Midnight Jesus

It’s three a.m. in the side yard of a shack in the worst part of town. I’ve got a dirty-faced baby on my hip and there’s a pit bull standing on the septic tank in the next yard over barking his head off. My patient sits on the hood of her ex-husband’s low rider smoking a cigarette and dumpingher pills into a mud hole by the right front tire. Airbrushed across the hood of the car is a cross-eyed Jesus with open arms. She lays her hand on top of his as the still-hot engine ticks. Throughtears she pleads, “Help me Jesus, please.” The dog is silent. Sirens approach. “Just breathe,” I tell her. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”  The baby fidgets, resting her head against me, staring up into my eyes.  I raise one finger and she holds it tight. I fumble for the words again. “Just breathe.”   Midnight Jesus shares fascinating, bizarre, and sometimes humorous true-life stories of everyday people looking for hope in their darkest hours.  Poignant and unpretentious, Jamie paints beauty where at times it seems none exists—from skating rinks and bars, late-night highways and lonely apartments, broken churches and rundown trailer parks, jail cells, bridge rails, ERs, psych wards, and that place over the levee where God laughs and walks through the cool dark night.