Wilmette, Illinois, 1986.
Han Solo died on a Christmas morning.
The day dawned just as bright and warm as it could have, twenty-six degrees without the windchill rolling down from the lake on the horizon. Leia invited the neighbors' children over, but they could only stay for an hour to decorate gingerbread cookies before piling back into their vans. Some other grandmother was waiting for them.
Leia waved until they were out of sight and shut the door. The smile melted from her face.
The house was very still.
"Well," she said to Han, slumped back on his recliner. "Are you gonna help me, or what?"
He didn't answer, which was typical of him. Leia rolled her eyes and pulled a garbage bag from the front closet. The table was littered with clumps of dried frosting and licorice pieces and M , like a tornado of whimsical, sugary proportions had touched down in her kitchen. She smiled, remembering the seven-year-old twins from across the street smearing icing on their cheeks. How long had it been since Ben had been that young? Too long, she decided, sweeping paper plates into a bag. Too damned long. Her heart caught, just thinking about it.
And now, in the silence, there was nothing but her and the mess and the ticking clock. And Han—she supposed he must have passed out in his recliner in the way that he usually would at three P.M. on a Thursday, Christmas or no. She felt a bit discomfited, though, that she couldn't hear him, even from down the hall. Han was a loud man; even his breathing took up space, and when he slept, he snored. They'd argued about it for thirty years.
But it was quiet.
She stopped to listen, then made up her mind and ran back.
"Han!"
He looked like he was sleeping. His eyes were closed, but his chest wasn't moving under his reindeer sweater, and the floor was wet with spilled beer. The TV was still tuned in to Full House, canned laughter, applause.
"HAN!"
Leia barely recognized the sound of her own voice exploding from her chest, rattling in her ears as she ran for the phone. She was crying as she told the operator her address, and by the time the ambulance came, she was barely holding herself together, clutching at her sides like the rest of her might explode inside-out, heart first.
She called Ben. He didn't answer. Which made a lot of sense—he might only be on the other side of Chicago, but with the pace of his work in the hospital and how hard he ground himself to it, he might as well have been on the other side of the planet.
He doesn't care, Leia thought numbly. He still hasn't forgiven us, after all of these years.
She watched, desperate, as the EMTs wheeled her husband from the front door in a black bag. She tried to catch his hand as he rolled by, couldn't find it through the plastic. She sniffled.
They'd had a plan—she knew which funeral home they'd use, what flowers would be arranged for the ceremony. She'd insisted upon it after the doctors had found the tumor in her breast—benign, but it had been enough to make her picture a world in which Han would have to bury her.
She'd never imagined it would be the other way around. He was the stubborn one, always crawling back after she threw him out of the house. Waiting on the doorstep if she wouldn't let him in, in the ice and the mosquitoes and the freezing rain. Stepping up with fresh flowers and a smile on his face when she always forgave him.
In the days after Christmas, she would glance at the door and wonder if he was still standing there, waiting for her to let him in. Sometimes, when the wind moved, she imagined she heard his voice.
Leia.
So long, Princess.
When Ben came by, his face was like a block of solid stone.
"I… I have to leave," he said. They were sitting in the living room, not looking at the recliner. His hands shook in his lap. "My patient…"
He trailed off, and Leia didn't need to hear the rest. Someone was dying; forget the dead.
"Go," she said, and for the first time in years, Ben surprised her.
He hesitated.
Then, when she repeated herself, he finally stood and kissed her on the cheek. "I'll be back in a few hours," he mumbled. She watched him leave in the quiet, in the still, in the house with the dust settling on the empty chairs.
She clutched her face in her hands, and wept.
—
New York City, December 23, 1987.
The conference was dead on arrival.
Ben noticed it from the first day forward—the panels were lackluster, the doctors more interested in indulging in the free booze and sponsor-labeled ballpoint pens than paying attention to anything presented by anyone notable. The talk was of Reagan, of budgets slashed to pieces, of pacemakers and the terrible ways in which AIDS hollowed the body to bone. In between the gravity-well of those topics and laughter and the third-martinis in the Marriott lobby, though, the conversations turned to Christmas.
It was two days before the holiday, and the doctors were somewhat unphased. Most, including Ben Solo, spent their Christmases in a state of practiced numbness, sure at any moment that a call would come for them to return to their dying patients. They were used to it; the call always came.
That's what Ben liked most about being a cardiologist—the fact that he was always busy and never bored. He liked seeing his patients heal, liked analyzing the echos and EKGs and pimping the med students to watch them squirm. He liked being Dr. Solo, preeminent in his field; mender of hearts, easer of pain. Most of all, he appreciated having an excuse to be someplace important that allowed him to skip out on holidays and dates and things that his mother was always pushing him to do to get his life in order, like his life didn't already have a clear upward trajectory: He would be the best in his field. He was almost there.
And then, A Problem had come up.
A tremor in his hands, inexplicable as the liquid sloshed in his third cup of coffee during an early morning shift. It was confounding to Ben in his sleep-deprived state; insomnia was an old friend, had never steered him wrong as one shift inevitably bled into another.
His colleague, Dr. Hux, had noticed it first. He'd reported it to a few select important people, who had shuffled some things around, sat Ben down, and ordered him to take two weeks in December to clear his head. He'd negotiated them down to a conference in New York (he could network with other doctors, at least) and a peaceful return after New Years'.
But the conference was dead, and decaying more by the second.
"We should've chosen someplace more fun," slurred the woman next to him. Her words were one long vodka-soda jumble. "Like the ski lodge conference in Aspen."
Her My Name Is tag read "Allison, Anaesthesiology." One heel-tipped foot bounced over another as she leaned in, swallowing the last dregs of her drink. She motioned the bartender for another.
"Welp," she grinned, raising it once it was full—"Merry Christmas to us, Doctor—"
"Solo."
"Ben," she corrected, squinting at his own nametag. "Car… Cardiology, is that right?" She poked at a thin black straw with her tongue, missed, took an unappetizing sip. She giggled. "So you know how to break hearts, huh?"
It was an old line, and not very original. Ben said something noncommittal, like I guess, and checked his watch—four-thirty. He'd go to one last panel and leave halfway to make his flight. His belongings were already neatly packed into a briefcase upstairs, his paper ticket tucked away in his jacket pocket. All floating five short, tantalizing floors above in his moderately expensive hotel room.
Allison Anaestesiology uncapped a pen with her teeth and wrote her number down on a bar napkin. She slid it over like a state secret, the handwriting a jumble of crossed lines, cloth damp with a perfect imprint of the bottom of her glass.
He crumpled it into his fist and tried to summon a smile, found he couldn't. The idea of going through the motions of yet another one-night-stand was enough to make him feel heavy, and exhausted. Mostly, he was just tired—tired of trying to maintain relationships on top of everything else, tired of seeing women disappear from his life when he didn't show up in theirs. None of it ever added up to anything. It was all meaningless; we've seen this movie before, we know how it ends. The teacher-secretary-yoga instructor finds love in the arms of someone who will stay—and staying is something Ben has never been able to give to anyone besides his mother. Something he'll never be able to give.
If he was being honest—and the two gin-and-tonics he'd drunk made him consider it—sex was too much effort. He enjoyed the challenge of studying an X-ray more, the pounding adrenaline rush of deploying a stent in a clogged artery and seeing the relief ease a patient's face into bliss. That was living.
This zombie-land of drunk, stumbling, mumbling doctors wasn't. All Ben could do was revisit his cases in his mind and count down the hours until his flight—until Mom, and the empty house with the clock ticking in circles. He stared down at his hands, lying flat and still, not so much as a tremor.
Ben tossed the napkin into the trash on his way out.
—
The conference, of course, dragged on. The presenter of the final panel was an old man, once respected in the field of cardiology, who only seemed to want to remind the room of terms that they had learned years ago in med school.
Ben had been staring at a diagram of an inflamed heart for the past thirty minutes. He checked his watch:
Five fifteen
(oh no five-fifteen oh—)
He startled; the lecture's dull monotone had somehow lulled him into a kind of waking dream-sleep, a warm, mindless exhaustion that made his thoughts wander past the flight he was about to miss.
This was what relaxing did to him, he reflected, as he rose and stalked from the room (hardly anyone seemed to notice)—it made him soft, dulled his mind from the knife-point of clarity that he normally possessed when he was at work. It made him dream.
The elevator played tinned Bing Crosby as it rose in painful slowness, floor by floor.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas…
Something about it made Ben want to slam his fist into a wall. Maybe it was the smarminess, or the false sincerity. Maybe it was the whole corny idea of Christmas at all, that a month of snow and stress (and he knew holiday stress: it was one of the major factors in December that sent ailing patients to ask for his help—) could be anything to wish for, especially considering the circumstances of this Christmas in particular.
Mom was waiting in Chicago, expecting his plane to touch down at nine o'clock tonight; she'd struggled when he'd spoken to her over the phone, trying to keep the waver from her voice, trying not to cry.
He needed to be there, and he'd be too late to board his flight if Bing Crosby wouldn't shut up and let him think for a second.
The elevator dinged, and Ben gathered himself together. Screw this time of year. The thought cooled him, pointed his anger in the right direction. Screw it.
He found his room, fumbled with the key, and rushed inside. Gathered his luggage in seconds-flat and reemerged, only to see that both elevators were back in the lobby and the fourteenth floor, respectively.
He waited for ten minutes (were they stopping at every goddamned floor?) before deciding to take the stairs.
—
It seemed that not a single cab wanted to stop in New York City.
Ben was standing with his hand held high in the eye of the storm of Rush Hour, the metal shells of cars spinning past, the snow beginning to fall in a dizzy white sheet. He was wet and cold and miserable, and to make things worse, his hand was shaking again, and he couldn't determine if it was because of the weather or because his heart was beating like a hollow drum.
So he shouted and ground a sharp ache into his jaw, and try as he might, no one was paying him any mind. The city remained in constant, stirring motion.
Until—
Ahead, a strange pile-up of cars; an unexpected red light. At the intersection a block ahead, a bright flash of yellow slowed and settled back onto its wheels. A cab.
My cab.
Across the busy street, a thin man in business-casual attire with his own arm stretched out high began to lower it. Their eyes met.
Don't be stupid, Ben thought at him—he was lithe, tall compared to the New Yorkers stepping around him. Might have a runner's build.
The stranger shook his head slightly. They stared at each other a second, frozen, each one daring the other to make a move.
The man bolted.
Ben ground his teeth as he took up pursuit, wet shoes pounding the pavement, brushing past a couple pushing twins in a double-wide stroller. An old Asian lady shouted something incomprehensible to him as he sprinted past, the world was bisected parallel lines of falling snow, thrown like celebratory confetti as the yellow cab remained idle ahead.
Come on come on come on his breath a rattle in his ears, tie flapping like a battle flag. Come on come on come on. He spent what little time he didn't have in the hospital in the gym, but he wasn't a runner, and this guy clearly was. Ben grit his teeth—again, decided, Fuck it, and dashed into the street. Brakes squealed, horns blared, and a woman shook her middle finger at him, but—
Five steps, and he made it.
He slapped his hand down on the yellow paint, satisfaction curling up his spine.
"Too late."
The runner had his hand on the handle, about to tug. God no. Ben tried to control his breathing, black spots bouncing around the edge of his vision. He slammed his hand against the door, keeping it shut—the guy was shorter than him by an inch. Just an inch, but it would do.
"I need this cab," he said, low.
The man shrugged.
"I need it," Ben insisted.
Most of his med students would've folded by now, averting his eyes as he imposed himself upon the room. It didn't take much—Ben's anger was always at a low simmer, and though he usually tried to hunch in on himself to hide it, he knew he was big enough to make himself intimidating.
But this guy wasn't even phased.
"Well, I want it," the man said, smiling broadly.
Ben glowered for a second; then dug in his pocket for his wallet. "Here," he said, forking out a couple of bills.
The man took them, studying Andrew Jackson with an amused tilt to his lips. "Seems to me," he said slowly, "Anyone who wants a cab this badly would be willing to at least pay seventy."
Ben gaped. "Are you insane?"
"Or seventy-five."
"Or maybe I'll tear you a new assho—"
A car leaned on its horn behind them.
The man wasn't smiling anymore. "Now I'm thinking a hundred."
Panicked, Ben looked toward the cabbie, but he seemed occupied, gesturing towards something with his hands. Some one? He didn't know, but according to his watch, the seconds were leaking away fast, and the cab was the only thing continuing to stand still.
Ben grumbled, but gave the man one hundred.
"Pleasure doing business with you." The man smirked and stepped aside. Ben tried to do the same, but as soon as he started forward his shoe caught on… Something… And he flailed, and went sprawling to the cold concrete.
He blinked. Cold slush dripped down his pant leg.
An olive green trunk stared back at him, military-issue by the look of it, something stenciled on the side. He made out the words DIVISION and SHOWER CURTAIN and convinced himself that he hadn't, because it didn't make any sense.
None of it did—not the trunk floating up from the ground and landing with a solid thunk in the cab's trunk, or the cherry-red heels stepping into the passenger seat, or—
Ben stumbled to his feet. Wait.
The cab peeled away.
"STOP!"
He took off, legs burning, briefcase hanging loose from his hand. "STOP, THAT'S MY CAB!"
Nobody around him seemed to notice or care, but then, this was New York, after all. Nobody would. Stealing a cab was probably a fucking rite of passage or something.
His throat burned, his teeth ached; and finally, the universe seemed to notice that he'd suffered enough. It sent him a shining red light, a pause to the traffic's perpetual motion.
He sprinted forward and slammed his fists against the door.
"This is my cab! Get out! Get—"
He caught a glimpse of a woman's face—young, white, mouth stretched in an O of perfect surprise. Brown hair, plastic loops hanging from her ears.
By the time he caught his breath (again), the cab was sliding forward. He stumbled back into the pavement and tossed his briefcase to the ground—SHIT FUCK GODDAMMIT. The world swam in hazy lines.
A chubby woman in a puffer coat was staring at him, her eyebrows raised.
"It's… I'm…"
He cleared his throat, and decided it was better not to explain.