Chapter Text
Rey sat in the waiting room of the hospital and her bones ached with tiredness. How was it even possible to feel something in your bones? If Rey had thought she knew what exhaustion was before today, it paled in comparison. She couldn’t even really be certain how long she’d spent in another hospital, surrounded by the fetid commingling smell of antiseptic and human waste. Rey thought privately that if she never had to smell another hospital, let alone be in one, it would be too soon. All the same, she would stay in that fluorescent lit waiting room for another month if it meant that her grandfather would be fine.
He wasn’t fine, though. Rey had finally felt like there was some semblance of order in their life again in the last few days. It had been hard won. In the aftermath of her disastrous absence, her grandfather —despite not understanding why— had been even more confused than normal. It was as if his equilibrium was completely thrown off and he needed a moment to come back to center. He’d even snapped at Rey a few times and she had done her best to weather this particular storm.
At night, after her grandfather was in bed, she would sneak outside when she was sure that no one could see her and run laps around the neighborhood. The pavement would pound beneath her feet, and she tried to eke out just a little more speed with each passing circuit until she was at a punishing pace that threatened to have her double over on her lawn. Only after she felt like she might collapse, would she allow herself to come back inside, darting a glance at the Solos’ house as she did so. She knew Ben was inside, but after everything they’d said to one another...she just couldn’t face him.
There was a part of her that had tried to rebel in the beginning, to war against her own words as she’d told him that she was going to turn down the job offer for Resistance. But she’d buried that part of herself before, and she could do it again. She could sacrifice again and again and again . She could give everything up. But she didn’t want to. Ben had been like that first day of warm weather in a frigid winter, giving a false promise of early spring. And Rey had had hope for the first time in nearly two years, and hope had proven to be the worst poison to her peace of all. Because now it made what she knew she’d need to do even harder.
She’d typed an email to Amilyn a week ago and it sat taunting her in her unsent drafts. In it, she detailed how she regretted that she could no longer pursue the opportunity in Chicago and all the reasons she had to turn down the offer. She’d stared at it, fingers hovering over the send button, multiple times. But she hadn’t quite been able to go through with it. There was still so much want, and now it was accompanied with soul crushing guilt.
That guilt had no outlet now that she was refusing to speak to Ben. It just stayed under the surface of her skin, simmering and threatening to boil over with each passing day. She felt guilty that she’d promised Kay that she’d attend her wedding, just like she’d promised the same to Rose. She felt guilty that she still wanted the editing job at Resistance and felt guilty that she wasn’t following through on quitting. Guilt because she’d pushed Ben away and guilt because she’d gotten involved with him in the first place. Guilt that she just couldn’t do more .
It all brewed into a perfect storm as that morning started. Rey had woken up with a bad feeling. It was the kind of feeling you have before a tornado comes over the horizon to destroy a community, before a hurricane makes a violent landfall on a normally sleepy coastline, before a disaster takes your peace and shatters it. Still, she’d gone about her daily tasks in the usual fashion. Her grandfather had been averse to rousing at first, but had finally come around, grumbling as he dressed. His descent down the staircase had been slower than normal, and he’d paused several times in order to catch his breath. Rey thought absently that she’d have to check with the insurance company and see if that fancy lifting chair could be installed sooner rather than later.
She settled her grandfather into his favorite chair, trying to make sure that he was comfortable. Only when he had flicked on the television set and she was sure that he was fully engrossed in his program did she allow herself to check her phone. Much like the email draft she’d started to Amilyn, she’d been neglecting to respond to Ben’s text messages and phone calls. In her spare moments though she’d still pore over each line and character and allow herself to pine for him, pine for the possibility and the life that might be. The maybes that he, and the job offer, and her friends in Chicago all presented were so tantalizing and not for the first time that week did she feel a tendril of resentment unfurl and wrap around her heart. Not for her grandfather himself, never him, but for the situation she was in and the disease that was stealing pieces of her only family away day by day.
She angrily stuffed her phone back in her pocket and set about cleaning. If she squinted, she was sure that she could see a piece of the kitchen floor that needed cleaning. Rey pulled out the mop and the bucket, the floor cleaner and the wax, determined to polish the kitchen floor to a shine that she could see herself in. This was the way of things; when life started to become too much for her conscious mind, she would bury herself instead in tasks that demanded her physical attention and relish in the pleasant ache of manual labor. She spent three hours cleaning that floor until her arms burned and her hands smelled strongly of polish. It felt good, useful .
She prepared a light lunch and walked over to her grandfather, gently touching him to rouse him from the nap he’d settled into. He started awake, much like normal, but then he seemed to settle back into the nap as if it were difficult to keep his eyes open. She tried a little bit harder, giving him a soft little shake of the shoulder and whispered, “Come on, grandpa, it’s time to take your pills.”
This got his attention finally, and Rey waited patiently as he lifted the chair to bring himself back to a standing position. He took deep breaths as he shuffled over the freshly cleaned floor and settled at the dining room. She set the plate of food and his afternoon medication in front of him and sat on the other side waiting. Her grandfather swallowed his pills and then took a few tepid bites of the casserole she’d reheated. He let out a sigh and shoved the plate away from himself, “I just don’t think I’m very hungry today, my girl.”
“That’s okay, grandpa,” Rey said and came around to wrap an arm around his shoulders in a gentle hug. “Maybe I’ll cook Shepherd’s pie tonight; it’s your favorite.”
“That sounds nice,” he replied and gave a little grimace as he stood. She made a mental note to schedule a doctor’s appointment if her grandfather’s appetite didn’t pick up and let him hold her arm to steady himself. “I think…I need to rest.”
Rey nodded and that deep feeling of unease seemed to grow. She could hear her grandfather’s breathing grow labored as they took the few steps from the table back to the living room and by the time they reached his chair it had swelled into a fervor. “Grandpa, are you feeling okay?”
He clutched her arm tighter, his grip practically bruising the flesh there, and she looked at his face with shock. His complexion was growing wan as his free hand fluttered over his chest, and then seized at his left arm.
“Oh, god,” she heard herself say and there was a ringing in her ears as her grandfather started to sink to the floor. She did her best to guide him gently, and then, with shaking hands stroked at his face, “Grandpa, grandpa, grandpa. ” Instinct reminded her of her phone, and she pulled it out of her pocket, swearing as her hands trembled over the three buttons on the screen. She pushed hard to call and the seconds that it dialed stretched into an eternity.
“Nine-one-one operator, what’s your emergency?” a calm female voice finally asked on the other end of the phone. Rey choked on a sob as she looked at her grandfather who was curling in on himself now. “Hello, are you there?”
“Yes,” Rey said suddenly, “My grandpa, he’s-he’s-“
“Is he conscious?” the voice asked urgently.
“Yes, I don’t know, maybe,” Rey replied, her voice shaking, “He’s on the ground. He just collapsed.”
“What’s your address?” the dispatcher pressed on. Rey rattled off her address as the dispatched said, “Okay, please stay on the line, we’re sending someone to your location.” Rey was walked through a further round of questions about her grandfather’s age, if he was breathing, how long it had been since he’d fallen, what were his symptoms, and a myriad of other queries. Rey tried to keep herself thinking straight but when the dispatcher asked for her callback number and hung up, she let herself fall down next to her grandpa. She cradled his head in her lap and shook until someone came in through the front door. Then she was being moved as a new crowd of faces swarmed around her grandfather who looked so helpless, his complexion waxy.
She was in a daze as he was loaded onto a stretcher and she followed behind. She was barely aware of someone shaking her and asking, “Rey, what’s going on? What happened?” She looked up to see Ben’s face, his features filled with concern.
Ben.
It felt like she was trying to speak around a wad of cotton as the fear of what might be bit at her like a striking viper, and her face felt warm with tears she hadn’t known she was shedding. “My-my grandpa. I think he had a heart attack.”
Ben’s face was blank and might be filled with as much shock as hers, but he didn’t have time to offer a response before one of the EMTs touched her shoulder, “Ma’am, we need to leave. If you’re riding in the ambulance, you need to come with us now.” She nodded blankly and pulled away from Ben, completely disoriented.
The inside of the ambulance was a blur as they administered oxygen to her grandfather, ripped open his shirt and stuck wires to his chest. She couldn’t decipher half of what was being said as the EMT crew spoke rapidly around her. All she could hold onto was her grandfather’s hand as he looked up at her through half closed eyes.
“It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay.” She wasn’t sure if she was trying to comfort him or herself with the mantra as the minutes and the miles passed under the wheels of the ambulance.
When they arrived, she lurched from the ambulance to follow after the stretcher, already pushing through the double doors, but was stopped by a strong pair of hands, “Ma’am, I can’t let you go in there.”
“Why?” she squeaked out, trying to struggle past the passive but serious face of the emergency responder as her grandfather disappeared from her line of sight.
“He’s being prepped for surgery. I need you to wait and, I promise, we’re going to do everything we can to save him.” She was steered toward a waiting room. And that’s where she’d sat, and sat, and sat. She hadn’t dared to move, hadn’t dared to find something to eat, hadn’t even tried to sleep as hours passed by her. Rey began to find patterns in the tiles of the drop ceiling, the only thing keeping her mind from wandering down a dark path. Her tears had dried after the first hour and she was only left with a hollow feeling as she watched people come and people go from the waiting room leaving her by herself.
At last a frazzled looking physician came into the waiting room and said hoarsely, “Sheev Palpatine?” Rey stood quickly as if she was in school and the teacher had called her name. The doctor nodded and took the surgical mask from her face, sitting down with a weary expression on her face. The seconds seemed to pass slower than normal while Rey waited for something, anything . Finally, the doctor started, “He’s stable.”
Rey felt like she could finally breathe again, as if she’d spent the last several hours in the waiting room underwater and the news was the first gulp of precious oxygen in her burning lungs. But contrary to what she might have expected, she had even less patience as the doctor continued, “He’s in the ICU recovering, but I won’t lie to you, the next forty-eight hours won’t be easy.”
“Can I see him?” It was the one question she’d held onto with single-minded determination and need since the EMT had turned her away earlier. And from the doctor’s expression, Rey knew that she was in for more waiting.
“I’m afraid not,” the surgeon said, her brow furrowed, “We had to do an emergency bypass. That kind of procedure on a man his age….well, suffice to say, that I can’t give you any guarantees right now. The only thing we can do is give him space to rest, time and hope for the best.”
“How did this happen?” Rey asked, her voice small, “What caused it?”
The doctor gave a shrug, “In geriatric patients like this it could be anything really. Stress, changes in his routine, or even just simply old age. There isn’t a great way to tell when we’ve reached this stage, and I wouldn’t spend time dwelling on it.”
“What can I do?” Rey pressed feeling helpless and feeling like it was her fault. Out of the corner of her eye she could see someone familiar standing nearby but didn’t have the wherewithal to process who it might be.
“You can go home and rest yourself,” the doctor replied adamantly. “If he makes it through, he’s going to need a lot of help in recovery. There’s little point in staying here right now. I wish I had better answers, but-” the doctor ended with a tired shrug. And with that the doctor reached out and put a tentative hand on Rey’s shoulder that she guessed was supposed to be “comforting” before standing and leaving her to stare blankly ahead. Rey looked up to see Korr Sella coming towards her with that same trained sympathetic look on her face as the doctor.
“What are you doing here?” Rey asked, her eyes narrowing at the social worker.
“Duty calls,” the other woman joked lightly before clearing her throat. “I overheard enough to agree with the doctor though, Rey. I think it will be good for you to go home. But...I wouldn’t advise driving.”
“I didn’t bring my car, anyway,” Rey said thickly. And then she looked around before saying, “I can walk.”
“Rey, you’re in Indianapolis; that’s a pretty long walk.” The statement practically floored her. How had they driven so far without her noticing? “Do you have someone you can call?” Korr asked lightly. Rey took a moment to think —and of course she did—but when she pulled her phone out ready to dial Ben’s number, she was dismayed to find the device completely dead. She’d walked out of the house with nothing ; she didn’t even have her wallet because she hadn’t needed it before this had happened. As if sensing the answer, Korr Sella sighed and with a slight smile said, “I could give you a ride.”
Rey looked distrustfully at the woman who she’d come to associate with hospitals and stress, “Why would you do that?”
“Because I like to help people,” Korr said finally, her normally calm façade cracking just a bit. “It sort of comes with the territory. Please, just let me drive you home.” With an almost imperceptible nod, Rey gave in and followed Korr Sella out into the hospital’s parking structure, stopping next to the cute little Corolla that the woman owned.
Rey slid into the passenger seat sullenly, the compact car smoothly rolling down the dimly lit ramps until they reached the street. It was dark and Rey for the first time glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was late. Very late. It had been early afternoon when she had last been cognizant enough to recognize the time of day. Surely that much time couldn’t have passed, could it?
Korr was silent for the most part, only really turning on the radio to some easy listening station playing hits from the eighties and nineties. The woman was tapping on the steering wheel and mouthing the words to the songs under her breath. Rey thought that she might be a bit like her, in another life, another place where things didn’t go so horribly wrong. Rey’s bone deep fatigue felt like it might bury her, but she willed her eyes to stay awake the entire drive.
Finally, the little car settled to a stop in front of her house. Her grandfather’s house. And she hesitated before getting out of the car just long enough for Korr to clear her throat. Rey looked over and the woman gave her a long look before starting, “Rey, I want to tell you, so it doesn’t come as a surprise later, but... I’m going to recommend professional intervention in your grandfather’s file.”
Rey sucked in a sharp breath, suddenly remembering that this woman wasn’t her friend, but was paid to intrude on her life. “Why? I’m doing everything I can. I never leave his side.”
“Rey, it’s never easy to hear, and it’s certainly my least favorite part of this job, but ultimately we need to think of your grandfather. At a certain point, we need to start considering his quality of life and whether this is the right choice for him,” Korr said slowly.
“You mean, am I the right choice for him?” Rey replied defensively.
“No one here is blaming you, Rey,” the social worker said, “These things happen as our loved ones grow older. And that’s why there are professionals trained to handle these types of situations and paid to help-“
“I don’t need help!” Rey said and could feel her face growing heated under the woman’s scrutiny. “I’ve given up everything. ”
“And it’s not enough,” Korr Sella said softly, “And that’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve done admirably, under the circumstances, but you need to consider your choices and whether-“
“Whether what?” Rey bit out venomously.
“Whether you’re doing what’s best for him or what’s best for you ,” the woman finished seriously. “And I’m afraid that if you won’t act in his best interest, then I’ll have to.”
Rey’s jaw dropped momentarily before her features hardened into a scowl. She searched for the handle of the car door and tried to yank it open, growing frustrated by the locked and unresponsive lever. Korr sighed and hit the button, unlocking the door with a click.
Rey tore out of the car and turned around uttering a curt, “Thank you for the ride,” before slamming it behind her and making her way up the drive and into the house. She closed the door sharply and locked it behind her and watched as Korr’s car stayed for another few minutes before slowly tooling down the quiet road.
It was only then that Rey realized how…empty the house felt. For the first time since she’d moved back home, she was the only person inside, and she shivered slightly. It was so quiet that she could hear the silence. She could hear it in the ringing in her ears and the pounding of her heart. The rage she’d felt just minutes prior in the car didn’t subside, merely pulled back like the errant tide gathering strength to batter the shore once more.
Rey walked with unsettled steps past his favorite chair, and his television set, and the table where she’d sat with him just hours earlier. She walked past all of that into the den that used to be his little workshop. This was the place that was the most resistant to the passing of time and the raging disease that had come like a thief in the night to take her grandfather away. She flicked the light switch and the incandescent bulb flickered to life, illuminating the room in a swathe of warm light.
She looked around at the walls where years of ships lived within their glass houses. Many of them she could remember helping to build with her own two hands. Rey could remember the look of pride on her grandfather’s face the first time she’d pulled the little string and watched how the ship had come to life as if by magic. He’d corked it and hung that one in a place of honor nearby. And then there was his last ship, still largely unfinished, but sitting in the bottom of a handled jar as if he’d been testing the fit. This room was sacred and as much as she flitted about the rest of the house and tidied and organized in the last two years, she couldn’t bring herself to do more than dust this room. It was a shrine to what had been, and she just couldn’t let it go.
Rey picked up the bottle, turning it in her hands to look at the half-finished boat within and her heart clenched within her chest.
In messy letters, painted by a hand slightly unsteady with age, read the words “Rey of Sunshine”.
Then, as if the last tumbler in a lock had clicked, everything that Rey had been keeping squashed and smothered within herself for the last week —the last two years even— spilled out. Her fingers tightened around the circumference of the bottle and her arm drew back of its own accord before sending the bottle hurtling toward a wall with an almighty crash . She let out a shriek of fury and her hands searched for something else that she could wreck, throw, destroy.
It wasn’t fair. She’d sacrificed everything . There was nothing left to take. She’d given every part of herself to this, and her grandfather might die because of a fucking heart attack.
Rey was screaming with frustration and pushed the workbench over, sending paint and tools careening to the ground amid the shards of glass. She continued to rage, hurling anything that unfortunate enough to be within arm’s reach into the walls, shattering a few more of the ships. Their contents tumbled over the floor, released from their clear prisons. Her yells finally quieted, and she looked at the carnage of the room, her breast heaving, and felt only regret. Her legs were giving out and she sunk to the floor, crawling over the glass to pick up the little boat and clutch it to her chest. Hot tears began to tumble down her cheeks, and the sobs started small at first before building into spasms that shook her entire body.
She hardly heard the crash from the front of the house until the door of the den flew open and Ben was standing there with a wild look in his eye. Rey looked pitifully up from the floor at him and then suddenly his arms were around her as he surged forward, pulling her against his chest while he rocked her. Rey allowed herself to let go finally, crying until her throat was raw from the bawling and her eyes were sore from the tears she’d unleashed.
“Shh,” Ben said softly, stroking her hair as she finally settled, balling her hands into the front of his shirt.
“You’re here,” she mumbled softly, feeling lost.
“Of course, I’m here,” he replied, speaking the words into her hair. Then he was tripping over his words as if she might stop him if he didn’t let them pour out, “I’ve been trying to call you. You wouldn’t answer and then your phone was dead. And I went to the hospital in town and you weren’t there. And then I tried calling the ones in Indianapolis, and. God, I’ve been so worried about you. And then I heard crashing over here and I panicked and…I might have broken the door down.”
This got a weak little chuckle from her at the mental image, and she pulled back to look at his face, “You-you broke the door down?”
His chest bobbed sharply in a mirror of her laugh, “Sorry about that. I’ll fix it, I swear.”
“No, it’s okay,” Rey replied softly. “I’m-I’m glad you came.”
She unclenched her fists from the fabric of his shirt, and his eyes widened. “Fuck, Rey, you’re bleeding.” She looked vaguely in the direction of her palms and saw that they were indeed stained red. She hadn’t noticed before, but now she could see dark red spots on the front of his chest.
“I’ve ruined your shirt,” she said apologetically, and he snorted as he looked at the evidence.
“I have other shirts, Rey,” Ben said nonchalantly, pulling her to her feet. “Come on.”
Ben led her on legs that shook like a newborn foal to the bathroom where he pressed her down into a sitting position on the closed toilet seat. “Ben, what are you-“
“Shh,” was his response, “just let me take care of you.” He took her face between his hands, his thumb warm as it swept over the puffy flesh under her eyes. His eyes were all warm tenderness as he leaned forward and left a lingering kiss on her forehead.
After a moment he pulled back and took her hands in his. Ben gently turned them palms up so he could inspect the damage and his mouth was set in a grim line. He detached himself from her only long enough to rummage around the bathroom, rifling through the medicine cabinet while uttering soft swears under his breath. Finally, he unearthed the object of his search, and opened the hard-plastic case of the first-aid kit.
The process of extracting the glass from her hands was tedious and time consuming. The only sign that Ben was affected by her grimaces of pain as he pulled each tiny shard out was the twitch of his jaw every time she jumped or winced. Finally, with a shaky breath he finished and set the tweezers down.
“Okay, this next part is going to-to sting a bit,” he said, and she nodded as he pulled out the alcohol wipes and ran them gently over her palms. Rey’s brow furrowed slightly as she tried to contain a hiss of pain. He held her hands aloft in the light and squinted as he assessed the damage now that everything was cleaned. He cleared his throat a bit, “I don’t think you’re going to need stitches.” With a crinkle of paper, he unwrapped some gauze and began to tenderly wrap a bandage around the circumference of one of her palms.
“Do you…” he trailed off as if he wasn’t sure how to ask his question. Rey watched him with tired eyes, and at her silent encouragement, he started again more confidently, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Rey pursed her lips for a moment, debating internally whether she wanted to share, but the valve that had kept all of her emotions in control was far past functioning. “I don’t know what there is to say,” she replied honestly, and then her voice cracked. “The doctors can’t tell me if he’s going to make it and…and I don’t know how I’m going to do this, Ben. He’s my only family. When he’s….gone….I’ll be all alone.”
“You won’t be,” Ben said softly, and she looked up at him in confusion. He started again, louder this time with resolution in his voice, “You’ll never have to be alone, Rey. Because…because you’ll have me .”
“Ben?”
He sucked in a breath, his fingers pausing before locking his eyes on hers with a tentative look. His voice was almost shy as he asked, “Do you remember when you asked me if I left any broken hearts in New York?”
She did, but only just; it had been a throwaway line she’d used months ago now. She’d just been teasing him, and hadn’t even meant anything by it. But she gave a small nod to him all the same.
“Well,” and it looked like he was struggling to find the right words. He turned his attention back to wrapping her hands to mask his embarrassment, “Shit, I was going to do this differently. Flowers or something, but-“
“It’s okay, Ben,” she said encouragingly, and he chuckled at her comforting him.
He nodded and kept his attention firmly on the task at hand as he began again, “Well, when I said I didn’t, I wasn’t lying, but….I didn’t tell you everything. Not the whole truth.”
“And what is the whole truth?” she implored him to continue, not sure where this conversation was going.
Ben finished wrapping her second hand and darted his eyes to the ceiling. With nothing else to distract him now, he looked at her once more, “The truth is… The truth is that I couldn’t leave a broken heart in New York because…”
“Because?”
“Because I left it here,” he said in a rush and her eyes widened a bit, “It was mine. I kept looking for pieces of you in New York, and I thought-” his face pinched a bit at the admission, “I thought maybe I could fill the hole you’d left behind but…. Nothing worked.”
He took her face in his hands again, now more serious than she’d ever seen him, “I won’t lie to you; of course, I want to leave this town someday, but…”
“But, what?” Rey asked, breathless as her heart pounded. She wondered if Ben could feel her pulse racing under the hand that rested against her neck.
“But I’ve tried running away without you, and my life was empty, Rey,” he replied, and she could see the wetness that threatened to gather on his lashes. He blinked furiously, pausing to collect himself. His thumb absently stroked over her bottom lip as he tried to say more strongly, “So, what I’m trying to say is…Is that wherever you are, that’s where I belong. Whether that’s here or Chicago or, I don’t know, fucking Timbuktu, I don’t care. You….you never have to worry about me leaving you, Rey.”
Her breath caught in her throat as he caught her eye, and then he was kissing her, or she was kissing him. She couldn’t be sure who’d initiated it as tears streamed down her face or maybe his. It wasn’t the kind of kiss that was frenzy and passion. It was the kind of kiss that was a soft, unspoken promise. And all she knew was that when he kissed her like this , she felt like she’d finally found her home. Eventually they pulled away from one another, and she rested her cheek against his shoulder. The exhaustion she felt now was practically overwhelming. His chin was perched on the crown of her head, his hand moving to stroke her back gently.
Then without warning, she was moving. One of his arms threaded under her legs to hold her tightly to his chest as he stood up in the cramped confines of the small bathroom. She let out a little cry of surprise at this sudden shift and realized he was carrying her towards her bedroom. She gave a weak protest, “Ben, I can walk.”
“I know,” he said simply, not letting her down as he pushed the door open with his back. He gently deposited her on the soft surface of her bed and worked the blanket out from under her, drawing it over top of her prone form. “You should-you should get some rest now,” Ben said, his face still filled with a tender regard. “It’s late.”
As he turned to leave, her hand darted out to catch his wrist, “Wait.” He stopped and looked at her as she found the words that she needed to ask, “Can you…. Can you stay with me, Ben…and-and help me forget for a little while?”
She watched as his lip trembled slightly at her words and then he nodded and toed off his shoes. Ben lifted the corner of the comforter and she awkwardly scooted over as he tried to maneuver his long limbs into the twin bed.
Finally getting comfortable, he molded himself around her, his arms pulling her in securely to his chest. As Rey listened to the quiet sure sound of his breathing, she felt for the first time in a long time something resembling peace. And with that she let exhaustion win, closing her eyes to drift into a deep and dreamless sleep.