How Done It

Hutch brings Starsky home from the hospital after Bellamy’s poison is counteracted, but is all the poison out of the situation?

This is a companion piece to It’s Me Again, God.

As elated as Hutch was to be bringing his partner home from the hospital, he couldn’t help but still be worried. He had nearly lost his friend this time. Far too close for comfort. They had chased their tails through the city all day and into the night knowing they only had twenty-four hours to save Starsky from a poisonous compound injected into him. Hutch had barely made it, returning to the hospital with the compound in the last hour.

The antidote had been administered in time, but the damage done wouldn’t snap back to normal overnight. Starsky hadn’t come around for the first six hours and when he did he was so weak he could barely speak. About two hours into the wait for him to regain consciousness, Captain Dobey had tried to send Hutch home for some sleep. He promised he’d call him if Starsky woke up before he returned, but the exhausted man refused to leave. At the end of his tether, Hutch had used every ounce of energy he’d had to save his partner, and he wasn’t about to budge from his side until he could talk to him and reassure him that everything would be all right. Hutch knew Starsky would wake up confused and probably scared, and waking up without his partner present was simply not an option he would remotely consider.

Hutch was crashed in a chair when he was jolted awake by the nurses responding to the monitors telling them Starsky was in trouble. Five minutes of exhilaration and rapid response from the medical team later, things were settled down and Hutch was once again alone with his unresponsive partner. Any thought Dobey or the medical staff had that they would be able to pry the overwrought detective away from his friend now had been eliminated by the latest crisis.

The partners’ instincts about each other were rarely wrong and this time was no exception. When Starsky finally opened his eyes, he had been disoriented and scared. Having Hutch there to assure him that the antidote had worked and he was going to live was important. His implicit trust in his partner meant Starsky could rest without fearing if he fell asleep he would never wake up again.

After two days in the hospital, Doctor Franklin said Starsky could go home and released him to his partner’s competent care. He had told Captain Dobey that both of his men needed to heal. One of them mostly physically and the other emotionally.

The doctor reassured all of them that the thing Starsky needed most of all was rest over the next week. He predicted that the residual physical issues would resolve with patience and rest, probably within a week or two at the most. Starsky was easily winded, extremely light sensitive, his hands shook, his abdominal muscles were sore and sometimes cramped, his energy level was low, and worst of all he had some painful lingering neuropathy in both feet. Franklin sent Starsky home with a cane to assist his still unsteady gait, and prescriptions for both muscle and nerve pain. He also told the partners to watch out and bring him in right away if Starsky showed symptoms of a chest cold in the next few days because it could potentially lead to pneumonia if left unchecked. Assuming all went well, he thought Starsky could be cleared for desk duty within a week or two and street duty within three weeks.

~*~*~

Hutch had tried to talk his partner into coming to his place instead of going home. His little bungalow on the canal had no stairs, and it also had the advantage of not being the scene of the crime. Starsky was adamantly opposed. Vic Bellamy was dead and the professor was in jail awaiting trial. The danger was gone and Starsky wanted to reclaim his space and needed to feel comfortable there. The fact that Hutch was planning to stay with him would help with that.

Within a few minutes of leaving the hospital in the Torino, Starsky had fallen asleep, leaning heavily against the passenger door. Hutch had decided that picking his buddy up in the squeaky, rattling, undependable bucket he drove wasn’t a good idea. He was grateful for the smooth and uneventful ride. He parked and reached over to pat Starsky on the arm.

“Home sweet home, buddy.”

Starsky turned toward him and Hutch could see him blinking several times behind his shades. “Oh, sorry. Guess I fell asleep.”

“Let’s get you upstairs and you can continue doing that.”

Hutch hurried around the front of the Torino to help. Starsky tried to wave him off, but wound up needing a hand.

“You okay?” Hutch asked after he helped Starsky out and onto his feet.

“Yeah,” Starsky answered. “My right foot feels like it’s asleep and the left one feels like I’m standing on hot nails. Other than that, I’m terrific.” He snorted a laugh, obviously intent on at least attempting to not let the situation get him down in the dumps.

Hutch frowned, hoping these things were really going to be as time limited as the doctor had assured them they would. “Don’t worry, buddy. Doc said it’ll all get better in just a few days. Look how far you’ve come already.” Starsky leaned on him on the side without the cane and slowly they got up the stairs.

When they were inside, Starsky went straight to the couch.

“Bed,” Hutch said.

“Couch,” Starsky replied. “Been in bed for days. I wanna be out here where you are for a while.”

Hutch relented and helped him get settled. Starsky was a little out of breath, but he looked entirely happy to be there.

“Cap had Edith bring over some things to stock the larder. You relax while I go see what I can fix to eat.” Edith Dobey had also cleaned up the mess left behind by the crime lab.

Doctor Franklin had been tied up with emergency cases long enough to keep Starsky from a final assessment and release until the late afternoon. After they’d stopped to fill and wait for Starsky’s prescriptions, they hadn’t made it to the apartment until four o’clock.

“Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere, Hutch. How ’bout a cerveza?”

Hutch just laughed at him. “How ’bout you get serious? You’re gonna chase your dinner down with two different kinds of pills that’ll make you sleep. How about some juice instead?”

Starsky had barely touched his food at the hospital, even the food Hutch and Huggy had smuggled in to tempt his appetite. Hutch was intent on getting him back on his feed as soon as he could,

“Nah, I’m not hungry. If you won’t give me a beer, a soda will do. There should be something acceptable in the fridge.”

Hutch sighed. That one or two week timeline wasn’t going to be met if he couldn’t at least get the man in the living room to eat. He answered, “Sorry, buddy, you don’t have any soda. The only things in here are three bottles of beer you can’t drink, some milk that Edith probably got for me, and a pitcher of lemonade she left. Will that work?”

“Okay,” Starsky answered in a sulky tone.

Hutch added, “Edith left meatloaf and mashed potatoes; I only need to heat them up for you. How about you at least attempt to eat some of that before you take the pills?”

Starsky smiled. “That was nice. Her meat loaf is better than Ma’s. I’ll try to eat some.”

Hutch left Starsky looking around his living room, a frown on his face, while he took care of things in the kitchen. When he returned and handed Starsky his lemonade, Starsky asked, “Did the crime lab team ever figure out how Bellamy got in?”

Hutch shook his head. “Not really. They thought he probably picked the lock, but couldn’t be certain.

The crime lab team had thoroughly canvassed Starsky’s apartment for any clue as to how Bellamy had gained entrance, and also how he had drugged Starsky enough to keep him too out of it to object to Bellamy injecting him with that poison. They hadn’t found a thing. Doctor Franklin hadn’t been able to determine what sort of agent had been used to render Starsky incapable of fending off Bellamy. When they analyzed the contents of the syringe Hutch brought from the professor’s home to the hospital, they discovered a sedative was part of the mix. Assuming it was the same as what had been injected into Starsky would explain why he had so quickly lost consciousness. The sedative on top of whatever had been given to him prior to that put him out within minutes of the injection. However Bellamy had drugged him before that couldn’t be determined either by the hospital lab tests, or by the crime lab team.

“What about how he drugged me? Did they find out?” Starsky asked.

“Sorry, but they couldn’t find anything.”

They team had searched the contents of Starsky’s refrigerator and also his bathroom. Nothing was found. Even a look at an empty root beer can they’d found in the kitchen trash showed no evidence.

The two detectives hadn’t discussed the hows and wherefores of his case yet. Concentrating just on getting to the point where Starsky could go home had taken all of their collective energy.

“Well, at least he’s dead. He won’t be able to repeat whatever he did,” Starsky commented.

Hutch’s mind immediately went to the dark rooftop where he had been certain his best friend had sealed his fate while saving his life. Bellamy was getting into position to blow Hutch away when he came up again, but Starsky had blasted him before he could do it. The memory of it sent a shiver through Hutch. The response to his query as to why Starsky had done it when Bellamy was the only guy who knew what they needed to know to save his life had been quintessential Starsky. “Seemed to be a good idea at the time.”

He had passed out after that, leading to a white knuckle ride back to Receiving with another officer driving the Torino and Hutch having to start CPR on Starsky in the back seat before they got there.

All Hutch said in reply was, “Yeah.”

Starsky was able to eat at least half of what Hutch gave him for dinner. He took his medications and managed to keep all of it down, which wasn’t always the case with what little he’d eaten in the hospital. A definite improvement.

“Hey, I wish I could figure it out.” Starsky yawned after he spoke, but his expression was determined.

Hutch had been helping him stretch out on the couch and he looked up from untying a shoelace to respond. “What? How he drugged you?”

Starsky nodded. “Yeah, I just don’t get it. I’ve been thinkin’ about it over and over in my head and I just don’t understand.”

“Let’s talk it out,” Hutch said. “Maybe it’ll help you figure out something you might have dismissed as unimportant.”

“Yeah, okay. Would you mind getting me some more of Edith’s lemonade first?”

Hutch chuckled. “Not if you don’t mind if I have a beer when you can’t. If we’re gonna talk about how that creep got the drop on you and neither one of us knew anything was about to happen, I think I need a drink.”

A few minutes later they were settled on both ends of the couch with their stocking feet tucked under a throw. Hutch cursed both Bellamy and Professor Jennings in his head while he watched Starsky’s hands shake just a little trying to handle the glass. Cheryl’s words back at the station haunted him. He had asked her what would happen.

“Uncontrolled perspiration, distorted vision, loss of coordination, difficult breathing, coma.”

He shuddered at the memory, brought back to the present by a prod to his leg from Starsky’s foot.

“Where’d you go?” Starsky asked.

Hutch blushed. “Sorry. I’m back. So, let’s start after you dropped me off at my place. Did you stop anywhere?”

“No. I thought about driving through somewhere, but I was too beat.”

“Okay. So you got here around eight. What then?”

“I didn’t have the energy to make anything for dinner more ambitious than a PB & J.”

“Creamy?” Hutch asked, momentarily getting a smile out of his partner. They both kept both kinds of peanut butter in their cupboards. Starsky liked creamy, Hutch crunchy.

“You know it. Crunchy’s like eating rocks in something creamy.”

“So you say. What’d you do next?”

“Took a quick shower and turned on the tube. I was still pretty wired when you called. I took that file folder down to the car and threw it in so I wouldn’t forget. Had a beer hoping it would help me relax, and went lights out around midnight. Next thing I knew I woke up ’cause I heard something moving around.”

This was the part that troubled both men the most. They knew Starsky had been drugged somehow, but how? The crime lab team had confiscated everything in the apartment that could potentially have contained a drug. Everything from the open jars of peanut butter to the orange juice to the toothpaste and mouthwash. Nothing had turned up on their tests.

“When you woke up and Bellamy was in your room, you couldn’t move?”

“Not much. I couldn’t get up or fight him off. It kind of felt like it does when they give you something to put you out for when you’re gonna have a tooth pulled. I knew he was there and that he was gonna do something to me. I saw the hypo. After he left I tried to go for the phone and wound up falling out of bed onto the floor. Felt like I was gonna pass out any second and I didn’t know what he’d given me. I dialed you and you know the rest.”

“The crime lab didn’t find anything. Unless Jennings talks, we’ll never know.”

“Maybe it’s gonna stay a how done it,” Starsky said. Hutch knew what he meant.

Starsky’s eyelids were blinking heavily and he barely stifled a yawn.

Hutch smiled at him and said, “We’re sure not solving any mysteries with you nodding off on me. Bed.”

“No,” Starsky protested again. “I’ll take a nap out here.”

Hutch knew Starsky probably wanted him close. “How about you crawl into bed and I’ll sit in the chair in there and read for a while. You’ll sleep better.”

Not waiting for acquiescence, Hutch got up and offered a hand to his friend, levering him up to his feet. He handed Starsky his cane, gently spun him around and pointed him toward the bedroom.

“I’ll be there after I clean up,” he promised.

Hutch went back to the kitchen to tidy up the plates and dishes. Planning to spend the night on the same couch he just told Starsky to vacate for better sleep, he decided he might as well have another beer. After he was done in the kitchen and had scouted something interesting to read off of Starsky’s bookshelf, he settled in the chair in the bedroom to read and relax; content to keep an eye on his recovering partner from there. He chuckled to himself at the thought that he needed that as much as Starsky did.

About halfway through that second beer, he noticed the words on the page he was trying to read were starting to blur. He was definitely tired, but falling asleep over a book at six in the evening was unusual for him. He tried to shake it off and keep reading, but he couldn’t concentrate. Starsky was still sleeping soundly. Hutch was wondering why his ears were ringing and when the book slipped out of his hand his foggy mind made a connection, but he was too late to do anything about it. A fuzzy orange was taking over his vision as he slid into unconsciousness, dropping the beer bottle over to partially spill on his lap.

~*~*~

Starsky woke up an hour later. He stretched a little, creating a Charlie horse in his right leg that caused him to swear. As soon as he got that under control, he looked over at what he had initially thought was his sleeping partner, but even groggy and in pain he could tell the difference between sleeping and unconscious. Hutch was sprawled in the chair with a beer bottle lying in his lap and his book on the floor. Immediately concerned, he struggled up to his feet and hobbled over to check on him.

“Hey, Hutch,” he said. He righted the beer bottle and set it on the floor next to the chair. He lifted Hutch’s chin and patted his cheek, not knowing it was in a similar fashion to the way Hutch had tried to revive him a few days before. He achieved the same lack of results.

Starsky put a shaking hand on Hutch’s carotid and wasn’t happy with the slowness of his pulse. He had a sinking feeling he knew what Hutch had gone through when he found him on the floor out cold. His under-eyelid inspection revealed overly dilated pupils and prompted Starsky to do the same thing Hutch had done. He called an ambulance. As soon as he’d done that he called Captain Dobey.

~*~*~

For the second time in three days, Captain Dobey watched one of his boys wait for word that his partner would be all right. Starsky was too tired and in too much leftover pain to pace effectively, but that didn’t stop the man from trying. He had refused to take any more pain medication until he knew Hutch was safe.

“Starsky, if you don’t sit down you’re going to set yourself back. Exactly how am I supposed to explain how I allowed that to Hutch?” Dobey asked.

Starsky turned around to face him and said, “I think it’s actually helping. My right foot feels more like it’s waking up than it does like it’s asleep. That’s an improvement.”

The captain couldn’t help but think that was a little sad. When Starsky made his frantic call to him he forbade him under no uncertain circumstances to ride in the ambulance with Hutch. He was on his way and would drive him to Receiving himself. He needed Starsky to wait until he and the crime lab team could arrive to explain what had happened. Starsky had told him on the way to the hospital that only a reassurance from the medics that Hutch wasn’t in any danger of crashing completely meant he would keep that promise. Dobey knew Starsky couldn’t move fast enough to enforce any insistence to the contrary, but again… that didn’t mean the man wouldn’t have tried.

A uniformed officer appeared in the waiting room and motioned for Captain Dobey to join him. Before he did, Dobey admonished Starsky, “Sit. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Starsky reluctantly made his way to a chair and eased down into it.

After a few hushed words with the officer, Dobey walked over and sat next to Starsky.

“We don’t know how it was done yet, but it appears a strong narcotic had been added to the beer Hutch was drinking. The crime team found an empty in the trash and one more in the refrigerator that was also laced with it.”

“Dammit! How the hell could that have happened?”

“Like I said, we don’t know that yet. It’s not like the team overlooked it last time. In the original investigation, they didn’t look at anything that was sealed and these bottles appeared to be new and sealed. Did you drink any beer the night before Bellamy got into your place?”

“I did have one right before I went to bed. It looked normal. I popped the top off of it. I would have noticed if it wasn’t on right. Dammit!”

“What happened to the empty bottle? The team didn’t find it.”

“That’s because I threw it in the outside trash. I’d gone down to the Torino to put a folder in for work the next day. The night was nice and clear and I decided to sit out on the steps and finish my beer. I pitched the empty into the downstairs trash before going inside and to bed.”

“Hutch obviously didn’t notice anything unusual about the beers he opened tonight, either.”

“But how the hell did Bellamy think that would work? It’s not like I have a beer every night. What if I hadn’t? If I’d been rowin’ with both oars when he broke in there he wouldn’t have made it to that rooftop before he and my 9mm were introduced.”

“I thought of that. I guess he had some way to watch you in your place. I don’t know. We’ll probably never know. He probably saw you drinking it on the steps. A lucky break for him. For now, all we can guess is that Bellamy had been in your place more than once and had replaced the beer in your refrigerator with beers laced with the drug that night. I guess Hutch just had the misfortune to solve that part of the mystery for us. We’ll bring the professor in for interrogation tomorrow and see if he’ll pop to it.”

“No way Bellamy thought that up himself. My money’s on the guy with the Ph.D.” Starsky got up to do his best impression of pacing some more.

~*~*~

A few hours after they arrived, a nurse came out to get Starsky. He followed her through the double doors into a hallway where Doctor Franklin was waiting for him.

“He’s going to be all right,” he said. That out of the way, he added, “You should be home resting.”

Starsky ignored that. “Are you sure? He drank more than one of those drugged beers. You sure he’s okay?”

Doctor Franklin smiled at him. “I’m sure. He’s awake now and you can see him. I want him to stay another couple of hours just to be sure he’s shaken the effects. I should add that it’s a lucky thing he found those beers instead of you. After what you’ve been through the past few days… Well, there’s no point speculating about that. Go on and be with him. Oh, and when you leave here, see that you don’t come back to my ER anytime soon, will you? I think that’s enough adventure for you both for a while.”

Starsky grinned at him. “No promises, but we’ll do our best. Where is he?”

“Treatment three,” Franklin answered pointing. When Starsky turned to go in the opposite direction, he asked, “Where are you going?”

“I need to let our captain know he’s okay.”

“Go on in there and try to keep him talking. The more awake he is, the sooner I’ll let him go home. I’ll tell your captain.”

Starsky gratefully headed toward his partner, waving a hand without turning around when he heard the doctor chastise him one more time to rest.

~*~*~

Starsky sat next to Hutch’s bed in an odd role reversal from the past few days. He reached out and patted Hutch on the arm.

“I hear you’re going to be fine, Superman,” he said.

Hutch smiled groggily. “Didn’t know you had Kryptonite at your place.” That struck him as funny enough to bring on a short run of drug-induced giggles.

Starsky laughed at that. “Always the detective. No Kryptonite, but I did have a collection of beer bottles with knock-out-drops in them. Doc says it’s a lucky break you drank those beers instead of me. Could have been ugly.”

Hutch closed his eyes again at that comment.

He didn’t open them right away and Starsky could see he was sliding out again. “Stay with me, partner. Doc says you need to wake up better so you can go home.”

Hutch opened his eyes again and looked at his friend. “You okay?”

Starsky reflected briefly on the number of times his partner had asked him that same question over the past three days. “Oh, yeah. The room’s even in pretty good shape.”

That earned him a small smile. “What a mess, huh? When can I get out of here?”

“You’ll be out of here in a couple of hours, but you have to stay awake.”

Hutch nodded. “Good. S’pposed to be takin’ care of you.”

“You are, buddy. I know I’m pretty boring right now, but going lights out like that on me is kinda rude, don’t ya think?”

Hutch rolled his eyes at that. “Sorry. I’ll try harder.”

“Hey, you know something? You’ve never dropped out like that on me without getting clonked on the head before. Don’t be adding new numbers to your routine, okay?”

“Not in my plan. This stinks. When can I get out of here?”

“I just told you that, don’t you remember? Stay awake and talking to me and Franklin will cut you loose in a couple of hours. I’m gonna ask Dobey to take you home so you….”

“No way. Back to your place.”

“I’ll be fine and you’ll feel better around your jungle.”

Hutch suddenly looked a lot more awake, although Starsky could see he was working hard to focus. “No. Back to your place. Gotta make sure there’s no more Kryptonite.”

“You’re hard headed, you know that?”

“Write your congressman.”

The end