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

23. Tyler

"How did she handle that?"

"Not well at first. Not too many sixteen year olds are thrilled with body parts being removed."

"How did her parents handle this?"

"They were amazing. Really. They had a very angry and scared teenager on their hands and after a few days where they were all trying to come to terms with everything, they found a way to help Sam cope. And after she got out of the hospital, Tyler helped her see that her basketball life wasn't over. He got her into wheelchair basketball."

"Samantha loves basketball, I'm told," Kravitz said.

"She lives and breathes it," he smiled.

"Her father was a pretty good player, I hear."

"Tyler had a basketball scholarship to college. But he decided to try this music thing for a while and see what could happen."

"And I suppose it's fair to say that turned out well for you two."

"Uh, you could say that," Josh said with a smirk.

After Samantha lost her leg but found that she could still play basketball, how was she?"

"Unstoppable. She had gotten for a prosthetic that she could use to play basketball on her school team and she played on her wheelchair team here as well. They are a really good team."

"She adapted well to the prosthetic?" Kravitz asked.

"She did."

"I understand Samantha is no stranger to gun violence. Can you speak to that?"

"Well, I know from Sam that her birth parent shot her biological mother but I can't really speak to that. She was a victim of a school shooting last school year, or rather the end of the - at the end of her Sophomore year."

"She obviously survived. What do you remember about Samantha after the shooting?"

"She was shot in the left thigh. But just a surgery to remove the bullet was needed and she physically recovered pretty much alright."

"You emphasized physically. Is there a reason?"

"As Tyler and Jenna both said, Samantha struggled mentally with the aftermath of the shooting. She seemed alright over the summer but we were on tour and away from Ohio where she didn't have to think about what had happened. When school went back in the fall, we, Tyler, Jenna, my wife Debby, and I, as well as their family, didn't realize just how much Samantha was still struggling. She was having auditory and sensory hallucinations from the shooting, even though that classroom wasn't being used. She held a lot of guilt because her friend Blaine shielded her with his body. He was killed."

"But Samantha found a way to turn his loss into a positive, didn't she?"

Josh smiled. It was a little sad because he'd wanted her to hear how proud he was of her. She knew, of course, but in a courtroom, he wanted her to hear it in this venue, too.

"She created a scholarship in his name. It was incredible. Tyler and our business manager helped her but she put in all the legwork. She got it off the ground and was very involved in everything."

"The night Mark Solman abducted..."

"Objection!" Mark's lawyer called out. "Allegedly abducted her."

"Overruled. The facts of this case are pretty clear. We've established, with already presented evidence, that your client abducted Ms. Joseph. We aren't here to determine if he did but rather why," the judge frowned at Mark's lawyer.