14,600 Days

646

I don’t even know what to write for a summary. It’s death fic, so be warned and have tissues handy.

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“If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.”

– Winnie the Pooh

Tuesday, May 15, 1979 was the day my partner almost died. I spotted the goons in the police car just before it happened and yelled for Starsky to get down, but it was too late. The sound of machine guns reverberated all around us as the bullets riddled his body and his striped tomato.

I ran around to the other side of the car, stunned to see him lying on the ground, bleeding out. I froze, unable to do anything. Unable to say anything. Afraid to touch him, afraid to move him.

Since it happened in the police station parking lot, someone called an ambulance and I rode in it with him as it made its way to the hospital. I wanted to hold his hand but the paramedics wouldn’t let me get close enough.

Captain Dobey and I sat in the waiting room while they operated on him. We didn’t know if he’d even make it through the surgery. But miraculously, he made it through alive. Then they transferred him to the ICU and hooked him up to a bunch of machines. There were tubes coming out of his nose, out of other places. So many tubes. The doctor said that Starsky was in a coma, the implication being he would not be waking up.

I remember sitting just outside his room, looking through the window, hearing Huggy’s echoing footfalls coming down the nearly empty hallway. He and Dobey stood behind me while I gave Huggy the news: Starsky was dying and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The body can only withstand so much. I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

When the doctors and nurses cleared out, I went into my partner’s room and sat in the chair a few feet from his bed. I was separated from him by all the machines and tubes, but we may as well have been separated by the vastness of an ocean.

Hesitantly, I raised my hand to touch him, and then just as quickly, dropped it down on my leg. He was so fragile, so friable; I dared not touch him.

I must have sat there for hours, but I had no comprehension of how much time had passed. It could have been one hour or ten; it was all the same to me. The only sound in the room came from the heart monitor because I was unable to make an utterance. I don’t even think I coughed while I was in there. I was petrified that any sound I made would vibrate distortedly throughout his frail body.

Eventually, I left his room and sat next to Dobey in an uncomfortable chair, feeling angry and despondent. In a fit of despair, I balled up my fist and slammed it against the chair’s hard arm, while Dobey looked like he wanted to be anywhere else except sitting beside me.

He’s always been a father figure to Starsky and me, and he tried his best to offer me comfort, suggesting I wash up in the men’s room and catch up with Huggy, who had gone down to the cafeteria to get coffee.

Somehow, I managed to wake from my reverie long enough to ask Dobey if he wanted something to eat. But he was so distraught, that for the first time since I’ve known him, he refused to eat anything.

I think, in that moment anyway, that maybe I was more a comfort to him than he was to me. I hope he has someone who can comfort him now.

Then I returned to my previous state, oblivious to things happening around me. I didn’t even remember where the men’s room was and had to ask a nurse, and then I bumped into a guy on my way in. I didn’t know he had just killed an orderly and was about to try to kill me. He could have been an old man visiting his wife on her deathbed and I still would have knocked into him, such was my state of mind.

I found the guy in the supply closet and tackled him, but he got away. It was then that I knew I had to find out who was behind the attacks on us. Not for me, but for Starsky. To avenge his shooting.

Dobey didn’t want me to go out on the streets alone, but Huggy pilfered Dobey’s car keys and handed them to me in the elevator. Then two more goons tried to kill me in the parking garage. I left the hospital in search of answers and when I got to the squad room, I called Dobey for news on Starsky. He told me to get back to the hospital right away.

I drove there as fast as I could, using the mars light and siren, racing through red lights and swerving around pedestrians and trucks; I didn’t care. When I got to the hospital, I didn’t even take the time to park the car; I just left it by the main entrance and dashed inside.

As I neared the ICU, I started racing down the hallway. There was some sort of commotion coming from Starsky’s room, and when the doctor came out, I had expected to be told that my partner had died. It was a miracle that they were able to revive him.

I think they got his heart started at the same time I burst through the double doors. It was as if he had given up after I left the hospital, being unable to sense my presence, and then willed himself to live because he somehow knew that I had come back to him.

I thought about how I had failed to speak to him, how I had avoided touching him, when I was with him in his hospital room. Maybe in his unconscious state, he was reaching out for me, trying to sense me, and was unable to. Maybe he thought I had been killed by the same assassins who had shot him.

Even though the doctors were able to restart his heart, his prognosis was still poor; he remained in a coma, his body in a seemingly losing battle against the massive damage and shock.

But then another miracle happened. He opened his eyes when I spoke to him the next day. The sound of my voice alone seemingly roused him from his coma. And then he smiled at me and nodded his head. I’ll never forget the sight of those deep blue eyes and that infectious grin.

Such is the strength of our bond that it was able to bring Starsky back to me from the brink of death. It was me and thee, baby, all the way. Even Death himself couldn’t separate us, and lord knows he tried so many times. But we always beat him.

A week later, Starsky was sitting up in bed, wearing his blue pajamas instead of those thin, regulation-issue hospital gowns that somehow always make people seem more infirm than they already are. My heart was so filled with joy, with love, that I climbed into the bed with him. He was my best friend, my partner. There would never be another like him.

He was tipsy from the painkillers he’d taken and I was tipsy from drinking too much beer while preparing the veal. Do you have any idea how long it takes to stuff veal? I probably wasn’t even in any shape to drive to the hospital by that time, but I drove there anyway.

I couldn’t have my buddy starve to death in the middle of the night, could I?

And then Dobey and Huggy joined us, bearing gifts of antipasto and champagne, procured from God knows where at that hour. But when Huggy hung a lantern from the ceiling so we could see what we were eating, it set off the sprinkler system and soaked us all with freezing cold water.

But it was okay, because we were together, Starsky and I. We huddled together for warmth until the nurses came running in, screaming at us.

Who would have believed that we’d ever have had such a happy gathering, hiding from the nurses and laughing in the middle of the night, just a mere week after seeing Starsky as I had, lying on the ground, bloodied and riddled with bullets?

And not only did we celebrate Starsky’s good health, we also celebrated my triumph over Gunther. He was out on bail, as I had expected, but there was going to be prison time in his future for sure, unless he somehow managed to pay off the judge.

I was concerned that might happen, but my worries ended a few months later on the day that Gunther took his own life rather than walk into the courtroom in handcuffs.

Dobey had wanted to assign me a temporary partner until Starsky was able to return to work, but I flat out refused. I remembered when I was shot and Starsky was partnered with Joan Meredith. He kept referring to her as his “partner.” The words stung like a bullet that ripped through my heart. I couldn’t do that to Starsky.

But Dobey didn’t want me on the streets alone and I refused to be assigned to desk duty, so I persuaded him to let me take a leave of absence. Dobey agreed, because what choice did he have, really?

I visited Starsky every day while he was in the hospital. Huggy stopped by often to visit with us as well, and sometimes he brought us a couple of specials from the Pits. It was a hell of a lot better than the hospital food.

After Starsky was released from the hospital, I spent my days taking care of him, nursing him back to health. Driving him to doctor appointments, helping him with his physical therapy exercises, and cooking healthy meals for him, much to his chagrin.

But fuck it, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t continue with this charade.

You know that none of that actually happened. But what you don’t know is that I’ve been living in a dream these past nine months, desperately trying to convince myself that my partner was still alive.

My therapist doesn’t know I’ve been in denial about Starsky’s death all this time. She doesn’t know that I concocted a medically-impossible story in my head that Starsky survived because of our love for each other.

Because one, I never told her about it; and two, I stopped going to the therapist six months ago.

See, I lied when I said I was still seeing her. I lied about a lot of things. To myself and to all of you.

The truth is, Huggy stopped by my place often, trying to be cheerful and optimistic, and bringing me specials so I would eat, but I directed all my anger towards him. He continued to try to get through to me, despite my verbal abuse. Then eventually, I just tuned him out.

I tuned everyone out when I no longer had the energy to be angry anymore.

I know that Starsky never made it to the hospital alive, but this is the first time I’ve been willing to acknowledge it. I know that he was dead before the ambulance even got there. In fact, he was probably dead before he hit the ground.

That’s the reason I stood away from him, frozen, silent. I knew as soon as I saw him that he was gone. They used machine guns, for chrissakes. He never stood a chance.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I think that’s what devastated me the most. I mean, how could I ever have closure? How could I move on with my life when I never had the chance to say goodbye? To hold him in my arms, to comfort him, to look into his eyes, the way I had done when he had those other close calls with death.

But this time, he was taken from me in a violent instant, and before I had a chance to recover from my initial shock, he was loaded into the coroner’s wagon on a stretcher and driven away.

But maybe it doesn’t matter that I didn’t get to say goodbye to him. Because who am I kidding? Starsky was my best friend, my partner, my buddy. I loved him more than anyone else, so if I had been able to say goodbye? So what? I would still feel just as devastated about losing him as I do now.

And that story I concocted about me riding in the ambulance with him on the way to the hospital, wanting to hold his hand but being prevented by the paramedics? It wasn’t an ambulance and it didn’t go to the hospital. I sat next to his body at the morgue. I did briefly think about holding his hand there, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him.

Hours later, when I finally returned home, I regretted not holding his hand, even though it wouldn’t have made a goddamn fucking difference to him. But I thought it might have made a difference to me.

Now? Now I realize that it wouldn’t have mattered. As if holding his hand after he died would somehow make me not feel as despondent as I have for the past nine months. It was another lie I told myself.

And my delusion about spending hours in Starsky’s room, not making a sound, not realizing how much time had passed? That was me at the cemetery after we buried him. His mom and brother had left; Mrs. Starsky needed to be sedated and Nick had to take her back to the hotel. And Dobey and Huggy gave me space so I could mourn alone.

But I did make a sound, though. Because after everyone had gone, I broke down and sobbed for what seemed like hours. I thought that maybe I had gotten it out of my system, but I hadn’t. Even after nine months, I still get tears in my eyes whenever I think about him. It’s as if he died just yesterday.

When Dobey and Huggy came back to the cemetery to retrieve me sometime later, they practically had to drag me away. Only the possibility of getting blackout drunk at the Pits gave me the impetus to leave.

And Starsky flatlining in the hospital and being revived by the defibrillator paddles just as I burst through the double doors? And waking up when he heard my voice?

It’s one hell of a romantic story, isn’t it? Just like in the movies.

The tagline of that movie would be something like “Their bond was so strong that even Death couldn’t tear them apart” or “The love they both shared” or “The greatest friendship of all time.”

It would be some sappy thing like that.

But can you understand why I so desperately wanted it to be true?

Of course I know that it’s medically impossible to shock a patient back to life once they’ve flatlined. Did you know that the medical term for flatlining is asystole? A defibrillator can only work to correct an irregular heart rhythm. But in asystole, there is no rhythm, so there’s nothing that can be corrected.

I’ve spent nine months trying to convince myself that Starsky survived because our bond was so strong that it could overcome the impossible.

But that’s bullshit. You know it and I know it. Because as strong as our bond was, as great as our love for each other was, it couldn’t overcome the amount of shock and damage a body goes through when assailed by machine guns at close range.

And real life isn’t a Hollywood movie where there’s always a happy ending and the protagonists are the heroes who save the day.

But a few things I wrote above are true, as you know. I did investigate the hit on us which led me to James Gunther. And I arrested him. I needed to avenge my partner’s murder, even though it wouldn’t bring him back. Dobey did try to assign me a new partner but I refused. And then he tried to assign me to desk duty, but I refused that, too. And I did take a leave of absence, but it wasn’t to take care of Starsky, at least not at first.

It was to try to find a way to come to terms with his death and what that meant for me as a cop and more importantly, as a person. But then it became about me living out a fantasy in my head that he was still alive.

It’s been 276 days since I lost my partner and best friend, and I still haven’t gotten over it. And I know now that I don’t have the energy to try any longer. I don’t have the will.

Because, if I’m honest, I don’t want to get over his death.

There, I said it.

I don’t ever want to wake up one day and think to myself, Hey, I feel happy today. I don’t miss Starsky quite so much anymore.

No, I don’t ever want to feel like that. It would feel like a betrayal.

I did the math. If I lived, say, another 40 years, that would equal 14,600 days. My two choices: live without Starsky every single one of those days and feel just as despondent as I have since he died; or miss him a little less each day, the sound of his voice slowly fading from my mind, the few photos I have of him the only reminder of what he looked like. I don’t know which of those options is worse.

And if one day I could think about him without getting tears in my eyes? That would be the worst thing of all.

If you’re wondering how I could have kept up my delusion for nine months? The alcohol helped a lot. You bet it did. I drank lots of alcohol. Lots. Whenever an intrusive thought tried to enter my head (Starsky’s dead, Hutchinson, you asshole, you buried him two days after he died, remember?), I just drank some more until the unwanted thought went away. Until I had no more thoughts.

I really did make that stuffed veal, though. Tried to convince myself it was for Starsky. Drank a lot of beer and a lot of wine, and eventually, a lot of brandy, and in the end, I never ate it because I couldn’t stomach the thought of ever eating meat again. It was so much blood and flesh. So much wasted life.

Then I got so plastered that I passed out on the couch at four in the morning after spilling brandy all over my baseball jacket, imagining that the person I loved more than anything else in the whole world was lying next to me on the couch, and we were laughing and happy.

And Gunther? I lied to myself about that, too. You know he didn’t kill himself. You know he was able to pay off the judge, or perhaps blackmail him. And he must have gotten to some of the jurors, too.

I’m sure you heard about his acquittal on the news the other day. That was when I made my decision.

Let me explain. I haven’t told you about the heroin yet. I bought some yesterday from a dealer who operates on the outskirts of town and goes by the name of Ray-Ray. I returned home, planning on overdosing. I carefully prepared it with spoon and flame, filled the syringe with the potent liquid, and then placed it down on the coffee table because I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I thought about how Starsky had given so much of himself to get me clean after Forest’s men turned me into a human pincushion, that I just didn’t have the heart to end it like that. So I spilled the liquid down the toilet, put the syringe and paraphernalia into the trash, and carried everything downstairs to the dumpster.

I thought about using my gun, of course. But I worried about some poor schmuck finding the mess and having to deal with that traumatizing image for the rest of their lives; Huggy or maybe Fifi. Or perhaps a rookie cop just out of the academy who never expected to see a scene like that on their first day on the beat.

So I rejected that idea, too.

I’m sure you’re wondering if I thought about going out in a hail of bullets. Suicide by criminal. Of course I thought about it, many times, but that would have required me to return to work and go out on the streets with a new partner. And I simply couldn’t do it. There was too much planning involved and too much interaction with other people. It made my goddamn head hurt.

And besides, I could never, NEVER, refer to anyone else as my partner.

So I finally decided that the best way for me to end things was by drowning myself. You see, thinking about the time I was drugged by Forest’s men reminded me of when I escaped from them. They had thrown me in the backseat of Monk’s car, and I heard them discussing how they were going to dispose of my body in the harbor. They were going to dump me at The Point; said the current would carry me out 200 miles. That gave me the push I needed to kick the goon next to me in the face and jump out of the car.

But I had Starsky to go back to, then.

If you’re reading this letter, that’s where I am now: at the bottom of the bay, or carried 200 miles out to sea. Don’t worry though; I doubt I’ll suffer much, because I’m planning on drinking heavily before I jump in.

It will be better this way; no mess. And no one will have to bear the burden of burying me, either. Because burying my partner was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and I wanted to spare the people who love me from having to do that.

Besides, I’ve always loved the sea, ever since I was a kid and joined the sea scouts on Lake Superior.

Mom, Dad, I’m really sorry. I hope you can forgive me.

And it doesn’t matter anyway, because that’s just where my body will be. I’m hoping, praying, that there’s some kind of afterlife where Starsky and I can be reunited in some way.

But if there isn’t, I’ll at least have a part of him with me. If you’re wondering where his badge and jewelry are, the items that meant the most to him besides his car, and which I’ve kept on top of my bureau all these months, I’ll be wearing them close to my heart.

The striped tomato is still at the impound lot. I visited it this morning to say goodbye. They wouldn’t let me sit in it, though, because they still need it for evidence, in case they ever find out who the two gunmen were.

Please, don’t mourn for me, or for him. Because in death, one way or another, Starsky and I will be together.

I would like to ask a couple of favors, though.

A few years ago, for Christmas, I had a tree planted in Starsky’s honor in MacArthur Park, near the horseshoe pitch. Ask Molly and Kiko; they know where it is. It’s a cherry tree and it blooms each spring with lovely pink flowers that are as beautiful as Starsky was.

I regret that I never told him that. We had this routine where he would flirt with me and admire my appearance, and I’d disparage his looks every chance I got. He would call me Big Blond Beauty and Blue Eyes, and I would insult him by calling him Meathead or Mushbrain.

He would tell me I’m cute, and I would tell him he wasn’t.

I know it was a game we both enjoyed playing, that it was one of the many ways we showed our affection for each other, but I really wish I had said something nice about him, or perhaps his car, while he was alive. Just once.

Anyway, I’d like to ask that someone plant another tree next to Starsky’s tree, in my memory, so that the roots of our trees can become entwined, and grow stronger and closer with the years, as I so wish Starsky and I could have done in life.

I would also ask this: for someone to frame this photo of Starsky and me, together and happy, and hang it in the squad room on the wall near our shared desk. And then place our ever vigilant piggy bank below it, next to the coffee machine which we frequented so often. And I hope that seeing our photo every day can provide some measure of comfort to our beloved Captain Dobey, so he can feel that we’re still with him, in a way. Still his boys.

The photo was taken by a newspaper photographer and accompanied an article where the writer referred to us as heroes.

I don’t know if we’re heroes or not. Starsky didn’t give his life to save me, or another cop, or an innocent civilian, although I know he would have. Instead, he died by senseless violence, for no reason other than one man’s lust for revenge.

And I’ve certainly been no hero these last nine months.

You know who the real heroes are? The three cops in that framed photo in Dobey’s office that hangs above the water cooler. Those brave men in uniform who go out each day and risk their lives to do their jobs: to protect and serve. Men who spend more time arresting bad guys than they spend with their wives and children, in order to keep the streets safe. Men who give their lives in service of their communities; their names are Elmo Jackson; Frank Graham; William “Mac” McDermont; Jim Nedloe; Iron Mike Ferguson, and countless others who’ve come and gone.

But Starsky and I were blessed with something that most other people never have: each other. We were friends first; cops second. And I find comfort in the idea of Starsky and I looking out on our eventual replacements and perhaps giving them hope that someday, they, too, can find true friendship and love.

Sincerely,

Kenneth Richard Hutchinson
Friday, February 15, 1980