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.
I volunteer at Children’s Hospital every Thursday reading books to sick kids. It’s something our club started doing fifteen years ago after one of our brother’s granddaughters spent months in pediatric oncology.
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.
The nurse’s face had gone tight. “Her mother abandoned her here. Dropped her off for treatment and never came back. We’ve been trying to reach her for weeks. CPS is involved now but Amara doesn’t have any other family. She’s going into foster care once she’s stable enough to leave.”“And if she’s not stable enough?”
The nurse looked away. “Then she’ll die here. Alone.”
I stood outside room 432 for a full minute before I could make myself go in. I’ve read to dying kids before. It never gets easier. But a kid dying completely alone? That was a new kind of hell.
I knocked softly and pushed open the door. “Hey there, I’m Mike. I’m here to read you a story if you’d like.”
The little girl in the bed turned to look at me. She had the biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen. Her hair was gone from chemo. Her skin had that grayish tone that means the body is struggling. But she smiled when she saw me.
“You’re really big,” she said. Her voice was small and raspy.
“Yeah, I get that a lot.” I held up the book I’d brought. “I’ve got a story about a giraffe who learns to dance. Want to hear it?”
She nodded. So I sat down in the chair next to her bed and started reading.
I was halfway through the book when she interrupted me. “Mr. Mike?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”“Do you have any kids?”
The question hit me hard. “I had a daughter. She passed away when she was sixteen. Car accident. That was twenty years ago.”
Amara was quiet for a moment. Then she asked, “Do you miss being a daddy?”
My throat tightened. “Every single day, honey.”
“My daddy left before I was born,” she said matter-of-factly. “And my mama brought me here and never came back. The nurses say she’s not coming back ever.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. What do you say to a seven-year-old who’s been abandoned while dying?
Amara kept talking. “The social worker lady said I’m going to go live with a foster family when I get better. But I heard the doctors talking. They don’t think I’m getting better.”
“Sweetheart—”
“It’s okay,” she said. Her voice was so calm. Too calm for a seven-year-old. “I know I’m dying. Everyone thinks I don’t understand but I do. I heard them say the cancer is everywhere now. They said maybe six months. Maybe less.”I set the book down. “Amara, I’m so sorry.”
She looked at me with those huge eyes. “Mr. Mike, can I ask you something?”
“Anything, honey.”
“Would you be my daddy? Just until I die? I know it’s not for very long. But I always wanted a daddy. And you seem nice. And you miss being a daddy. So maybe we could help each other?”
I felt like someone had punched me in the chest. This little girl, dying and alone, was trying to help ME. Trying to make her own abandonment about giving me something.
“Sweetheart,” I said, and my voice was shaking. “I would be honored to be your daddy.”
Her whole face lit up. “Really? You mean it?”
“I mean it. For however long you need me, I’m your dad.”
She held out her small hand. I took it gently. Her fingers were so thin. So fragile.
“Okay, Daddy,” she said. And then she smiled the biggest smile. “Can you finish reading me the story?”I picked up the book with my free hand, still holding hers with the other. My vision was blurry from tears but I kept reading. And when I finished, Amara asked me to read another one. So I did.
I read to her for three hours that day. Read until she fell asleep, her hand still holding mine.
When I finally left, the nurse stopped me in the hallway. “That was the happiest I’ve seen her since she got here. Thank you.”
“I’m coming back tomorrow,” I told her. “And the day after that. And every day until… until she doesn’t need me anymore.”
The nurse’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re a good man, Mike.”
I shook my head. “I’m just a dad who misses his little girl. And now I’ve got another little girl who needs a dad.”
I came back the next day. And the next. And the next.
I started arriving at 2 PM every day and staying until visiting hours ended at 8 PM. Six hours a day with Amara. Reading stories. Watching cartoons. Playing simple games when she had the energy. Just sitting quietly and holding her hand when she didn’t.The nurses started calling me “Amara’s dad.” The doctors would give me updates on her condition like I was actual family. CPS stopped looking for foster placement because technically Amara had family now. Me.
Two weeks in, Amara asked me another question. “Daddy Mike, do you have a picture of your daughter? The one who died?”
I pulled out my wallet and showed her. “This is Sarah. She was sixteen here. This was taken a week before the accident.”
Amara studied the picture carefully. “She’s really pretty. She looks nice.”
“She was the best kid in the world,” I said. “Smart and funny and kind. She wanted to be a veterinarian. Loved animals more than anything.”
“I bet she loved you a lot.”
“I hope so. I loved her more than life itself.”
Amara handed back the picture. “Daddy Mike, do you think Sarah would be okay with you being my daddy now? I don’t want her to be sad.”I lost it then. Just started crying right there in that hospital room. This dying little girl was worried about my dead daughter’s feelings.
“Baby girl,” I said through my tears. “Sarah would love you. And she would be so happy that I found you. That I get to be a daddy again.”
Amara reached up and patted my face. “Don’t cry, Daddy. It’s okay. We found each other.”I called my club president that night. “Brother, I need the club’s help. I’ve got a situation.”
Within twenty-four hours, fifteen of my brothers had visited Amara. Brought her stuffed animals and books and toys. Made her an honorary member of the Defenders MC. Gave her a tiny leather vest with her name on it.
Amara’s room went from empty and sterile to filled with life. Filled with family.
My club brothers started taking shifts. Someone was always there with her. If I couldn’t make it one day, another brother would sit with her. Read to her. Be her uncle or her grandpa or whatever she needed.
She was never alone again.
Three months in, Amara started getting worse. The cancer was spreading faster than the doctors had predicted. She was in more pain. Sleeping more. Eating less.
One night I was sitting with her, reading Goodnight Moon for the hundredth time, when she stopped me.
“Daddy Mike, I need to tell you something.”
“What is it, baby girl?”
“I’m not scared anymore. I was really scared before. Scared of dying alone. Scared nobody would remember me. Scared I didn’t matter.” She squeezed my hand weakly. “But you made me not scared. You and all my uncles. You made me feel like I matter.”
“You matter more than anything in this world, Amara. You matter to me. You matter to all your uncles. You changed all of our lives.”
“Good,” she said. “Because you changed mine too. I got to have a daddy. I got to have a family. Even if it’s just for a little while.”
“It’s not just for a little while,” I told her. “You’re my daughter forever. Even after… even after you’re not here anymore. You’ll always be my daughter.”
She smiled. “Forever?”
“Forever, baby girl.”
Amara died on a Saturday morning in June. I was holding her hand. Three of my brothers were in the room with us. She went peacefully, no pain, just slowly stopped breathing while we sang her favorite song.
The hospital let us have a memorial service in the chapel. Over two hundred bikers showed up. We filled that chapel and the hallway and spilled out into the parking lot.
Every single person who’d met Amara in her three months at that hospital came. Nurses. Doctors. Janitors. Other patients’ families. The woman who delivered food trays. Everyone.
Because in three months, this little girl had touched hundreds of lives. Had shown all of us what courage looked like. What love looked like. What faith looked like.
CPS had finally tracked down Amara’s mother. She didn’t come to the memorial. Didn’t even call. But she signed papers releasing Amara’s body to me. The social worker who handled it cried while telling me.
“In thirty years of doing this job,” she said, “I’ve never seen anything like what you did for that little girl. You gave her something no one else could. You gave her a father’s love.”
We buried Amara in the cemetery where my daughter Sarah is buried. Put her right next to Sarah’s grave. Because Amara was right—Sarah would have loved her. And now they’re together.
The headstone reads: “Amara ‘Fearless’ Johnson. Beloved Daughter. Forever Loved by the Defenders MC and her Daddy Mike.”
That was four years ago. I still visit her grave every Sunday. Still read her stories. Still tell her about my week and what her uncles are doing.
And every Thursday, I still go to Children’s Hospital and read to sick kids. But now it’s different. Now when kids ask if I have children, I say yes. I have two daughters. One in heaven for twenty-four years. One in heaven for four years. Both forever in my heart.
The nurses at the hospital started a program because of Amara. It’s called the Defender Dads program. Volunteers who commit to being a consistent presence for hospitalized kids who don’t have family. Who show up every day or every week and be whatever that kid needs—a dad, a grandpa, an uncle, a friend.
Sixty-two men have gone through the training. They’ve been matched with over a hundred kids in four years. Kids who were dying alone now die surrounded by people who love them.
All because one little girl asked a scary-looking biker if he could be her daddy until she died.
I didn’t save Amara. I couldn’t save her from the cancer. Couldn’t save her from dying.
But she saved me. Saved me from the grief that had been eating me alive for twenty years. Saved me from feeling like I’d never be a father again. Saved me from the emptiness.
For three months, I got to be a daddy again. Got to read bedtime stories and hold a small hand and hear someone call me dad. Got to love and be loved.
That little girl gave me the greatest gift of my life. She gave me purpose again. She gave me healing. She gave me hope.
People see a tough biker when they look at me. They see tattoos and leather and assume I’m hard. Dangerous. Someone to avoid.
But Amara saw something else. She saw a daddy. She saw someone safe. She saw someone who could love her.
And she was right.
I was her daddy. I am her daddy. I’ll always be her daddy.
Because once you’re someone’s father, you don’t stop being their father just because they’re gone. You carry them with you. You honor them. You live in a way that makes them proud.
Every book I read to a sick kid, I’m reading to Amara. Every hand I hold, I’m holding hers. Every child I comfort, I’m comfing her.
She asked if I could be her daddy until she died. But the truth is, I’ll be her daddy forever. Death doesn’t end that bond. It just changes it.
And every single day, I thank God that a dying seven-year-old girl looked at a scary biker and saw a father. Because being Amara’s dad, even for just three months, was the greatest honor of my life.
She was my daughter. She is my daughter. She will always be my daughter.
And I will love her until the day I die and hopefully forever after that too.
