Dr. Pederson had driven Steve to the hospital in his own car and had stayed until he had seen him comfortably settled in a private room. He had also phoned Steve’s pastor who showed up about an hour later.
“Would you like to receive Holy Communion, Dr. Pearson?”
“O yes! But I am not sure my stomach can handle the Host.”
“I will dip my finger in the Blood of Jesus and lay it on your tongue.”
Dr. Pearson closed his eyes and nodded gratefully.
At that very moment, Mary Thorsheim appeared in the doorway.
“Come and join us, Mary. Dr. Pearson and I are about to celebrate Holy Communion.”
“Yes. Come, Mary,” Steve insisted, beckoning to her weakly.
And so the three of them celebrated Holy Communion together.
When Communion was over and Steve and Mary had been blessed, the pastor said, “I have one more thing to ask you. Do you remember Dr. Engstrom? He was the college chaplain many years ago when you were a student.”
“Very well.”
“He is now quite elderly, a widower retired in Minneapolis,” the pastor said, packing up his Communion kit. “He drove himself down to St. Mark to attend Kay and your son’s funeral. I met him there afterwards for the first time. He seemed uncommonly concerned about you. He asked me to stay in touch, to let him know how you are managing. And so, of course, I phoned him as soon as I heard from Dr. Pederson. He said, ‘I’ll be there in the morning. I need to have some time with Dr. Pearson, if possible.’ He wondered if you were all right with that.”
“Yes. Of course. Yes.”
“I’ll let him know.”
“Thank you, Pastor.”
And now Mary was alone in the room with Steve. She sat down on a chair near his head. Silence reigned for many minutes until Steve, who had been staring at the ceiling, turned his head toward her and said, “Thank you for coming, Mary. I … I….”
“That’s okay, Steve. Where would you expect me to be?”
Tears blurred the vision of both of them.
“Steve. You and Harold were such good friends. I have brought you something of his that I think may be of interest to you. It’s his new Bible, the Revised Standard Version. It was published shortly before he died. He had it for only the last two weeks of his life. In those two weeks, he marked some passages that must have jumped out at him. Almost all of them deal with something I think he believed we had not given enough serious thought to. I know he marked them for me, but I have a feeling they might speak to you too. I have put bookmarks in place to help you find those passages, except where he left notes in the margin to guide us to the next passage. I’ll just leave it right here in case you’re interested in having a look at it,” she said, placing it on his bed table.
“You are too kind, Mary.”
Pause.
“I have appreciated everything you’ve done for me, you know, even though I haven’t been very good at showing it.”
“I know,” she said, patting him on the arm. “Good night. God bless you! See you in the morning.”
When Mary had gone, Steve lay there for a very long while inert, as the events of the day slowly seeped into his consciousness. They tried to serve him some Jello for supper, but he took only a little tea.
He was suddenly very weary. But he reached for Harold’s Bible out of sheer loyalty and opened it to the first of several bookmarks.
The secret things belong to the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever. (Deut. 29:29)
“They belong to us,” mused Stephan as he gave way to sleep. “But what have we done with them?”
As he drifted off, he thought of Dr. Engstrom who for some reason was so keen to be there with him in the morning, and of Harold whom he would meet in his marked-up Bible in the days ahead, and of faithful Mary who had come on behalf of Kay just to be with him.
Despite everything, a deep and gracious peace enveloped Steve on his first night in the hospital.