Requiem For A Loud

Chapter 2: An Unnerving Waiting

Generally, the loud sisters and silent places didn't get along very well; even by definition they were quite opposites. They were young, energic kids, whose lifestyle had turned them very noisy. They rarely found themselves without anything to do, and their activities tended to attempt against peace whenever they were. That partially explained why they felt so bad. So many hours sitting there, having to whisper, and without anything to do but wait was affecting them. However, they were mostly affected by the fact that they were in the hospital's waiting room with no news from the doctors.

Lori checked her phone. A quarter to four. They had arrived to the hospital almost five hours before. Apparently, Lincoln and Lynn were just playing soccer when he got hit right in the head by the ball, and then he fainted. When she couldn't wake him up, Lynn panicked and started screaming for help. Some people on the park gathered around to help her and they quickly called an ambulance. Lola and Lana saw a small group of people that seemed to be looking at some accident, so they went there, curious about it. When they found it was Lincoln, however, they ran to tell their parents, separating at some point to find them easier.

Lori was trying to keep Leni away from some attention-desperated punks when she saw Lana. The little one was running and screaming for her parents. She was crying too. Worried, the oldest Loud sibling went to her.

"Lana, what happened?!" She asked, looking for an injury.

"H-He's b-b-bleeding and...and...h-he won't wake up," said sobbing, while tears kept running down her cheeks as she tried to wipe her nose.

"Who's bleeding?!" 

"L-L-Lincoln!," she answered, before throwing herself in her sister's arms. 

Lori literally dragged Leni away from the boys, running where Lana guided her. When they got there, 

Lori's heart skipped a beat or two as she saw her little brother laying still on the ground, clearly unconscious, with a trickle of blood coming down his nose. 

Her parents were already there, with Lola, Lily and Lisa, trying to calm down an hysterical Lynn. She was trying to tell them what happened, but the crying and the mumbling made it impossible to understand her. A moment later, Luna, Lucy and Luan arrived, having seen the commotion on the park. The ten sisters were all scared and deathly worried. Their parents weren't much better, but they tried to calm them. Fortunately, the ambulance came really soon, and they immediately took Lincoln to the nearest hospital.

As soon as they entered the hospital, time slowed down. Every minute became a little eternity. Almost an hour after they arrived, a doctor finally approached to tell them how Lincoln was. The poor man quickly found himself cornered against a wall when the ten sisters surrounded him, asking about their brother's condition. Lisa even took his notes and started reading the test results herself when Mr Loud called them and made them leave the doctor alone. Being able to breathe again, the doctor explained that Lincoln was stable but anaesthetized. They were yet to discover the cause of the fainting, so he ask for permission to run some more tests. The parents agreed, and asked when would they able to see him. He told them they needed to wait for the tests to completed and the drug effects to be worn out. It would take a couple of hours.

So the Loud family made themselves comfortable on the waiting room and waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Five long hours of silence, of being worried to no end. Lori looked around. Leni was watching herself in a pocket mirror, but her mind was clearly somewhere else. Luna had her arms around Lynn's shoulders. Lynn was hugging her own knees against her chest. Luna and Luan were trying to cheer her up, but they were downcast as well. The latter hadn't cracked a single joke since they got there. Lucy was holding one of her vampire's novels, opened on the same page for half an hour now, while Lisa was enlisting out loud all the possible causes of Lincoln's fainting and their respective treatments. The twins, meanwhile, were still scared by the image of their brother's unconscious face covered in blood. Lola was resting her head on her sister's shoulder, not caring that her hair was right next to Lana's dirty cap.