’t matter, and that if God judged me, he would also forgive when I repented. I moved over towards Mrs. Avrohom and I put my hand on her shoulder and asked her if she was alright. She looked up at me and between her sobs asked me what had just happened, what had just happened with her son. I told her that I didn’t know, that God always had a plan and that we should never question it, but that I didn’t know.
Jacob showed up later. The doctors had called him because he was the family member listed as a contact. In between the call and his arrival, doctors came in and out of the room, checking Ben’s blood pressure and heart rate. I was no longer touching his mother when he walked in, but he was upset that I was sitting close to her. I told him what had happened, with every detail I knew, and he didn’t seem surprised or upset. He looked at his brother, and said let us pray, pray for the man who may be sitting before us. I didn’t know what he meant, and didn’t feel like I should ask.
Together we kneeled and we prayed, prayed silently until the sun rose and another of God’s glorious days began for us.
In the morning, Jacob took his mother home. She didn’t want to leave, but he felt she needed some time away, and she obeyed him because he was the head of their household. He asked me to stay and try to learn everything I could about Ben’s condition. The doctors kept coming in and out of the room, but when they spoke they did so in hushed tones, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Around lunch they stopped coming in. It was just Ben, who had not moved since his seizure, and me. I started reading my Bible, turning immediately to one of my favorite sections, Matthew 4:1-11, which is about the temptation of Christ by the Devil while Jesus was living in the desert, and about the food the angels of Heaven brought him after he resisted the Devil’s offerings. I often imagined myself in the position of Christ, resisting the Devil’s foul gifts, which I had spent so many sinful years indulging in, and someday having angels descend from Heaven, their wings shining with holy righteousness, to bring gifts for me. When I heard a voice, I thought my prayers had literally come true. I closed my eyes and I said thank you, God, thank you for rewarding my devotion to you. And then I heard the voice again and I stood up and I was scared to
