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

22. Tyler

Samantha's eyes rolled back in her head as she came off the witness stand, and she dropped like a stone.

"Sam!" I cried out and ran to her side.  I patted her cheek as Jenna and Carol came rushing over. Sam was out cold. I heard someone say 911 had been called, and the courtroom was cleared out.

"Come on, Sam. Come on, honey. Open your eyes for me. Open up. Sam, come on," I pleaded with her.  Her breathing was shallow, and her complexion was pale. Jenna was holding her hand and also patting her face.

"Sam, honey? Open your eyes for me, sweetheart," Jenna was saying. 

Paramedics came into the courtroom and began assessing Samantha. They put an oxygen mask on her face, took her temperature while they hooked her up to a heart monitor, and checked her blood sugar, which our CGM app told us was a little high, but she'd just had lunch. Her temperature was up, though. We hadn't even felt a fever, but her temperature was suddenly 103 degrees. Another infection? Where? How?

The paramedics loaded Samantha on their stretcher and started out of the courtroom. The police and court staff had cleared the hallway of press, so we did our best to keep Samantha shielded from view.  Jenna went with Samantha in the ambulance, and I grabbed our belongings. Mr. Kravitz drove me to the hospital behind the ambulance.

When I arrived, Jenna was standing in the waiting room, chewing on her thumbnail and pacing.

"What's happening? Has anyone said anything?"

"She has another infection on her stump. Tyler, it's really red and splotchy. There are all these marks all over her stump," Jenna said.

"Is she cutting again?" I wondered.  She'd been cutting when she was at her worst after the shooting.

"No. They look like tiny scratches, nothing like when she was cutting. But she's also been scratching at it. We could see scratch marks on her thigh. And one spot where she broke the skin a little. That's where it looks like the infection started. But they're not sure why."

"So what are you doing out here?" I asked worried things were bad and they'd made Jenna wait out here.

"I came to wait for you. They took her straight back and so I came back out here for you."

"Oh. So, what's happening? Can we go back and see her?"

"Oh, of course. Come. I'll take you to where they are right now."

I followed Jenna. We got to where Samantha was.  She had been changed into a gown already, and I saw her stump exposed and out from under the blanket. It looked a very angry-looking red, and I saw small scratches, red lines, and small red dots around the bottom. I didn't see any blood, but I did see the deeper scratch where, presumably, Sam had been regularly scratching. She was still unconscious and still had an oxygen mask on. I touched her forehead and felt the heat of her fever. I kissed her forehead and saw her frown. It made me smile because it meant she was at least minimally aware.

Blood was taken, and Sam was sent for an x-ray. Some imaging was done on her stump, and some cultures were taken from her stump.  A dermatologist was called to look at her stump, and he took a small sample of Sam's stump. A tiny scraping that Sam wouldn't even notice.

I knew we were in for a fight again. I hoped Sam had the strength. She'd been doing so well, and we could not understand what had happened.  Sam hadn't said anything about not feeling well beyond saying she was tired. And we had no reason to think anything more about it, considering we all were exhausted from sitting in a courtroom every day.

Samantha was eventually admitted to a medical floor because even if everything came back with nothing but an infection, she was going to need the big guns, the heavy antibiotics.