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

33. Jenna

Once again, I was running down a hospital hallway to be by my daughter's side. But this time, we had Rosie and Junie along. Because Sarah had said we all needed to come. That Samantha was critically injured. And she might not survive.

We'd frantically thrown clothes and diapers into suitcases. Tyler booked tickets for the first flight out, and called Josh and Debby and let them know.  I didn't know what he told them or what their plans were. I was focussed on getting to my daughter as fast as I could. Because if I had to say goodbye, I wanted to be able to hold her in my arms one last time.

I was trying to keep it together for the girls, but even Rosie was struggling.

She had been almost silent the entire way here on the plane. She had stayed curled up into Tyler. Junie seemed to understand that something serious was happening.

I texted Sarah as we approached the doors to the ICU. She texted that someone was coming to get us.

"Hey guys," Brendon said, opening the doors to the unit. He looked terrible. He was pale, his eyes were red, he had a five o'clock shadow, and looked exhausted, defeated and dishevelled.

"Brendon, what happened? What's going on? Is Samantha okay? Is she...?" Tyler said.

"She's, well, not quite okay. But she's alive. For now."

"What do you mean 'for now?'" I asked, frantically.

"They say the next two days will be the most critical. The doctor is coming to fill you two in on what they told us. But come back now and see Samantha. She's unconscious, though."

We followed Brendon into the unit and down the hall until he turned into a room. I had Junie in my arms while Tyler was holding a very upset Rosie. She hadn't spoken since she woke us up screaming. But she had cried a lot.

"Sama?" Junie said, her head in my shoulder.

"Yeah. We're going to see Samantha," I said, trying to sound upbeat.

As I crossed the threshold of the room, I looked at the figure in the bed. Samantha's eyes were closed. She had a ventilator breathing for her. There were all sorts of tubes and wires everywhere. She was getting blood transfusions and I saw a drainage tube with blood hanging off the bed, too.

"Sam?" I said, as I approached her. Sarah hugged me as I approached the bedside.

"She looks alright. I mean, besides the ventilator, she doesn't look so bad. What happened that you were so frantic when you called? She just looks like she got a cut on her forehead. Why is she on a ventilator?"

Sarah's eyes filled with tears.

"The doctor will explain it better, but Sam has a lot of really bad internal injuries. She didn't come up here from surgery until almost eight this morning. They had to remove her spleen and her liver is lacerated."

"But she looks okay. She looks fine. What do you mean, internal injuries? She looks okay. She's going to be okay, right. She's fine. She'll be fine!" I said. My thoughts were jumbled, but I couldn't accept that Samantha wouldn't survive this. She'd been through so much and she'd survived.

"You're the parents?" A voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

"We are, yes," Tyler said, hefting Rosie in his arms. She was looking at Sam.

"Okay. I've told her guardians what's happened and what's been done. Now that you're here, I can explain it to you. Do you want to come to the conference room and leave the children here?"

"No. We'll stay here," I said. I wasn't leaving Sam's side for a minute if we might lose her. I wanted to be with her for every one of what could be her last minutes.