Little Girl Asked If She Could Be My Granddaughter Because Nobody Visits Old Bikers

Little girl asked if she could be my granddaughter because nobody visits old bikers like me who are dying alone.

I’m seventy-two years old and I’ve been lying in this hospital bed for six weeks with stage four lung cancer eating me from the inside out. No wife. No kids. No family. Just me and the machines keeping me breathing.

The nurses try to be kind but they’re busy. The chaplain stops by once a week but he doesn’t know what to say to an old biker who doesn’t believe in God. The social worker asked if there was anyone to call and I told her the truth: everyone I love is already dead.

My brothers from the club visit when they can but most of them are sick too or taking care of their own dying wives. We’re old now. The club that once had forty members is down to eight. And half of those eight can’t drive anymore.

So I lie here alone. Watching TV. Counting ceiling tiles. Waiting to die.

Until three days ago when a little girl in a pink shirt and striped leggings appeared in my doorway. She was bald. Couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. She had an IV pole with her and hospital bracelets on both tiny wrists.

“Are you a real biker?” she asked, staring at my vest hanging on the chair. Even in the hospital, I keep it close. It’s the only thing that matters to me anymore.

“Used to be,” I said. My voice sounds like gravel now. The tumor makes it hard to talk. “Before I got sick.”

She walked right into my room without asking. Bold little thing. “My name is Destiny. I have leukemia. What’s your name?”

“Garrett. I have lung cancer.”

She nodded like this was a perfectly normal conversation. “Are you scared?”

Nobody had asked me that. Not the doctors. Not my brothers. Not anyone. They all assumed old bikers don’t get scared.

“Yeah, kid. I’m terrified.”

She climbed up onto the chair next to my bed. Her little legs dangling. “Me too. But it’s less scary when you have somebody. Do you have somebody?”

I shook my head. “Not anymore.”

Destiny was quiet for a moment. Then she said something that broke my heart and put it back together at the same time. “Can I be your somebody? And can you be mine?”

That’s when I started crying. This seventy-two-year-old biker who hadn’t cried since Vietnam started sobbing in front of a seven-year-old girl with cancer.

“Why would you want to be my somebody?” I asked. “You don’t even know me.”

She pointed at my vest. At all the patches. At the American flag and the Purple Heart and the road name embroidered across the back: “Garrett ‘Ironhorse’ McCain.”

“My daddy was in the Army,” she said softly. “He died in Afghanistan when I was three. I don’t remember him much but Mama says he had a motorcycle. She says he loved to ride.”

“She says bikers are the bravest people because they’re not afraid of anything. But you said you’re scared. That means you’re honest. Mama says honest people are the best kind.”

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “Where’s your mama now, Destiny?”

Her smile faded. “She died four months ago. The cancer came back and she didn’t want to do treatment again.

Social services put me in foster care but then I got sick too. The foster people said they couldn’t handle a sick kid so they gave me back.”

My chest tightened. “Gave you back?”

“Yeah. Like I was a library book or something.” She said it so matter-of-fact. Like she’d already accepted that nobody wanted her. “Now I live at a group home. It’s okay. The workers are nice. But nobody has time to visit me here.”

This little girl was dying alone just like me. Seven years old and already learning what it means to be disposable.

“Well, I got time,” I said. “I got nothing but time. You can visit me whenever you want.”

Her whole face lit up. “Really? And can I call you Grandpa? I never had a grandpa before.”

Something in my chest cracked open. Something I thought had died years ago. “You can call me whatever you want, sweetheart.”

“Grandpa Ironhorse,” she said, testing it out. “I like that. It sounds strong.”

That was three days ago. Destiny has visited me seventeen times since then. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes just for ten minutes before her treatment. She brings me things—drawings she makes in the children’s ward, stories she writes, questions about motorcycles and riding and what it was like before she was born.

Yesterday she brought me a book. A kids’ book about a lonely dragon who makes friends with a brave knight. “The nurses read to the little kids,” she explained. “But I’m too old for the little kid books and I can’t read the big kid books by myself yet. Will you read to me, Grandpa?”

So I read to her. My voice cracking and wheezing. Having to stop every few pages to catch my breath. But she didn’t care. She just curled up in the chair next to my bed and listened like I was telling her the greatest story ever written.

When I finished, she hugged me. This tiny bald girl with arms like twigs hugged me like I was precious. “Thank you, Grandpa. Nobody ever read to me before. Mama tried but she was always too tired.”

“I’ll read to you every day if you want,” I told her.

“Every day until…” She didn’t finish. Didn’t need to. We both knew what she meant.

“Yeah,” I said. “Every day until.”

The nurses have stopped questioning it. Destiny shows up and climbs into the chair next to my bed and we talk or read or just sit in comfortable silence. Sometimes we’re both too tired to talk. Sometimes we just hold hands and watch TV.

She tells me about her dreams. Wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up. Wants to save animals. I don’t tell her the statistics. Don’t tell her that most kids with her type of leukemia don’t make it to adulthood. I just listen and nod and tell her she’ll be a great vet.

I tell her about my life. About riding across the country. About my brothers in the club. About the woman I loved who died thirty years ago. About the son I had who overdosed when he was nineteen. About the decades of loneliness I’ve been carrying.

Destiny listens like my stories matter. Like I matter.

“You’re not alone anymore, Grandpa,” she told me yesterday. “You have me now. And I’m not going anywhere.”

The doctors say I have maybe two months left. Destiny has longer—maybe a year if the treatment works. Maybe more if she’s lucky.

But for right now, we have each other. Two dying people in a hospital who decided to be family.

My brothers from the club came to visit yesterday. Eight of them crowded into my room, loud and rough and emotional. They met Destiny and she met them and within five minutes she had them wrapped around her tiny finger.

“So you’re Ironhorse’s granddaughter,” my brother Wolf said. He’s the club president. Biggest, meanest-looking man you’ve ever seen. He was crying. “We heard about you.”

“Yep! And he’s my Grandpa Ironhorse,” Destiny announced proudly. “Do you have a cool biker name too?”

By the end of that visit, Destiny had learned all their road names, heard all their stories, and made them promise to teach her about motorcycles when she gets better.

“When you get out of here, little bit, we’re taking you to the clubhouse,” Wolf told her. “Gonna show you Ironhorse’s bike. Gonna let you sit on it and everything.”

Destiny’s eyes went huge. “Really? I can sit on a real motorcycle?”

“Damn right you can. You’re family now. And family takes care of family.”

After they left, Destiny turned to me. “Grandpa, did you tell them to do that?”

“No, baby girl. That’s just what brothers do. When one of us claims someone as family, we all do.”

“So I have eight uncles now too?”

I smiled. “Looks like it.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then: “I was so lonely before. But now I have you and the uncles and the nurses who love us. I’m not lonely anymore.”

“Me neither, Destiny. Me neither.”

This morning, Destiny’s doctors told her the latest round of chemo isn’t working. They want to try something more aggressive. Something that will make her even sicker. Something that might not work.

She came to my room crying. Climbed into my bed—against all the rules but the nurses looked the other way—and buried her face in my shoulder. “I’m scared, Grandpa. What if it doesn’t work? What if I die?”

I held her as carefully as I could. This precious child who’d chosen me to love. “Then you won’t die alone, baby girl. I promise you that. If you go before me, I’ll be right there holding your hand. And if I go before you, I know you’ll be there for me.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She pulled back and looked at me with those big brown eyes. “Grandpa, if you die first, will you wait for me? In heaven or wherever we go?”

I don’t believe in heaven. Never have. But looking at Destiny’s face, I wanted to. Wanted to believe there was somewhere we’d see each other again.

“I’ll wait for you,” I told her. “I’ll be the old biker at the gates making sure nobody gives you any trouble.”

She smiled through her tears. “And I’ll bring you flowers. The pretty yellow ones you like.”

We’ve been reading a new book every day. Destiny brings them from the children’s ward library. Today we read about a little girl who befriends a grumpy old man and teaches him how to love again.

“That’s like us,” Destiny said. “Except you’re not grumpy. You’re just sad. But I’m making you less sad, right?”

“You’re making me a lot less sad, sweetheart.”

“Good. Because you make me less sad too.”

The social worker came by yesterday. Wanted to talk about Destiny’s “situation.” The group home doesn’t want to keep her long-term. Too expensive to care for a sick kid. They’re looking for a foster family willing to take her.

“What about him?” Destiny pointed at me. “Can Grandpa Ironhorse be my foster dad?”

The social worker looked uncomfortable. “Honey, Mr. McCain is very sick. He’s not able to take care of you.”

“But I don’t need taking care of! I just need somebody who loves me!”

After she left, Destiny cried in my arms for an hour. “It’s not fair, Grandpa. I finally found you and now they’re going to take me away and put me with strangers who don’t want me.”

“Listen to me, baby girl.” I lifted her chin so she could see my face. “No matter where they put you, you’re still my granddaughter. You hear me? Distance doesn’t change that. Time doesn’t change that. Nothing changes that.”

“But what if they don’t let me visit you?”

“Then I’ll call you. Every single day. And when you’re better and I’m better, we’ll figure something out.”

We both knew I wasn’t going to get better. But she nodded anyway. Wanted to believe it was possible.

My brothers have been coming every day now. Bringing Destiny presents. Bringing us both food from outside because hospital food is terrible. Sitting with us. Reading to us when we’re too tired to read to each other.

Wolf pulled me aside yesterday. “Brother, I need to tell you something. The club took a vote. If anything happens to you, we’re going to make sure Destiny’s taken care of. We’ve got lawyers looking into it. Seeing if one of the brothers can get custody. She’s not going back to that group home.”

I started crying again. Seems like that’s all I do anymore. “You’d do that? For a kid you barely know?”

“She’s your granddaughter. That makes her ours. We don’t leave family behind.”

I’m writing this because I don’t know how much time I have left. The pain is getting worse. The breathing is getting harder. I’m tired in a way I’ve never been tired before.

But I’m not lonely. For the first time in thirty years, I’m not lonely.

Because I have a seven-year-old granddaughter with a shaved head and a brave heart who chose me. Who decided that a dying old biker was worth loving.

She’s sleeping in the chair next to me right now. Curled up under the blanket my brothers brought her. Holding my hand even in her sleep.

Tomorrow we’re going to read another book. Maybe color some pictures. Maybe just talk about nothing and everything.

And someday soon, one of us is going to die. Maybe me first. Maybe her. I hope it’s me. I hope she beats this thing and grows up and becomes a vet and saves all the animals.

But if it’s her, I’ll be there. Holding her hand. Making sure she doesn’t go alone.

Because that’s what grandpas do. That’s what family does.

The little girl asked if she could be my granddaughter because nobody visits old bikers who are dying alone.

I said yes.

And that yes saved both of us.