Read Online Miracles in the ER by Robert D. Lesslie - Free Book Online

had come from. A child her age could have contracted it from a blood transfusion, but she had always been healthy, and there was no history of that. The other and much more likely source was from her infected birth mother.
    The little girl in Dakota’s lap squirmed in her mother’s arms and I looked down. My hands clutched the chart I held, and I felt my face flame to a burning crimson.
    Dakota looked at me, tilted her head, and her eyes followed my stare.
    Her forearms were bare and I could clearly see the scars of needle tracks extending to both elbows.
    She didn’t flinch or try to hide them. Her eyes met mine and she smiled.
    “You’re right. I’ve had my own troubles, but those days are long past. Thankfully I don’t have HIV or hepatitis, and I know I’m fortunate. Not like Autumn’s…” She stopped and looked over at the stretcher. “Or Summer’s,” she whispered. “She’s positive too.”
    I slumped into an empty chair and cradled the girl’s clipboard against my chest. This was a lot for me to handle—something I didn’t expect—something I had never experienced.
    Dakota gently smoothed her daughter’s golden hair and our eyes met.
    “She’s fine too. Never had any problems. We make sure they get the best medication possible and keep a close watch on them. But they’re completely normal, and happy. That’s the main thing. They’re happy.”
    Autumn’s X-ray did reveal a right-sided pneumonia. But it had all the appearances of being something routine—not what you would expect with a person with active HIV. That was good news. She would still need to be admitted but probably for only a few days.
    “She’s going to be fine,” I told her mother.
    We talked about what to expect with Autumn’s treatment, and I asked Dakota when her husband would be coming to the hospital. If he was anything like his wife—and I was sure he must be—he was someone I wanted to meet.
    “Dylan won’t be able to get here till later. He won’t get off work until after eight.”
    “I’ll check on Autumn in the morning. Maybe I’ll get the chance to meet your husband.”
    My hand was on the curtain again.
    “Tell Miss B I said hello.”
    The words stunned me, and I froze.
    How did Dakota know “Miss B”—my wife, Barbara? Only the little children in her classes at church knew her by that name—and the special-needs campers at Camp Joy. Where had she…?
    I turned and looked at her—a giant question mark painted on my face.
    Dakota smiled and nodded.
    “I was in her ‘Teens Under Fire’ program years ago—maybe seventeen or eighteen. She might remember my name—or the goofy, belligerent teenager who sat in the back of the room staring at the ceiling and chomping on chewing gum. I don’t know, though—there were probably lots of us like that.”
    “Teens Under Fire”—TUF—was a program my wife had put together years ago and run for more than a decade. She’d been led to reach out to the troubled youth in our community and expose them to the realities of bad decisions—violence, substance abuse and addiction, prison, and sometimes death. It was a sobering afternoon for hundreds of teenagers, most on the verge of real trouble—some already there.
    “I was one of those kids in real trouble.” Dakota shook her head and looked down at Summer. “I was making all the bad decisions Miss B was talking about. And I kept making them.”
    She paused and looked down at her elbows.
    “I was in Tennessee when I hit rock bottom. Knoxville, in jail—headed for something worse. One night, for some reason, I started thinking about your wife—Miss B—and some of the things she’d shared with us. The main thing I remembered was that she cared—really cared— about us in that room. Why else would she be spending her time that way? When Iwoke up the next morning, I was still thinking about her and about that program, Teens Under Fire. I think I had been ‘under fire’ all my life and hadn’t known