Rey is tough, and she is lucky, but just after midterms in the fall semester of her senior year, she falls sick with a cough.

It nags her: first a tickle at the back of her throat that forces her to leave class when she has to cough convulsively to rid herself of it, spasms wracking her body and eyes welling with tears as she tries to calm her breathing in the women's room down the hall from her lecture.

A week later, she's bedridden with a slight fever and the annoying cough deepens, moving into her lungs and causing an ache in her chest. Her roommates bring her food and mostly leave her in peace, not wanting to catch whatever it is she has.

Two weeks and the fever has lifted and she's back to class, but her classmates still fold themselves away from her and give disdainful looks when she interrupts class for the millionth time to go cough in private when she can't hold the sensation in any longer. Professor Dameron looks both annoyed and sympathetic when he pauses in describing the effects of the second world war on the literary community in America as she shuffles out of the classroom once more.

It's been three weeks and Thanksgiving is already on the horizon when Jess and Finn stage an intervention and demand she see the university clinicians. The health center's not that bad, they plead, she's been coughing for weeks and it's getting kinda gross, plus what if it's not just a cold. She's taken all the OTC meds they can bring her, and nothing's helping. Rey protests about time, then about money, but boy, her roommates have prepared and are ready for every roadblock she can think to throw up.

They will drive her if need be. Everyone's busy. There's the petty cash box. The clinic is free for students anyway. Her health is important.

Her mood is glum when she finally calls the clinic and the chirpy receptionist confirms yes, they can see her this afternoon.

Dr. Holdo is a calm, slender woman with very cold hands but a warm aura around her, the kind of person Rey expects a psychiatrist to be. Someone who has overgrown tropical plants in the windowsill and a bookshelf of faded medical manuals from school and throw pillows on the couch in their office. She examines Rey with a half-smile quirking the edge of her mouth as Rey details her symptoms.

"I'd like to do a chest x-ray," Dr. Holdo cuts in gently. "I suspect you have walking pneumonia, and that's the only way to be sure."

Rey freezes at the suggestion. Aren't x-rays… expensive?

Holdo talks her down and twenty minutes later she's in the basement radiology lab, cocooned under a warm layer of lead encased in vinyl and she almost drifts off to sleep with relief at the cozy weight until another coughing fit wracks her. The tech is clearly annoyed but patiently repositions her after it subsides, telling her needlessly to hold still so the image comes out clear.

Dr. Holdo calls her later: it's positive, and there's a script waiting at the pharmacy for a general antibiotic that should clear things up.

"Please let me know if it doesn't help," she repeats. "We're here for you, okay?"

Rey takes the course of drugs and little by little, her cough lessens. It still plagues her, though, and she's getting thin from lack of exercise. She's never felt so weak, so useless without her kickboxing and zumba and free weights classes to perk her up, but her energy is at an all-time low. Most nights she can barely make it through dinner and her assignments before falling into an exhausted sleep punctuated by her stupid cough.

It's been nearly six weeks since the onset when it first happens.

She's sitting in class and, determined not to leave when a particularly vicious tickle creeps up the back of her throat, she tries to cough silently into the tissue she keeps wadded up in her pocket.

There's a spurt of warmth between her legs and then, a telltale wetness as the liquid cools in her jeans.

For a second she thinks it's her period come early but then, she realizes.

She… peed a little.

Rey flushes a shade of red that feels like she just ran a marathon and she spends the rest of the class crossing her legs and wiggling around, trying to assess how bad it is before grabbing her bag and bolting down the hallway to the restroom the second the professor nods their dismissal.

Okay, it's not as bad as she pictured during the forty minutes she spent freaking out, but it's definitely not good, right? That's never happened to her before.

A few days later she wakes and her pajama bottoms are wet again. Her cough is subsiding but she must've had an episode in the night, hard enough to cause this but not enough to wake her.

She's starting to wear pads all the time, just in case, when she mentions it offhandedly to Jess.

"For fuck's sake, Rey!" Jess exclaims, her face a mask of perfect horror. "Go back to the doctor! That's not normal!"

She can't bring herself to go in again but emails Dr. Holdo a terse follow-up.

The reply comes only a few hours later and is worded in such a way that Rey can't tell if Holdo actually wrote it herself or if a well-meaning assistant put it together from stock replies.

Hello Rey,

Thanks for contacting us, and I'm sorry to hear about this further complication. We sometimes see this in cases where a patient has been sick for a long time with a cough. It's very hard on our bodies, especially as women!

I'm giving you a referral for physical therapy. Please call the number below to make an appointment, and see me in six weeks for a follow-up if things don't improve. Happy Thanksgiving!

Kindly,

Amilyn Holdo, MD

The number is for a different unit in the university health clinic and Rey puts off calling until it's happened another three times in public and she's basically given up on ever being normal again.

"Hmmmm." This receptionist is much less friendly than the one on the general line. "Well, there's not much availability because of the holiday, but Dr. Ren could see you next Tuesday afternoon at four PM. Can you make it?"

Yes, yes she can; it's the last day of classes before the holiday but she's not going anywhere, is she.

The intervening week does nothing to calm the nerves she feels about returning to the clinic, this time to the fourth floor. She doesn't get up the guts to look up this Dr. Ren in the online directory. She's never heard that last name before, but then, she's never heard lots of last names.

By the time she's sitting in the freezing exam room and the medical assistant has taken her height and weight and heard her general complaints, she pictures a practical, diminutive but sturdy sort of woman who will somehow whip her back into shape. Perhaps Ren is an Americanized shortening of an unpronounceable long name, Renekslavskaia or Rendorowski or Renthamamnaman-

"Okay." The assistant closes her chart with a mouseclick. "Go ahead and take off your bottoms and put the drape over your legs. Dr. Ren's just finishing up with another patient and he'll be in shortly."

Rey stares at the young woman.

"My bottoms?" Her voice is a squeak. Also- Dr. Ren is a he?

The assistant pauses for a second as though confused.

"Oh," she sounds surprised. "Right, so, Dr. Holdo recommended a possible course of pelvic floor therapy. The initial consult today is an exam to assess where you're at, and the doctor may prescribe exercises from there. Sound good?"

Pelvic floor therapy?

No, nope, that does not sound good and Rey can feel her face flaming but she strips obediently of her jeans and embarrassing ratty floral underwear, tucking them underneath her pants where Dr. Ren Who Is Apparently A Man can't see them, and perches on the cold paper-wrapped table once more with the scratchy green poly-blend drape over her bare legs.

She tries to calm her breathing as she takes in this exam room, decorated not with pictures of athletes like the waiting area or the gym they walked through to get here, but with framed black-and-white geometric prints. They're pleasing to look at yet puzzling because they give no sense of the person who works here. She's been to the gyno plenty of times but it's hardly something she looks forwards to, and besides, she's always seen women doctors.

Rey realizes she's unconsciously doing Kegels, as if three minutes of clenching could undo the last six weeks of injury and she wouldn't have to go through whatever is about to happen to her, when a sharp rap on the door causes her to start.

"Come in," she calls and cringes to hear how weird and high-pitched her voice sounds.

This Dr. Ren is not what she expected.

For starters, he's... young. He's also quite tall, a hulking sort of man who hunches slightly as though he's afraid to startle people around him by drawing himself up to his full height.

He's clad in black scrubs and hip-looking trainers and while it's not long enough for a ponytail, his hair is definitely longer than what Rey imagines regulation to be for medical professionals.

"Hey there," he says without really looking at her and plops onto the rolling stool to bring up her chart. "I'm Dr. Ren, but call me Kylo. Rey-am I saying your name right?"

She just stares at him and it's an uncomfortably long pause before he glances up and she realizes he's waiting on her.

"Yup, that's me- Rey, like a ray of light," she croaks and immediately hates herself. It sounds totally stupid.

"Cool," he nods, peering at her history. "You're a student?"

"Uh huh. Engineering."

"Good. Stay in school."

Just as she's about to reply, a tickle licks up her tonsils and she coughs, a particularly vicious bout that has Dr. Ren eyeing her warily and offering the box of generic Kleenex.

"How long's that been going on?"

He asks while he's turned away at the sink lathering his hands and Rey dabs at the tears that have formed in her eyes as she notices how broad his shoulders look from behind. The coarse material of the scrubs is stretching across them and she can see the outline of his shoulder blades. The arm of his top hikes up a little with his movement and she's surprised to see a tattoo peeking out on his bicep. She can only see a bit of it, but it looks relatively recent- not all blurry like on an old man's arm- and like some kind of cool modern-style design.

"Since midterms," she admits. "I thought it would get better, but then this started."

He shuts off the tap with an elbow before answering.

"It's not uncommon," he assures her. "Incontinence after a long illness, surgery, childbirth- it happens more frequently than you might guess. Good news is, you're young, you're going to heal, and you just need to get back in shape."

He says this with a clinical detachment that should make her feel better, but a nervous sensation has gripped her middle and she catches herself breathing quick little puffs that don't move her belly.

"You do your annual well-woman appointments, right?" He hunts around in the cabinet above the sink and Rey notices he pulls rubber gloves from a box marked XL. The gloves go on with a snap and the rubber strains over his knuckles and her heart stutters.

She nods, mute. She knows what's going to happen, and oh God, she was not prepared for this today. Why didn't she look into this more before making the appointment? She would've shaved or used Nair or taken part of one of Finn's edibles or something. She hasn't been to a party or hooked up in ages and she'd be the first to admit she's kind of let herself go.

"Well, this won't be as bad as that." Dr. Ren promises. "Go ahead and lie back for me. Yup- there you go, scoot your hips down just a touch. Great! I'm just going to do a manual exam, then we'll do some strength testing, and we'll go from there, okay?"

Rey presses her lips between her teeth, stares up at the ceiling tiles and her stomach flutters when she notices he's not seated between her legs. He's standing over her, between her knees in the stirrups and while he's not looking directly at her, she can tell he's watching her reaction.

"Take a deep breath for me, Rey. You're going to feel a little bit of cold, then my fingers."

She holds her breath because yes, she feels it alright. The petroleum gel is cold but his finger is not and he's pushing it inside her before she has any time to steel herself.

Oh, make that his fingers- a second one now and she's biting her lip because she's deathly afraid she might cough again and pee on him by accident, this hulking, tattooed man who is pressing his XL-sized fingers into her. She wants to make a joke, buy a girl a drink first, but she's frozen as he uses his other hand to press down on her womb and manipulate her lower stomach.

The pain she was bracing for isn't there and she relaxes a notch. He's still not really looking at her when he says, "Try to breath normally for me."

She exhales a gust and tries to obey without thinking too hard about how awkward this is.

"Now, try to push my fingers out."

"Um," she hesitates, trying to make her nethers work in a way she's never thought to do on command, let alone when she's full of someone's fingers. He's pressing into her steadily and she doesn't manage it.

"Alright, that's fine," he mutters, and his fingers withdraw suddenly. "Sit up for me."

"Will I live, doc?" She tries this with a half-smile.

He rearranges the drape over her legs once more and he's leaning in close enough she can smell him. According to the signs in the clinic waiting room, cologne and perfume are forbidden, but maybe it's his deodorant or an aftershave?

"Stick with me, kid, and you might," he jokes back and she smiles now, a real smile as she catches his eyes.

He's standing with his hands on her knees and her stomach flip-flops when he doesn't look away immediately.

He has kind-looking eyes, she notices.

"Go ahead and lift your knees for me," he orders, looking away again. "I'm going to press down on your legs, try to resist against me."

Without her gym classes to keep her in shape, Rey's stomach has gone so weak he's able to push her knees back to the table without almost any effort. He cups her knees from underneath and tells her to do the same, but in reverse. Somehow this direction is slightly better, and she can see his biceps flex resisting her.

"Good," he pats her knee before sinking back onto the stool once again. "See, you lived! Alright, put your pants back on and meet me outside. We'll go through some exercises I want you to do at home." He says this as he's typing rapidly and squinting at her chart.

"How bad am I?" She can't resist asking, even though she's not sure she wants to hear the answer.

"Incurable," he says matter-of-factly and her heart skips for a moment before she sees the way the corner of his mouth twitches. "We may have to operate."

She ventures a smile again and he breaks. A smile crinkles his long face in a way that she doesn't find unpleasant.

The rest of the appointment is a blur of him showing her how to do her homework out in the adjacent gym room, these weird bridges and squeezing a ball between her knees and a modified set of Kegels.

"I can't exactly demonstrate this one for you," he winks as he describes it and shows her an anatomical diagram of the muscles it's supposed to be working.

She blushes even as she thinks, he probably says that to all his patients.