Angels Watching Over Me by Lurlene McDaniel Read Free Book Online

yet, I want to do this test. I’ll put you under an anesthetic, takeout a tiny sample of bone tissue from your knee, and send it to the lab for evaluation. Your knee might be sore for a day or two, but that’s all.”
    Leah felt afraid. “Do whatever you have to.”
    The doctor patted her arm. “You’ll be okay, Leah. We’ll take good care of you. I’ll see you Monday morning.” He smiled reassuringly as he left.
    Leah pulled the bedcovers up to her chin and closed her eyes. She didn’t want Charity or Rebekah to see the tears that were about to roll down her cheeks as, for the first time since entering the hospital, she surrendered completely to memories of her grandmother.
    Grandma Hall had tried to stay involved in Leah’s life even after Leah’s father had abandoned them. It wasn’t easy. For reasons Leah still didn’t understand, her mother had tried to keep Leah away from her grandmother. Her mother didn’t want Grandma Hall to see Leah at all. But Grandma Hall found ways to keep in touch. She sent Leah letters, even when they lived in the same city, and whenever she could, she stopped by Leah’s school during recess to visit.
    Leah remembered her grandmother ascheerful and smiling. She carried hankies that smelled like roses, and she loved to wear red. Most importantly, she was Leah’s only tie to her father—the father her mother wouldn’t allow her to mention. The father Leah longed for, instead of the steady stream of men who had dated her mother.
    Leah’s grandmother had told her stories about her father when he was a little boy and showed her photos of him as a child, as a soldier in Vietnam, as a new father proudly holding baby Leah. And when she’d ask, “Why did my daddy go away?” Grandma Hall would say, “He just had to go, honey. But he always loved you. And he still does.”
    When Leah was ten, Grandma Hall had gotten sick, and Leah’s mother had relented slightly about allowing Leah to visit her. Although feelings between the two were strained, Leah’s mother had often brought Leah to the hospital. “Hi, darling,” her grandmother would say, and she would stroke Leah’s hair tenderly.
    Leah had hated the hospital. Her grandmother looked awful, gaunt and pale, with IVs stuck into bulging blue veins. Leah hated the way the place smelled and feared the equipment, tubes, and syringes, as well as the nurseswho shuffled in and out, dispensing medicine but bringing her beloved grandmother no relief. Secretly Leah hoped one day to walk in and see her father visiting his mother. But it had never happened.
    Grandma Hall lived three months from the time she was diagnosed. She might have survived longer, except that one day when Leah and her mother went to visit, Grandma Hall was sobbing uncontrollably. “He’s dead, Roberta. My boy’s dead. I got a letter from some hospital out in Oregon. They found him unconscious in an alley.”
    That was when Leah knew her father was gone forever. And after that, Grandma Hall went downhill quickly. She died, a shadow of herself, hooked to machines, in pain, alone in the hospital.
    And now
, Leah thought,
here
I
am, all alone, in a hospital
. Grandma Hall, if she had been here, would have held Leah’s hand and told her not to worry, that she’d protect her. But Grandma Hall was dead. That left Leah’s mother—and tender loving care had never been one of her strong suits.
    Leah wiped her eyes with the edge of her bedsheet and rolled over. Charity was preparingfor bed on a roll-away cot that had been brought into the room. “How’s Rebekah?” Leah asked.
    “Her fever’s down.” Charity was wearing a long nightdress of cotton flannel, and her light brown hair hung down her back in a long braid. “And the swelling on her arm has gone down too. I have prayed for these things to happen. And I have asked God to let her go home in time for Christmas. It wouldn’t be the same without all of us together.”
    “Are you trying to tell me you believe