Still, he had thought a lot about Jesus in the hospital and been looking for the right time to tell Nicole about it. He was pretty excited to see her reaction.

“I can’t really tell you how He showed Himself,” he said. “It just seemed like He made it clear He was there with me.”

Nicole looked at him. She knew there was more, and he was grateful she didn’t press the point.

Instead, she asked, “So what are you doing with that?”

“With the fact that Jesus showed Himself somehow? I thought a lot about that. I think now Jesus and I have kind of an understanding.”

Nicole looked at him curiously. “What kind of understanding?”

“Well, first, I’m not denying He’s real anymore. I mean, there’s more to Him than just historical Jesus. So I figure that’s a big step forward. But also, it’s like He and I get each other now. He wants me to keep helping people, which I’m great with. And along the way, He’ll step in when I need Him.”

Nicole raised her eyebrows. “So this is what you’ve figured out? Jesus is like the Hutch to your Starsky? Did you talk to a chaplain or read some pamphlet?”

Nir was animated now. “No, it’s just what makes sense to me. You know, as I’ve worked the whole thing through in my head.”

“Got it. You know, I’ve got to give your logic process an A. Your conclusions? You better hope I grade on a curve. Who do you think Jesus really is?”

“I’m still figuring that out. You say He’s God Himself. I get that. But as a Jew, that sounds weird and maybe a little blasphemous. But who knows? You could be right. But maybe He’s an angel. Like the ultimate archangel. Or maybe some other sort of spiritual being more powerful than angels but not quite God. I mean, we don’t know all that’s in the spiritual world, do we?”

“We don’t.”

“Or maybe He’s like a Christian version of a bodhisattva.”

Nicole shook her head and chuckled. “A Christian bodhisattva?”

“Yeah, like in Buddhism. I was reading about it in an in-flight magazine a while back. They’re these guys who postpone nirvana so they can help people out.”

“And to you, that makes more sense than ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’?”

Nir began to deflate a little. She wasn’t taking this quite like he’d hoped. She wasn’t upset or anything, but she also wasn’t sharing the same excitement at his spiritual progress.