Leave The City (Book 8 of Adopted by the Josephs)

32. Brendon

I had moved from beyond furious to frantic about where Sam was and who was knocking at two in the morning. Sam has a key. Unless she's drunk again. If she is, I swear...

I opened the door ready to catch her or whatever and give her a good talking at, but it wasn't Sam knocking on the door. It was two police officers.

"Mr. Urie?" The first cop asked.

"Yes?" I said, frowning. This was unexpected.

"Can we come in?" The second cop, a female, asked. And then panic set in. We went into the living room and they directed us to sit. I did. Sarah was pacing a little.

"What's wrong? Is it Samantha," I asked. Sarah was beside me.

"Are you Samantha Joseph's guardians?" he asked, looking between Sarah and I. I nodded.

"Mr. Urie, we're here to inform you that Samantha has been involved in a pretty serious traffic accident."

"What?" Sarah said. "What do you mean an accident?"

"What do you mean she's been in an accident? Where? When? How?" I stammered.

"She was in a car travelling north on La Brea," the officer said. "They collided with a dump truck that merged in front of them."

"So, how did, what?" I couldn't understand what they were trying to tell me.

Sarah sank down beside me.

"Is, she, is she okay?" Sarah asked. "Or. Is... is she... is she... gone?"

"She's not gone. She's not okay, but she's not gone," the female officer said. "But she's really, really, really banged up, and it doesn't look great."

I wasn't understanding what they were saying. Sam wasn't okay, but Sam wasn't gone? What does that mean? I lifted my head.

"What does that mean? What do you mean, she's banged up? What doesn't look good?"

"We have to call Tyler and Jenna," Sarah was saying. "We have to tell them to come. They need to be here."

"Mr. Urie, we're going to take you and your wife to the hospital, okay?"

"Do we need to pack her some clothes? If she's going to be in the hospital for a while, we don't like leaving her alone," I said.

"Let's just get to the hospital and see what's what before we worry about how long she's going to be there. Okay?"

That wasn't an answer.

"That wasn't an answer."

The officer shrugged.

"I don't have much more information than that. Have you got medical and insurance information for Samantha?"

"Right, okay," I said. "Sarah, you have all that, right?"

"Yeah. It's, it's in my bag. Let me grab it and let's go."

Sarah grabbed her bag and we followed the officers out to their car. The male officer directed us to the back seat.

The officer turned on his lights and once we were out of the neighborhood, the sirens, too, and we sped to the hospital.

As soon as we got there, we flung the doors open and sprinted into the emergency department. I ran up to the triage desk, and Sarah ran to the security guard.

"Our niece. Samantha Joseph. She was in a car accident. We were told she was brought here."

The triage nurse looked at me, then looked at her computer, typed something, and read it. Her eyes widened for a second, and she looked at one of her colleagues. Another nurse poked her head out and looked at us.