Success and failure aren't usually measured in feeling. You have the money to keep the power on or you don't; you chop enough wood for the house or you don't; you dig your way out of the cave-in or you die trying.

He's glad it's dark, with wind howling outside, when he feels the shame of it tighten his chest a little more.

Maybe this is what it's like, and maybe it's going to stay this way. Something will happen, he'll do his best, and it won't be enough. There isn't room in him for that feeling and the implications of Bodhi's friend, here but gone. He shouldn't have tried to find something to say, he should have just listened. "Are you just going to sit here in the cold if I do?"