The little girl asked if I could be her daddy until she dies. Those were her exact words. Seven years old, sitting in a hospital bed with tubes in her nose, and she looked up at me—a complete stranger, a scary-looking biker—and asked if I’d pretend to be her father for however long she had left.
I’m a 58-year-old biker named Mike. I’ve got tattoos covering both arms, a beard down to my chest, and I ride with the Defenders Motorcycle Club.
Most kids are scared of me at first. I get it. I’m big and loud and look like I should be in a motorcycle gang movie, not a children’s hospital. But once I start reading, they forget about how I look. They just hear the story.
That’s what I thought would happen with Amara.
I walked into room 432 on a Thursday afternoon in March. The nurse had warned me this was a new patient. Seven years old. Stage four neuroblastoma. No family visits in the three weeks she’d been admitted.
“No family at all?” I’d asked.Continue reading…
