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

46. Brendon

Samantha was making some sort of off-color jokes about the accident. Then she mentioned Brandi and suddenly was sliding off her chair, tears falling from her eyes, but her eyes were rolling back.

"She's having a seizure," I said, as I guided her to the floor. She lay there seizing for two minutes. The restaurant manager had come over when Sam had started crying loudly, and I was about to take her out. Until she slid to the floor and seized. He said he'd call an ambulance. I agreed. Something was up.

At the hospital, Sam was confused but seemed to understand what had happened. We lay on her stretcher, with Sarah sitting beside us, and talked about the painting above her head.

As we were done talking about the painting, the doctor came in.

"That was quite lovely," she said. "Hi there. I'm Dr. Schacter. I'm a psychologist here at the hospital and I just wanted to check in with you based on the reasons you were brought in. Are you alright if we talk now?"

Samantha nodded.

"Your guardians can stay or leave. Up to you," the doctor smiled.

"They can stay," Sam said.  The doctor nodded and smiled at us.

"Well, off the bat, I'm going to guess that you trust your guardians?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "I mean, they let me move across the country to stay with them."

"Fair. So, I want to discuss what happened at the restaurant today."

"Honestly, I don't remember anything. I remember getting there and talking with Pete and Meagan, friends, but then I woke up here and I don't remember anything in between," Sam frowned.

"That's not unusual. Your guardians said something about a car accident?"

"Yeah. My friend and I were in an accident in October. She died and I was in a coma for two months. And had, I'm told, a lot of surgeries."

"Have you had a chance to process the loss of your friend?"

"I'm still trying to understand what even happened. I can't remember anything from before getting in the car," she said.

The doctor nodded.

"I'm told you have a therapist you see regularly?"

"Yeah. She's good. My therapist back home referred me. I like her. She reminds me a bit of him."

"Will you discuss this incident and the accident with her?"

"Yeah. I will," Sam admitted. The doctor smiled at her.

"Samantha, losing a friend in such a traumatic way is difficult at the best of times. The fact that you currently have no memory of the accident may be causing you to be unable to process the loss of your friend. I don't want you to stress yourself out trying to figure everything out. But work with your therapist to come to terms with what happened and to help you cope and move through your feelings surrounding the accident."

"I will," she said to the doctor. "I promise. I've done the bottling things up inside until I couldn't cope. It did not go well," she smirked.

"Alright. I'm just going to talk to your guardians about sending you home. We'll be right back, okay?"

Samantha looked at us and then shrugged. We followed the doctor through the curtain and down the hallway just a little bit.

"She seems to be trying to use humour to diffuse and disguise how she's really feeling. Keep an eye on that. If she gets some of those memories back they could be traumatic especially since none of us know what happened. Why her friend was driving at such a speed. If you have any worries at all, bring her back here. We have fantastic programs. We can help her. But make sure she is seeing her therapist regularly."