Nick sighed.
“I want to help you. Tell me what I can do for you.”
“You can’t help me, Father.” Nick shook his head. “No one can.”
“God works in mysterious ways. Nothing happens without a reason on His earth.”
“What reason could there be to let three innocent people die?” Nick responded bitterly.
“Not one of us knows in the hour of death,” Father Kevin countered softly. “God has taken Mary and Christopher to His side because He thought it was right. Now they are with Him. But you must live on.”
“Must I?” Nick turned his face to the side. “It’s no consolation for me that they may be in heaven. I wonder whether there’s a God at all if He allows things like this to happen. Mary never harmed anyone, and still God allowed that she…that she…”
He stopped and wiped his bandaged hand across his face.
“Jesus Christ doubted in His hours of fear and hopelessness,” Father Kevin replied. “It’s human nature to have doubts. Everyone has them. If you don’t doubt, you can’t believe.”
“I don’t know if all of that is true. I don’t know anything. None of this makes sense anymore.” Nick looked at his old friend. “I wish that I had the courage to kill myself.”
Father Kevin looked at him seriously and then placed his hands on his shoulders.
“I remember this little boy,” he said in a low voice, “a boy I respected because he had courage. He had a grand vision that shone above his path like a bright star. This boy didn’t have an easy life. He had to witness the death of his mother, his father, and his brothers. But he never gave up. He never understood why his father gave up on himself. This boy fought for all of his life.”
Nick frowned.
“It’s not the same anymore,” he whispered. “I don’t have any strength left.”
“God will give you the strength to endure what He imposes on you. Even if you don’t understand at this moment how He let it happen that Mary and Christopher had to die.”
“No! There’s no consolation for this!” Nick replied vehemently. “Not for me! It’s my fault.”
“You should allow others to help you.” Father Kevin let him go and sat on the edge of the bed.
“They want me to talk about it,” Nick said, sounding agonized, “but I can’t. I don’t want to talk.”
“The doctors are very worried. And not only them. The entire city is grieving with you. The people waiting outside the hospital want you to get better because they love and trust you. You’ve become their role model, their guiding light.”
“No, no. I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want other people to expect something of me. I want…I…”
“They want to help you.”
“Damn it! What do they expect? Should I cry and scream and pull out my hair?”
“Yes.” Father Kevin nodded slowly. “I think that they expect something like that. They’re waiting for a reaction from you so they can see that you’ve overcome your shock.”
“I’m not in shock. I simply can’t cry! Everything is cold and dead inside of me.”
“Because you’re not allowing it. You’re afraid to lose control.”
Nick stood up and stepped toward the window.
“That may be,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Maybe I’m afraid of going crazy.”
Both men were silent. The blood-red sun set over the other side of the park, behind the apartment buildings on the west side. Nick breathed heavily. What good would it do to talk about the horror that he experienced over and over again? It wouldn’t change anything. No one could help him—not even God. How should he continue to live with the thought that he was solely responsible for the death of these three people? Why hadn’t he listened to Mary’s plea that he simply forget Vitali? He had achieved so much and celebrated many successes, but that wasn’t enough for him. Filled with arrogance, he thought he was invincible. Now fate had taught him otherwise. Vitali had taken from him what he had loved most in his life. And the punishment for his guilt was agony and loneliness. No, there was no solace. Not for him. But no one understood.
“I love the Lord,” Father Kevin said in a low voice, quoting the Bible, “who listened to my voice. Who turned an ear to me on the day I called. I was caught by the cords of death, the snares of hell had seized me; I felt agony and dread. Then I called on the name of the Lord: ‘O Lord, save my life!’ Gracious is the Lord and righteous; our God is merciful. The Lord protects the simple hearts.”
Nick heard the springs squeak as the old man raised himself from the edge of the bed. The Jesuit priest’s gaze was full of compassion, and he put his hand on Nick’s shoulder once again.
“You can come to me whenever you need to,” he said, “but don’t allow your heart to harden against God in anger.”
Nick remained silent.
“Don’t judge yourself more harshly than God would judge you,” the Father raised himself up again, “and the sun will also shine for you again. The Lord will help you in His mercy if you ask Him to.”
The head physician and his team were eagerly awaiting the Jesuit priest as he left the room.
“Did he speak to you?” Dr. Simmons asked.
“Yes,” Father Kevin O’Shaughnessy replied, “but don’t expect him to talk about the things that torment him. He’s never been one to speak of his feelings, not in all the forty years I’ve known him. It’s pointless to keep him here.”
“Are you suggesting we simply release him, even though he’s still in shock?”
“Yes.” Father Kevin nodded. “He’s going to be okay. I’m also a medical doctor with many years of experience treating traumatized people, especially soldiers returning from Vietnam. Nicholas Kostidis reminds me of those men. His behavior shows every symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder: a disturbed affect and a seeming lack of feeling. But just because he cannot express it does not mean grief is not roiling inside of him.”
The doctors looked at the priest in astonishment.
“But what about the suicide risk?” another senior physician said. “He mentioned several times that he wished he had the courage to kill himself.”
“He said that to me,” Father Kevin confirmed, “but I don’t take it seriously. A man like Nick Kostidis doesn’t tend to commit suicide. Although he’s still incapable of grieving, he couldn’t force himself to do that. But he blames himself for his family’s death. We won’t be able to talk him out of believing it.”
“Maybe it would be best to admit him to a—”
“For heaven’s sake!” Father Kevin interrupted the senior physician. “He’s not crazy! Give him time to accept his family’s death. The only thing that can help him now is time. He’ll come to terms with it one day. I’m sure of it.”
The three senior physicians were perplexed as they looked at each other.
“Okay, Father,” the head physician finally said. “We’ll release Mr. Kostidis on Tuesday. We should respect that he doesn’t want to talk about something that’s still so fresh and painful. Maybe you’re right, and time will heal his wounds.”
Frank Cohen and Michael Page invited all the people Nick himself would have if he had been up to the task. They waited at the old, tree-filled cemetery of the St. Ignatius monastery in Brooklyn. Francis Dulong and his wife, Trevor and Madeleine Downey, Michael Campione and his wife Sally, and Christopher Kostidis’s best friends were among the group of about eighty mourners. The grounds of the monastery were sealed off by over a hundred police officers. No one without a permit was allowed near the cemetery. Countless reporters, camera teams, and also citizens of the city, who wanted to support their mayor in this hardest hour of his life, crowded behind the police barriers.