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Working as a nurse for the Resistance was gratifying work, even if it was a difficult job. The infirmary was woefully understaffed. While many were willing to risk their lives for the cause, few had any sort of medical training or possessed the skills necessary to bring the pilots and soldiers back to full health after they sustained injuries on dangerous missions to take down the First Order. As a result, nurses and physicians were in short supply on D’Qar. You were one of the few skilled professionals able to tend to the wounded fighters.
It seemed like the infirmary had been especially full lately. Ever since the destruction of Starkiller Base, more pilots were being shot down by First Order TIE fighters than ever before. It seemed like they were striking back against the Resistance with a vengeance. You made your rounds day in and day out, attending to the ill and injured.
You had gained a reputation as everyone’s favorite nurse. It wasn’t necessarily because of your skill, though that was certainly a contributing factor. It had more to do with the way you put patients at ease. You always greeted them with a warm smile when you did your standard vitals checks, and you tried to strike up conversations with the ones who were well enough to talk. You tried to make them all as comfortable as possible during their stay in the medical sector and treat them like they were real people instead of just broken things that needed to be fixed.
One patient in particular captured your attention. You didn’t recognize him when he was rushed into the emergency bay after Starkiller. Later, it struck you as odd that an unfamiliar face had entered your domain. You had cared for almost every living thing on the base at least once. Who could this man be that you had never seen him before?
The first time you entered his room on your rounds, you didn’t think anything of him. You didn’t even notice that he was the same person who had been hurried in to be placed under immediate medical care. He was comatose, unable to speak or even notice your presence in the room. You quickly checked his heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure without even glancing at his face before making a note on your datapad and moving on to the next patient.
When things began to slow down in the infirmary, you were able to spend more time one-on-one with the patients on your list instead of running all over the ward attending to the sick and hurting. You heard tales of glory and defeat as the pilots recounted their battle stories for you. It was fascinating to hear all they had been through for the sake of the Resistance. All of the animated chatter you experienced starkly contrasted with the atmosphere of the mystery man’s room. It was almost eerie how you passed from an area of amiable conversation into one of complete silence. The only sounds in the room where the beeping of the monitors and the wounded man’s shallow breathing.
In the silence of his room, there was no conversation to be made. There was nothing he could say. It pained you to see someone in such a state. Almost everyone in the infirmary was there as a result of heroism. You had no reason to believe this man was any different. In your mind, you speculated and created stories about how he ended up here, each more unlikely than the last. You had heard countless stories in your time as a nurse, but you wanted to know his.
All you knew about him was his name: Finn.
That was it. That was all there was. Just a first name. There was no surname, no past medical records, no next of kin – nothing. It was almost as if he didn’t exist before showing up on D’Qar. You were starting to believe that maybe his entire existence was all in your head until he received a visitor.
“How’s he doing nurse?” asked Poe Dameron, the most skilled pilot in the entire Resistance, as he entered the hospital room with a bouquet of flowers indigenous to the jungle planet.
“There haven’t been any drastic changes in his condition, Mr. Dameron, but his all of his vital signs appear to be normal. It looks like our patient here will recover from his injuries quite well,” you informed him with a smile.
“Well, let me know when he comes around. I’d really like to talk to my friend here again. We have some catching up to do.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Dameron. I’ll keep you updated on his progress.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it,” he said with a grin, giving you a playful wink and leaving the flowers before exiting the room.
You mentally chided yourself for not thinking to ask the pilot any questions about Finn before he left. He at least knew the man you had been taking care of for quite some time now. He surely knew a thing or two about him. What was his last name? Where was his home planet? How did he end up in the medical sector on the Resistance base? Furthermore, how did the two of them know each other? Perhaps they had fought together in some battle.
This Finn fellow must have been important to be getting a personal visit from Poe Dameron. Before long, a fairly steady stream of Resistance personnel was dropping by his room to check on his condition. Little by little, you pieced together some of the man’s story from what the visitors said. He was new to the base, which you had previously surmised. He had also been on Starkiller. He witnessed Han Solo’s death firsthand and was with Rey, the girl who used the Force, when she fought Kylo Ren in the woods. Still, there was little consensus on who exactly he was.
It was always peacefully quiet in Finn’s room. You completed your duties and went on your way usually. On the days that work was slow in the infirmary, you would stay a little longer and talk to him. You weren’t sure he could hear anything that was going on around him, but if he could, you thought he might enjoy hearing something other than high-pitched beeps and the sound of air blowing out of the vents. Eventually, you found yourself seated at his bedside after your shifts ended, taking books to read out loud to him.
“This one’s a children’s story,” you said to the unconscious man one evening, holding up a thin paperback even though you knew he couldn’t see it. “It’s the only thing I could find laying around that wasn’t a flight manual or history of the Galactic Republic. You’d be surprised at how hard it’s been to get my hands on anything interesting on this base. I’ve apparently already read you the only four fiction books on the whole planet. You’ll just have to settle for The Loneliest Tauntaun. No complaining.”
You proceeded to read him a story about a little tauntaun that got lost in the mountains of Hoth and couldn’t find his way home. It was a short book, a little over fifty pages. It was meant for readers much younger than you or your captive audience, but you still found it to be a charming story. Unfortunately, you started yawning before you could reach the end and decided it was time for you to get some rest.
“Goodnight, Finn,” you whispered as you turned out the light to his room. “See you tomorrow.”
The next day, you checked his vitals as per usual, noting that he showed drastic improvement. He would be recovered in no time. You were turned with your back to him, checking the readings on the heart and oxygen monitors, noting that they were nearing the healthy range, when you heard a faint noise behind you that almost sounded like mumbling. You leaned close to your patient and listened, hoping he would make the sound again, which would be an indication that he had come out of the coma. Sure enough, after a moment he murmured something again. It was a little bit louder, but still unintelligible.
He continued to make noises for some time, not entirely awake but still conscious. Eventually, with great effort, he managed to open his eyes. For the better part of half an hour, he drifted between awareness and unconsciousness.
“Welcome back, Mr. Finn,” you smiled when he had fully come to. “It’s good to see you awake.”
“It’s good to be awake,” the man said, his voice weak from lack of use. It was the first time in the weeks you had spent with him that you had ever heard him speak. “So does he get reunited with his family?”
“What?”
“The tauntaun,” he explained, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “What happens to him? Does he make it out of the mountains and get reunited with his little furry snow lizard family?”
“You spend all that time in a coma in the infirmary, and the first thing you think to ask about is what happens to a fictional tauntan?” you wondered incredulously.
He made a subdued motion that somewhat resembled a shrug. “I haven’t had much else to think about.”
“I can’t believe it.” You shook your head incredulously. “You were able to hear what was going on the whole time.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Wasn’t that why you spent so much time talking and reading to me?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t entirely sure,” you admitted. “I did those things just in case you were still aware of your surroundings. It would be horribly boring to be lying here all the time with nothing to do, so I thought I should at least break the silence.”
“I’m glad you did. I enjoyed the stories – the ones you read and the ones you told about your own life. They were really interesting, and I’m not just saying that because I was in a coma and they were the only kind of entertainment I had.”
“You’re about to have quite a bit of entertainment,” you informed him. “You’re quite a popular man on the Resistance base. People have been lining up to see you, namely a pilot by the name of Poe Dameron.”
Finn smiled brightly at the mention of Poe. “Has a girl named Rey been by?” His voice was full of concern.
“Yes, Rey dropped by to pay you a visit before she left. She left on the Millennium Falcon to search for Luke Skywalker. She hasn’t returned yet.”
“Good.” His face relaxed. “Did Poe ever say when he’s coming to visit again?”
“No, but he asked me to let him know when you were awake. I’m sure he’ll get here as soon as he can when he hears the news. Do you mind me asking how you two know each other?”
Finn averted his eyes from your gaze, almost as if he were embarrassed. “Well, it’s kind of a long story.”
You laughed. “You’ve sat through plenty of my stories. I think I owe it to you to sit through at least one of yours. I’m off duty in an hour, and then I’ll have all the time in the world to hear what you have to say. Until then, try to keep your heart rate from getting too high. You’re out of the coma, but your body still has some recovering to do. Luckily, your injuries healed in the three weeks you were unconscious. Even though it’s similar to being asleep, being comatose takes a lot out of a person. It will still be awhile before you’re able to go back to your normal life. I’ll see you soon, Finn.”
As you walked out of the room, you heard him whisper something softly to himself. “I don’t even know what a normal life is anymore.”
When you returned after your shift, you were pleased to see that Finn was sitting up in bed and drinking a nutritional beverage (which you knew firsthand to be absolutely disgusting) through a straw. No matter how unappetizing the drink was, he was probably glad to be consuming any kind of actual sustenance for the first time in weeks. He smiled as you entered the room with a copy of The Loneliest Tauntaun under your arm.
“Hello there, nurse!”
“Hey, Finn, how are you feeling?” you asked, looking at the monitors he was still hooked up to. He may have been out of the coma, but he still wasn’t in the best shape.
“You’re supposed to be off duty. That means no checking up on me while you’re here,” he teased. You had to admit that he was an enjoyable person to be around. His good-spirited nature was infectious, compelling everyone in the vicinity to share in his happiness.
“Maybe I should just leave then,” you joked back.
“Then I’ll never get to hear the end of the story. I guess I’ll just have to let you have things your way.”
“I guess so.”
“I’m willing to cooperate if it means I find out what happens to the lonely little tauntaun.”
You pulled up a chair next to his hospital bed and opened your book to the page you had previously marked by turning down the corner of the page. You hated to do that to a book, but you didn’t have anything on hand at the time that could be used as a bookmark. Just as you were about to start reading, Finn spoke up again.
“What’s your name?” he asked softly.
“(Y/N),” you told him. “(Y/N) (L/N).”
“(Y/N),” Finn repeated. He said it a few more times, as if he were testing it out. “I like it.”
“Thanks, I’ve had it my whole life,” you joked.
“That must be nice,” he mused, looking at you wistfully. “I haven’t had mine much more than a month.”
You laughed before you noticed how serious his expression was. “Wait, seriously? You grew up without a name?”
He turned his face away from you and examined a speck on the floor with feigned interest before making eye contact again. “I used to be a Stormtrooper,” he admitted with a sigh. “I was raised in the program, so for my whole life the only thing I was ever called was FN-2187. My designation number was the closest thing I had to a name. I met Poe and helped him escape the First Order. He refused to refer to a human being as a number, so he started calling me Finn. That’s where this whole crazy thing got started.”
“That sounds like quite a story.”
“It is,” he agreed. “I’ll make you a deal. If you finish the tauntaun story, I’ll tell you the whole thing. Deal?”
“Deal.”
You spent an increasing amount of your off-duty time with Finn, the former Stormtrooper. After you reached the end of The Loneliest Tauntaun (The tauntaun was hopelessly lost, and he was rescued by his mother, who found him and brought him back home.) Finn told you the story of how he had come to join the Resistance. It was incredible to you that one person could have gone through so much. He leapt from one peril to the next, somehow living through each one to fight another day. His actions were admirable, and you told him as much.
“I don’t know if ‘admirable’ is the right word for it. The whole time I kind of felt like that tauntaun. I was completely lost. I didn’t know where I needed to be, but I knew I wasn’t in the right place. Then, I helped Poe escape custody, and he rescued me from the First Order. Rey rescued me on Jakku and again on Starkiller. I couldn’t have ever made it to where I am on my own. Someone had to find me and bring me to where I’m supposed to be. What are the chances that everything would fall into place and I would survive it all? The Force is crazy like that, I guess.”
“The fact that you had help doesn’t make what you did any less heroic,” you told him. “Luke Skywalker didn’t save the galaxy from the Empire all by himself. Besides, you had to make some tough decisions on your own. Leaving the First Order was one of the bravest things you could have ever done. For all you know, you’ve inspired others to do the same.”
“I’m not a hero,” he frowned, shaking his head. “The years I spent in service to the First Order are something I won’t ever be able to make up for.”
“You don’t have to make up for them, Finn,” you said, grabbing his hand. “You deserve to be here as much as anyone else. You’re part of the Resistance.”
He looked down at your joined hands and smiled. “I guess I am. And that’s something I think I can get used to.”