To Save Our Families, Let's 'Marry' (BoyxBoy)

Chapter 8

The reason behind why Penelope Lore had been rushed to Sir Williamson Hospital's burn unit was finally revealed around dawn. John had initially pushed to find out earlier, but it soon became clear that the fire had left a large number of people injured; it was no small blaze but an enormous hellfire that had led to the collapse of half the school's music building. Seeing that they were not the only parents sitting in the dark on both the situation and the children's conditions, Hanna and John had slowly calmed down enough to sit patiently, in turn giving faith and reassurance to all the other panic parents that had piled themselves into the burn unit's waiting room until news came.

When the doctor finally had time, he explained that Penelope had been very close to the origin of the fire for a considerable amount of time, leading to the paramedics suspecting possible internal burns. While they had thankfully been proven wrong, what the youngest of the Lore family had failed to inform the paramedics was the considerably large, second degree burn on her back. Since it was not the most severe of the injuries, she had been given care until they had the time to treat her fully.

The overly worried parents had decided that this was enough for their daughter to stay in the hospital under observation for a few days. They had seen a trend with their sons, who were surprisingly weak despite their characters, they were not taking a chance with their baby.

The aforementioned sons, at that very moment, were texting, Joshua informing his older brother of the developments over the night. Once realising his cute little sister was injured and his younger brother was not handling it well at all, Archer had no desire to sleep and stayed up with his family despite being across the country. A lot of the night had consisted in him calming down Joshua and convincing him things would all be fine, starting to worry a little about him. Of course Archer was worried himself on Penelope's condition, however even he had never seen his brother act so vulnerable, not since they were children that is. Joshua's unchanging face had become the norm at the very young age of 10 years old, shortly after the last kidnapping situation within the Lore family. Since that day, no one knows exactly what had happened, but the young boy had matured greatly and never went back to the ways of a child.

To see him in this state was a little strange for all his family.

The young man himself knew he had reacted abnormally to the situation, he would have never thought that the prospect of his younger sister would terrify him to such an extent, much less to the point where it conflicted his own personality. However, he knew it was not just his sister. He felt bad for admitting this to himself, but the shock of being set up for a marriage interview had thrown him so off centre that the added stress of his sister's health immediately afterwards had really pushed him off the edge.

Joshua had a far too modest a limit for what he considered the edge of sensibility.

But the important person right now was Penelope, not him, and so he would not even dare to bring up how he disliked the joke of a marriage meeting, let alone that he was only so shocked over Penelope because of that happening before.

He couldn't help but also feel that if he were to say the first part aloud, he would undoubtedly be considered a homophobic.

His family would of course not take it such a way, crediting the entire thing to insecurities with regards to his sexual orientation.

Whilst the Lore's went through a whirlwind of different emotions, Caroline and Marcus were also present. Unexpectedly, the couple had decided to stay the entire night, wholeheartedly knowing exactly what sort of pain they had been going through.

When Henry had been studying abroad, there had been a shooting in the university he attended. He had been texting his family the entire time the school was on lockdown, however his responses had slowly gotten slower and slower until he was no longer responding, only once texting that he was alive. They had spent a gruelling 12 hours with no other clue on his situation, in which they had all panicked and sent Samuel on a private jet to check on him. In the end, they found out that he had been shot in the abdomen getting someone to cover, the bullet grazing his gut. His response had reduced because he was slowly losing blood. In the chaos, he had lost his phone and couldn't contact his parents after he woke up.