Answer: the most important event in chapter 7 is Ponyboy, Darry, and Soda wait in the hospital for news of Dally and Johnny. Reporters come, take a lot of pictures, and ask a lot of questions. When the boys finally convince the doctor they are the closest thing to family that Dally and Johnny have, the doctor informs them that one of Dally's arms is burned badly and will be scarred forever but he'll regain full use of that arm after a couple weeks of healing. Johnny, however, is in critical condition. He is suffering from third-degree burns and severe shock. Even worse, his back is broken. "Even if he lived he'd be crippled for the rest of his life," the brothers learn from the doctor. Ponyboy falls asleep in the car on the way home.
A major theme in this novel is the reality that every action, every decision, has consequences. Chapter 7 demonstrates this theme particularly well. When Ponyboy and Johnny ran away, Ponyboy had not thought at all about the possibility of being split apart from his brothers as a consequence. But now he faces a hearing to decide his future, and being put in a boys' home or reform school are very real possibilities for him. And when Ponyboy and Johnny decided to save the schoolchildren from the burning church, they didn't calculate the possible consequences, but now Johnny is lying barely conscious in a hospital room. Soda loves Sandy and wants to marry her, but now she is pregnant she has been sent away to live with her grandmother in Florida. Everything we do has consequences, whether those consequences are intended or accidental.
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