Chapter Text
The hospital wasn't that far from the Hunnicuts' farm, so Lincoln was able to get there in no time by running at a full sprint the whole way (and thank goodness for his alien endurance!). Ronnie was sitting in the lobby, her eyes red and swollen from crying. Lincoln took a seat beside her and slipped his hand into hers. She sniffed and smiled at him gratefully.
"I had Clyde take Bobby home," she said. "Because obviously I can't sit in the waiting room of a hospital with a sick kid. Thanks for being here, Linc."
"No problem, Ronnie," Lincoln replied, pulling his oldest friend into a sideways hug. Nobody had approached Ronnie with any updates about her parents yet, so all they could do was wait.
And wait...
And wait...
And wait...
"GAH!What's taking them so long?!" Ronnie yelled after two wholehoursof waiting. She walked over to Lincoln, who'd been pacing the floor due to not being able to hold still for long periods, grabbed his hand, and stormed over to the front desk. The preoccupied female clerk let out a squeak and almost fell over when Ronnie slammed her palms on the counter. "ARTURO AND MARIA SANTIAGO! WHERE ARE THEY?!" she demanded.
"S-s-sorry, M-m-ma'am. I-I-I w-was t-t-told not to let you in. Th-They're on the w-waiting list to g-get into s-surgery," the clerk stammered, sweating bullets. Ronnie looked totally gobsmacked, like the clerk had just slapped her.
"I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you right. They're waiting FOR surgery? They're not IN surgery?" she asked. The clerk gulped and nodded.
"Th-they said it had s-something to do with insurance, Ma'am," she explained. That's when Ronnie's temper boiled over.
"BULLS**T!WE HAVE INSURANCE! HALF OF THEIR SKIMPY PAYCHECKS GOTOINSURANCE!" she screamed. While Ronnie was arguing with the clerk, Lincoln remained calm, pulled out his phone, and dialed one particular number.
"Hello? Lisa? Ronnie and I are having an...incidentat the hospital..."
...
When Lisa dutifully marched into the hospital's lobby, Lincoln was busy restraining Ronnie from strangling the poor clerk. He was also calmly explaining that Lisa's PhDs were in political science and law as well as medical science, so she was their best bet for help in matters both legal and otherwise.
Lisa greeted the two teens and said, "You made the right choice in calling me, Lincoln. Now, this goes for both of you: unless I say otherwise, letmedo the majority of the talking. Understand?" Lincoln and Ronnie both nodded. Lisa confidently strode over to the clerk. "Hello! I am Doctor Lisa Loud, here on the behalf of the Santiago family." Lisa fished her medical license out of her purse and showed it to the clerk, who then directed her to the rooms where each Hispanic adult was situated. As the trio walked to Maria's room, Lisa asked Ronnie questions about her family's medical history, most of which she wasn't able to answer.
They got to the door to Maria's room, and Lisa shooed away the two personnel members standing in the way. Maria, clad in a pale blue hospital gown, was sitting on the edge of her bed, unharmed except for a few bandaged cuts on her face and her right arm in a sling.
"Mom!" Ronnie cried, running forward and hugging Maria. She sobbed onto her mother's shoulder as the older woman stroked her back with her good hand.
"It's okay, Mija. I'm okay," Maria whispered.
"Areyou okay, Ma'am?" Lincoln asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine, Lincoln. My shoulder dislocated when my arm hit the window, that's all," Maria replied with a half-shrug. "I'm trying to go see what condition Arturo is in, but the other staff won't let me leave the room. And that worries me, because he took the brunt of the impact!"
"Don't worry, Mrs. Santiago, Lincoln and I have everything under control. Ronnie, stay with your mother. Lincoln, come with me," Lisa directed. Lincoln followed Lisa to Arturo's room, which was oddly totally abandoned except for the unconscious man himself. His bandaging was sloppy at best, and there was a yellow tag attached to his wrist. This angered Lisa, because a yellow tag meant the patient had no insurance. Patientswithinsurance had priority, so Arturo was being forced to wait for treatment, and every moment he went without that treatment brought him an inch closer to death. Lisa pulled various pieces of examination equipment from within her overcoat, and was able to conclude that Arturo was clinging to life by a thread.
With a growl of frustration, Lisa hunted down the nearest employee and demanded an audience with the doctor assigned to Arturo's case. When said doctor arrived, she chewed him out about the sloppy wound dressings and lack of professionalism. The doctor remained indifferent.
"Look, lady, I don't care who you think you are. This guy was labeled as not having insurance, so he has to wait. End of story," he said.
"But he's your owncoworker!" Lincoln reminded him incredulously.
"I couldn't care less, kid. Doc Santiago's work iswayoverrated," the doctor declared.
"If that's the way you feel, then I'm commandeering this case in the name of Hippocrates himself!" Lisa yelled. "Lincoln, get this loathsomecreatureout of my sight! And bar the door to the room!"
"With pleasure!" Lincoln said, grinning maliciously and cracking his knuckles. He grabbed the doctor's collar with one hand and his belt with the other, carried him to the door, and threw him down the hall like a bowling ball. The unfortunate doctor slid across the floor until he collided with a group of doctors heading their direction, knocking them all over. "STEE-RIKE!" Lincoln cheered before slamming the door shut and hauling a heavy cabinet in front of it. He turned around, and Lisa was facing him with a plastic tube and an IV bag.
"Hold out your arm and roll up your sleeve," she ordered.
"Uh, why?"
"Through careful experimentation, I recently discovered that another person can partake in your rapid self-regeneration through a transfusion of your blood. As of this moment, injecting your blood into Arturo's veins has an approximate ninety-five percent chance of saving his life," Lisa explained. "Since the DNA strand that determines blood type in humans is absent from your genome, your blood will most definitely be compatible with his."
If it meant saving the life of his best friend's father, then Lincoln was okay with it. He sat down in a chair and rolled up his sleeve like Lisa requested. He hissed in discomfort as Lisa slid the needle into the crook of his elbow, causing his blood to trickle into the IV bag through the plastic tube. When the bag was half-full of the luminous green fluid, Lisa detached the tube from Lincoln's arm, put a new needle on the end of the tube, and inserted the needle into Arturo's arm, hanging the bag from the IV pole next to the bed.
"I have things handled from here, Lincoln. I need you to make sure nobody comes in and disrupts my progress," Lisa told him, shedding her overcoat and donning an apron, gloves, and a mask. With her younger brother keeping guard, she undid all of Arturo's old dressings. Then, moving with blazing speed that startled Lincoln at first, she cleaned out and re-dressed his wounds while setting broken bones. Meanwhile, Lincoln was using his body in addition to the cabinet to hold the door closed, because the hospital personnel were ramming something against the door to try to get in. Through the door, he was able to hear muffled threats to call the police. That worried Lincoln slightly.
"Uh, Lisa...?" he asked uncertainly.
"Almost done! Just a few more stitches!"
"Then HURRY!" he yelled, then was knocked off-balance by something much heavier being rammed into his makeshift barricade. Three police officers slipped through the gap that was created and trained their guns on Lincoln and Lisa. All three had their guns knocked out of their hands by Lincoln's sweeping kick. Lincoln knew several moves from several different martial arts, but he preferred a particular martial art that originated in Africa but found its way to Brazil through the old slave trade (he couldn't remember the name of it, though; he was pretty sure it started with the letterc). The officers were unconscious before they knew what was happening.
"And...done!He should be able to recover quite nicely now," Lisa stated, removing her gloves and mask and wiping her brow.
