The Inspiration of Caesar

Breathe, Partner.

Huggy approached cautiously. “Hey man, how is he?”

“I don’t really know. I only know I didn’t think I’d see him like this.” Starsky couldn’t get his eyes off the window. “That oxygen, it went on this morning.”

“Looks like it’s you that needs to take a breather.”

“I’m alright. We got Callender in time. I thought that’s all we needed. But he’s not responding very quick.”

“I think you might need some air, let me walk you outside for a minute.”

“Nah. I can’t leave.”

Huggy fell silent, looking at a man with half his heart across a pane. It was too much. He couldn’t leave, but he didn’t want to stay.

“Hug, you ever hear that saying? About Caesar?”

“Can’t say I have.”

Starsky touched the glass as a reflex. If he could only getin.“They say that the molecules of oxygen that were in the lungs of Caesar when he died, have traveled all over the world since then. Rejuvenating, across lands and oceans, and in and out of mortal bodies…”

Huggy stayed silent, in awe of this man’s depth when he wanted to convey it.

“…I hope that’s what is in that tent right now. A warrior, a king’s molecules. ‘Cause I feel so helpless that’s it’s not me in there…”

“Savin’ him.”

Starsky put his fist to his mouth and leaned on the glass. “Yeah.”

Huggy was a rickety man when it came to this much emotion. He had to leave before he cracked. “Hang in there, he knows you’re here.” A pat on the strong shoulder and he made an exit, heading for the nearest Christ Church he never told anyone he attended in times like this.

~*~

Judith had long gone seven days ago, when they had both seen her off at the airport. Hutch’s elated discussion about living to 140 years seemed a sick joke by now. Hutch had told Starsky, “You are looking at a man in the prime of his life with a hundred plus to go.” Four days later, Starsky found him unconscious in his apartment, after rushing over when he didn’t answer the phone.

Were they contagious the second time around? Apparently so. Several loved ones had fell to the impact once returning the sick to the hospital. Numerous families were in chaos, as more fell ill than there were those to support the sick. And though the medical team had curbed new isolated cases by a number, the reoccurrence in certain groups of individuals was not yet compartmentalized.

The relapses of certain patients was keeping the hospital staff and medical experts in a tizzy. Some were recovering, some had a rapid decline to death. There was no particular pattern, more so, it appeared to be genetic factors and auto-immune recovery that made the difference. The fact that Starsky did not even get a hint of illness, despite very close quarters with the infected, didn’t surprise him. People had to shoot his rugged type to death, or they lived unabated by anything to a ripe old age.

Starsky was going without the best rest, sleeping in fits that had him gasping for air when he did wake. He couldn’t satisfy a need so primal. He’d sit up sighing, wanting to expel out, not in. He had something to give, not get.

“Mr. Starsky, you need to get something to eat. You’ve been here for hours,” a random nurse consoled as she walked by.

“Yes, yes, I will,” was his constant answer, buzzing them off like an alarm clock whose five minute snoozer kept going off.

He sighed again, and got up to look in the window. And then, he held his breath.

Hutch. Hutch, NO. The body was moving, writhing, seething. Starsky’s palms hit the glass hard. A desperate action, a useless retort.

He looked about quickly. There was no one around. Instantly he reacted, like a cop, like a emergency response person, like a friend. He had oxygen. No staff was going to be able to help anymore than they had already. No, it was something else that was missing, it was the vitality, the passion of a soldier, the vim of circumvention of the antagonist–

“Hutch!” Starsky said fervently, as he clobbered the door, and rushed to the side of his partner. He ripped opened the tent, half uncovering, half unzipping, the crispy piece of cellophane was nothing compared to the glass he’d pressed against for days, and the quarantine regulations he’d battled.

But no more. Grasping his beloved friend, he clasped his hands and then separated them, opening his airway, spreading his chest wide. “Hutch, I’m here, it’s me, I’m here!” Starsky pounded his own breastbone to his and curled his arms in a muckle around his own waist. He heard the rasping, the desire to inhale, the asphyxiation, the need for…molecules.

Someone on the staff saw him in the room, and attempted to intervene. Starsky turned only slightly. “Get out of here! He’s mine!”

“Sir…you can’t…” Knowing it was useless, “I’ll go for help!”

But there was no time for that. Hutch was trying to speak, but only “S…St…sss” would expel, and then a mad suck for air, pulling, taunting…

Starsky took the biggest breath of his life, long, full, murderously fast. He grabbed Hutch’s head and pushed it back, holding him halfway up…and he passed to him the subsistence of his life force.

Hutch pulled from Starsky’s lungs, and when filled, gasped, giving Starsky time to replenish, mixing the oxygen of the tanks that still fed pockets of the plastic, with the tides of his essence, combining the will of the gods, with the potency of heritage and the love of his soul.

The exchange was working, they were in tandem within minutes, and Hutch swooned in Starsky’s arms, his lips searching, for more than air, for more than a breath.

The audience in the window caught sight, where all a witness saw the inspiration of Caesar.