A Heart Full of Stars ★ Obi-Wan Kenobi

Chapter 21

Koral woke up in a hospital bed. She immediately recognized the room she was in. It was one of the rooms in the Jedi Temple infirmary. She was a frequent visitor to this establishment. She was suddenly assaulted by memories of a red lightsaber slashing through her helplessly.

-I should be dead," she muttered.

She looked down at her hand, white as a corpse, and the fear that she had become a ghost came over her. Then she remembered that it was just her natural skin colour.

Koral straightened up to sit in her bed. She looked around and found Obi-Wan asleep at her bedside. What was he doing there? She shook him a little to wake him up and he looked up, still half asleep.

-Ah Koral, you're awake..." he muttered.

-How long have I been here?

-Two days. You were lucky, you know. The doctors said that if the wound had been any higher, your stomach would have been perforated.

-Does that mean I wouldn't have been able to eat again?

-I'm not sure.

-As long as I can eat, I'm fine," she said, ripping the intravenous line out of her arm, determined to leave this place and go home.

-Wait, the doctors said you should stay at least a day after you wake up so they can make sure you're okay.

-Well, I can assure you I'm fine.

-That's not how it works.

Ignoring her friend, Koral stood up and suddenly felt a sharp pain from her ribs to her right hip. She winced and put her hand on the bandage that covered her wound.

-Koral, you should be careful! You're not allowed to get up.

-I'm fine," she said as the pain gradually subsided.

-I insist that you stay here.

-But I'm hungry.

-I can get you some food. But in the meantime, stay here and try to sleep. You need to rest.

-All right," she capitulated and got back into her hospital bed.

-I'll be back in an hour," Obi-Wan said and left the room.

Koral made herself comfortable and closed her eyes in an attempt to sleep. It was only an hour. It would pass quickly if she slept. She tried to clear her mind and snuggled into the pillow, but the thought of a cookie came to mind. It had been a long time since she'd eaten a cookie, a group of Dark Jedi had been busy buying them all to keep the people of Coruscant from enjoying this delicious treat. But she was desperate for cookies. She could make them if she was allowed to return to her flat. She looked at the door and considered slipping out to make cookies. Pushing the thought from her mind, she rolled over in bed and grunted in frustration. She was a responsible adult; she could wait one day to eat cookies. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but the hunger wasn't helping. Giving up on the idea of sleeping, she stared at the ceiling and tried to resist the urge to escape from the infirmary.

-I'm a responsible adult, she declared to herself, trying to convince herself of that.

She waited for what seemed like an eternity. After at least three hours, she looked at her watch, wondering where Obi-Wan had gone. She let out a deep sigh as she noticed that what she had thought was 3 hours was actually 10 minutes.

-A responsible adult...

She looked at the door again. She was seriously hesitating this time.

-Or not.

Koral stood up, ignoring the pain in her stomach, and pulled down the handle, but the door refused to open. Of course, Obi-Wan knew that she certainly wasn't going to stand still for a whole hour. She tried to open the lock with the Force, but again, nothing happened.

-That's strange.

She tried to move something around the room, but nothing happened. Sometimes Jedi couldn't use the Force after experiencing a traumatic event, but Koral didn't feel particularly traumatized by what had happened to her on Ildar. She shrugged, telling herself that it would come back to her. And if it didn't, she would just have to relearn how to use the Force, that couldn't be too difficult. Her main problem at the moment was how to get out of this room. Her gaze roamed the room in search of a solution and stopped at the window. If she fell, she would have to fall at least half a kilometre.

-It's doable, she thought with a smile.

As planned, Koral had been allowed to leave the infirmary the next day, after Obi-Wan and Maoya had had to force her back in. Fortunately, she had been allowed to take a box of freshly baked cookies with her, but she was not a patient person and the wait had been unbearable. But the worst part was the days that followed. The Council had formally forbidden Koral to go back on a mission so that she would have time to "recover from her injury", as Mace Windu had put it. Everyone saw her as a survivor since she'd narrowly avoided death, but she didn't care how lucky she'd been, or how important it was to let her wound heal. She was bored and just wanted to get back on missions, to cut up some droids but mostly to find Count Dooku and get back at him for all the trouble he had caused.

For a whole week, Koral was also excused from the Jedi Council. She spent most of her time on the streets of Coruscant looking for something to do. She observed people living normal lives, lives she had never even considered leading. The meeting with Estheral and Thales had raised new questions in Koral's mind. There had been times when she was younger, that she had wondered who her parents were and what it was like to have a family and to be able to think about the future. She regretted all the prohibitions given by the Jedi code, which she tried to obey. She regretted not being allowed to fall in love, kiss someone, start a family or simply go to the beach with her friends to make sandcastles and play volleyball. As she walked through Galactic City, she watched children playing games she had never known, groups going into bars and coming out drunk, laughing. She would stop in front of concert halls to look at posters of musicians she had never heard. Her favourite time was at night when Coruscant seemed to be waking up, when only the led lights of the signs lit up the city and she could watch the crowds roaming the streets, moving from bar to bar. She loved the noise, the colours, and the whole atmosphere of those moments. The thought of leaving the Jedi Order so she could finally be a part of the hustle and bustle of life came to mind, but she hurriedly put the thought out of her mind. She realised that it was getting late and that she had been walking the streets for far too long. She walked back to the Jedi Temple, calmed down and intending to take advantage of the quietness to meditate. With regret, she left the crowd and returned to the huge building that dominated the city, still feeling like she was trying to understand a world she didn't belong to.