I don’t like needles. I can’t even stand to get my finger pricked. I never watch the nurse jab my poor fingertip and have to turn my head away like a little girl. I am even worse at the idea of a shot. I suppose this fear of needles is the reason I have never given blood. I am great at making excuses…

But I did give blood last week because Lana Beth Webster inspired me to do so. I went over to the Methodist Church where the Bloodmobile was parked, and gave out my most private information. I started looking at my watch after about one minute of waiting in line. My youngest son had a baseball game that was getting ready to begin and I was thinking that was a legitimate excuse.

But before I could verbalize my excuse, my name was called. And so I stretched out on the chaise lounge that was almost as tall as the kitchen counter top. I had a slight sweat already breaking out on the nape of my neck, and was asking myself what was I thinking, missing my baby son’s baseball game. What if he made a fantastic play, and I wasn’t there to see it? (No matter I missed the last game simply because it was foggy.)

A man began swabbing my left arm with iodine and I immediately turned my head as far to the right as my neck would let it. And I looked right at Lana Beth Webster sitting outside under the hospitality tent. She was wearing a baseball cap with a thick blonde pony tail swooshing out the back of it. I knew the ponytail wasn’t hers. She has lost her hair, all of it, over and over again.

I remember the first time I ever saw her. She was swimming with her big brothers and had thick blonde hair that curled around her pretty face. I sensed a sincere sweetness in her, just watching her with them.

I don’t know her well, but we always chat when I walk by her house. She loves dogs, and we talk mostly about my little dog and the neighbor’s even littler dogs. Until her dog had puppies. And then she invited my husband and me up to see them. And pride and joy lit up her little face like a light as she introduced us to the wobbly little creatures.

She ended up walking with us around the lake that day, talking a blue streak. She talked about her brothers and about all the dogs that lived nearby and what they liked to do. She wanted me to touch her hair. It had just grown back in, and was downy soft. My husband told her she looked like a movie star with her haircut on the cutting edge.

And when a strange dog came out of the woods barking at my dog, she slipped her little hand in mine and stood close to me, fretting.

She didn’t know that I am even more terrified of dogs than I am of getting shots. But I put myself between the dog and her and hollered at it like all I ever wanted to do was kick the daylights out of a growling, long-fanged dog.

Now, looking out the window as my blood is being drawn without me feeling a single thing, I see the pump tucked over Lana Beth’s ear. It gives her the medicine intravenously and constantly. And I wonder if it hurt when they put it in, or if it hurts now. I do not let myself think or imagine the countless, truly countless, times that little girl has been punctured with needles.

When they are finished taking my blood, I spot Lana Beth over on the playground. She is following after a little dog. To look at her, she looks just like any other little girl. But Lana Beth Webster is no ordinary little girl.

She waves to me, and I wave back. But what I feel like doing is saluting her. I feel like standing up straight and holding my body stiff and recognizing her courage and her bravery. And her grace.

(Ferris Robinson can be reached at ferrrisrobinson@cs.com)