Crumpled

Hutch fears the worst while waiting in the hospital with the sounds of the day echoing in his head.

Starsky get down!!! Starsky! Starsky! His shouts echo over and over in his mind. Sometimes they’re fast and urgent, speeding up to a fever pitch – StarskygetdownStarskyStarsky!!! – while other times they’re slowed and sluggish, as if they’ve gotten stuck inside a bowl of molasses – S t a r s k y… g e t… d o w w w n n n.

But they won’t stop.

The shouted pleas are accompanied by the obscene sounds of gunshots and shattering glass, like a percussion section punctuating the brass and strings of a discordant orchestra.

Most of the time, he hears the gunshots first—his own or the hitmen’s machine guns, he’s not sure which—and then he sees Starsky lying on the ground beside the Torino, silent and unmoving. Other times, he sees first, then hears. But which way did it happen? He tries to think. Bullets travel faster than words, faster than any possible human action, so he must have heard them first. Think, Hutchinson! But light travels faster than sound, so maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he SAW and then he HEARD.

He saw, and before his mind could process the strange scene laid out before him, he heard, and then it started to make sense. Only none of it made sense.

He still has the Torino, though. That’s real. He looks down at his feet on the floor and his ass on the seat and he tries to relax but he can’t, because he knows something is wrong. It’s the color. The inside of the Torino is supposed to be black. But this car… this interior looks more like burgundy. No, that can’t be. Maybe it’s his eyes. Maybe it’s the tears that have been welling up in there for as long as he’s sat here, maybe they’re altering his perception.

He looks over at Starsky’s hands on the wheel. That will reassure him. That will set things right. He IS riding in a car, isn’t he? He’d been heading for the Torino teasing Starsky just moments earlier in the police garage, so it makes sense that’s where he is now. He just needs to try to erase the sounds of the banging drums… the bullets… from inside his head. Try to forget the image, burned into his retinas, of his partner lying in a crumpled heap on the ground beside the car. Because none of that is real, dammit. How can it be? Because he, Detective Kenneth Hutchinson, is sitting in the Torino RIGHT NOW and those are his partner’s hands on the wheel, he’s sure of it, and even though the color of the skin is darker and the fingers are pudgier, the hands larger and thicker than they have any right to be, it’s just the tears messing with him.

But he doesn’t dare look at the face. No! He doesn’t DARE. Because he knows the tears will betray him, he knows he’ll see the wrong face staring intently at the road ahead, the mouth set tightly in a silent grimace, beads of sweat clinging to the tight dark curls at the edges of the slightly graying temples. Because they won’t be Starsky’s curls, they won’t be Starsky’s temples.

But if he doesn’t look, he won’t—

“Hutchinson.”

The sound of his name rouses him from his reverie and instinctively he looks to his left. But he shouldn’t have done it, because now he knows for sure it’s not Starsky driving the car.

Besides, Starsky doesn’t ever call him that. Well, not usually, except sometimes when he’s in a playful, teasing mood. He’s called him that in the squad room before. And occasionally in the car during long, boring stakeouts.

And that one time he said it in bed. It had been a totally serious and intimate moment between them, Starsky’s hard cock deep inside Hutch’s willing ass—the ass that now squirmed uncomfortably in the strangely-colored Torino’s seat—and then Starsky had leaned his full naked weight on top of Hutch, swirled his finger inside a sweaty, blond ringlet and impulsively moaned Hutchinson into his ear, and then they had both collapsed in a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

He tries to remember what happened after that—did they carry on, did Starsky slip out of him from laughing too hard, but the memory refuses to surface.

It’s Dobey driving the car. Of course it is, and the reason it’s burgundy inside is because it’s Dobey’s car. That’s why the hands are—

Suddenly, the car swerves left into a driveway and a familiar yet unwelcome sign comes into view, blurred by the tears that still swim over his vision but readable nonetheless.

EMERGENCY.

He closes his eyes. He’s seen enough.

The car lurches to a stop, the driver’s door swings open and then the passenger door, and Dobey grabs his arm, yelling something about going in.

All around him, people are going about this way and that beneath the sickly glare of fluorescent ceiling lights. Footsteps approaching, passing, receding. A hand on his shoulder. Faces blurred through the tears. A doctor shouting. A woman’s voice. Someone far away is sobbing.

The sounds around him are competing with the unrelenting noises in his head.

“Have a seat and wait here.” “They’re taking him to surgery.” “Can I get you anything?” “I’m his captain.” “The OR is that way, sir, but you can’t go in.” “Is there someone we should call?” “Is he gonna be okay?” “Is there a phone I can use?” “Please sit down.” “Hello, we need more officers here.” “Come over here, son.” “They’re taking him to the OR… “

Who is Dobey calling son? Is his son Cal here? But there’s no one here, just him. Starsky’s not here. Where is Starsky?

“Hutchinson… Hutch… We have to wait here, son, there’s nothing more we can do. Just wait here until Starsky’s out of surgery. Just wait and pray.”

He wishes he could close his ears.

“I called Huggy, but he wasn’t there so I left a message. I also called his mother in New York. She didn’t take it too well, as you can imagine. I guess it could have been worse, though. All the calls I’ve had to make in my day to widows of—“

Dobey hesitates and clears his throat.

“… WIVES of… my men. Fortunately his brother was there and he was able to calm her down. He said he would look into getting a flight… “

Why would Dobey call Huggy’s mother? It was all so confusing. Did Huggy have a brother? Hutch tries to remember but his brain won’t cooperate. It sounded all wrong, though. Everything was so damn wrong. Why were they here in this terrible place and where the hell was Starsky?

“I gotta take a leak,” he manages to croak. Dobey points him toward the hallway on his left, and he walks blindly in that direction. By the time he’s gotten there, he’s completely forgotten what he was looking for.

“The men’s room,” Dobey says, still pointing.

He pushes open the door and walks in. He enters a stall and closes the door, leaning his full weight against the cold, hard metal as a furious eruption bursts forth from deep within him, heating up his insides until he can feel his head exploding as white hot rivulets of lava stream down his face, burning it, etching permanent crevices there.

His legs weaken—they suddenly feel like rubber—and he slides down to the floor, his entire body shaking, and he finds himself crumpled in a heap next to the toilet, and the volcano is still active, still churning out boiling hot lava, tearing its way up through his insides as he struggles to breathe, his chest heaving in violent waves. And Starsky isn’t even dead yet.

Suddenly he remembers where he is and he listens for sounds around him, but there is nothing, only the persistent sound of sobbing. Not far away but right here. HIS sobbing, he dimly realizes.

And then he hears something, a door being pushed open and footsteps entering his private domain. He squinches down to look under the stall and can just barely make out the tip of what he assumes is a man’s shoe in the distance. But just as quickly as the man has entered, the tip is pulled back, the footsteps recede, and the door closes firmly shut. He is alone once again.

********

He has no idea how much time has passed, but at some point he realizes that he has to urgently pee, and so he picks himself up off the floor and does his business. It seems to be the last vestiges of the eruption, as both urine stream and tears slow down and stop almost simultaneously as he is at last wrung dry.

He zips himself up mindlessly, hardly remembering unzipping in the first place, and staggers out of the stall like so many drunks he’s seen in so many alleyways littered with stale urine and scattered detritus.

Lurching toward the sink, he fully expects to see angry red slashes etched into his cheeks, but there are none, only the faint wet remains of the deluge that had traveled there. He turns on the faucet and splashes his closed eyes, his face, but he can’t wash away the terrible memory or the sounds, no matter how furiously he splashes.

When he finally exits the men’s room, Dobey is waiting outside a few feet away. Hutch looks down at his captain’s shoes and squints through bleary eyes in an effort to examine the tips.

“Come with me, Hutch,” Dobey says gently, touching his arm and leading him away. “We just need to wait until Starsky’s out of surgery. Until then, there’s nothing else we can do.”

Hutch is too spent to argue, so he sits down in the chair that Dobey has led him to and waits.

********

The minutes tick off, then the hours. How many hours, he doesn’t know. But he must have been sitting here for a long time because his back aches terribly and his throat is dry as sand. As if on cue, a nurse hands him a paper cup and he drinks it greedily, not knowing whether it contains water or coffee and not particularly caring which.

The nurse offers another cup to Dobey but he waves it away.

“You okay, Hutch?”

He realizes Dobey has been talking to him for quite some time, but he only becomes fully aware of it when he hears his own name spoken.

“Yeah,” he answers. It is both true and untrue at the same time. He IS okay, in the sense that HE isn’t the one bleeding his guts out all over the operating table. But at the same time, he ISN’T ok, because how the hell could he be?

He wonders if maybe this place is purgatory. Perhaps he and Starsky have both been shot and killed and he’s been sent here to this cold and sterile waiting room, waiting for what seems like eternity to find out if Starsky is going to make it.

Or perhaps this was Hell? No, that couldn’t be it, because Hell would be finding out that Starsky was dead, and so far, the doctors hadn’t said any such thing. He is sure he hasn’t heard those words uttered by Dobey or the doctors or anyone. So this must be purgatory. And he has a feeling he’ll be here a very long time.

********

He doesn’t remember coming up here, or sitting in this backwards-turned chair, but he feels unnaturally calm now compared to earlier when he could hardly breathe, could hardly think from the sounds of the gunshots and shouting wreaking havoc inside his head. He can see Starsky now, can observe him through the window as he lies immobile in his ICU bed connected to an untold number of tubes and monitors. Can’t touch him though. Too fragile! Starsky might shatter if he tried. Or perhaps HE would.

Starsky get down!!! Starsky! Starsky! The words, the ever present gunshots and smashing glass are still there in his head, but they are much farther away now, receded into the background, their previously interminable racket reduced to a sound like distant thunder, temporarily eclipsed by new words in his head and sounds that are coming from behind.

Doctors opening and closing doors, holding whispered conversations. Measured footsteps approaching from down the hall, echoing in tangent with the beating of his heart and the steady beeping of the monitor that he’s been staring at through the glass for who knows how long.

He turns briefly as Huggy approaches, but he doesn’t acknowledge him. Instead, he turns his attention back to his partner.

“Captain…” Huggy’s voice says from behind.

“Coupla guys dressed up like officers… he’s lucky to be alive,” Dobey responds.

“He’s gonna be okay,” Huggy insists, and Hutch wishes to hell they would both shut the fuck up.

It’s an effort to speak, but he needs to tell them. He forces himself to utter the words about Starsky that have been ricocheting like a ping-pong ball inside his head ever since he came up to this floor and spied his comatose partner through the window.

“He’s dying. “

-The End-