This Time I Have Not Got You

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Follows the scene just after Starsky is gunned down in SR. We can all feel Hutch’s pain as he sits beside Starsky and is just totally overwhelmed and somewhat “outside” of the reality of the scene. If you remember, there is no blood on Hutch – his clothes or his hands. That being the case, is this what was happening for him?

 

I find it easy to write as if I am in Hutch’s head and feel closer to Starsky that way so I am experimenting with Hutch POV first person stories. Here’s another one and in this I am trying to be in Hutch’s head immediately after Starsky was gunned down in SR. For all of you out there like me, who can feel Hutch’s pain in that scene when he first goes in to be with Starsky and is just totally overwhelmed and somewhat “outside” of the reality of the scene…here is one take on it. If you remember there is no blood on Hutch – his clothes or his hands. That being the case, is this what was happening for him?

This is one of my earlier stories.

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“I’ve got you…it’s ok now.”

“I’m here, I’ve got you, it’s all gonna be ok.”

“Easy Starsk, I’ve got you, I’ve got you now.”

How many many times over the years had I uttered those soothing words to my partner as I held him in a tight embrace, warding off any further threat to him, comforting him in his time of emotional or physical pain? Being there for him – being with him – making up the whole that was the two of us?

Those words had no place in what was between us now. Those words could not leave my mouth this time. I had no solace, no protection, no power to rid my closest friend of what was right now pulling him away from me.

Powerless, I was completely and utterly powerless to help him.

The still and almost lifeless body lay inert and broken, swathed in white on the narrow bed. White bandages, white tape, white lights, white sheets, there was so much white. His skin too was white…such white skin. Tubes and needles invaded his arms, his nose, his mouth, and his chest. Beeping, bleeping, pulsing and rhythmic machines and apparatus surrounded and crowded in on his personal space and effectively locked him away from mine. The body that was so ravaged and so brutalized by the recent assault lay quiet and silent, not even able to breathe for itself.

This body, the body of my partner, my closest friend, my soulmate. Starsky’s body.

Starsky is going to die. Starsky is going to die, and there is nothing I can do about it. The body…it can only withstand so much…so much damage, so much trauma. This time, Starsky is going to die. This time, I do not have you, buddy. This time I haven’t got you and it’s not ok, and it’s not all going to be all right. Starsky is going to die. Oh, Dear God, he is going to die.

I sat rigid in the hard backed chair. I could not even reach out to touch him. Could not even put my hand in his cold one, could not stroke his white cheek, or squeeze his shoulder or touch the soft, limp, dark brown curls. This time, I could not heal him. This time was different and so terribly, frighteningly, final. For the first time in our relationship Starsky was taken from me so completely, so cruelly, so senselessly. I could not be with him to comfort him, to hold him, to make him better with just my physical presence. Our connection, our bonding was broken. Broken like his poor body. Severed because his spirit and his light had been crushed and extinguished.

So scared, Starsk, I am so scared. I can’t feel you anymore, can’t sense you anymore. Have you already left me?

I could not touch him. Why did I not touch him? My shaking hand just stopped in mid air, half way to his arm. I pulled it back as if his body was molten fire rather than cold whiteness.

If I reached out and touched him I knew that I would touch death, would feel Starsky’s life ebbing out of his stricken body. If I didn’t touch him I would not have to feel the cold creeping stranglehold that death was mounting on his body. This time my hand in his, my gentle touch, my body’s warmth, my transmission of love could not hope to win him back from the clutches of pain and injury.

For there was another force holding my friend now and I could not compete with it’s wrath.

This force was cold, it was not gentle and it was so very unloving. The White Knight was no match for the black demon of death. In the past I would have raged against the forces threatening him. I would have fought hard to reclaim his safety and protect him from further hurt. In the past I would have been relentless in bringing Starsky back to me. But this time was different.

From the moment I skidded to a halt around the back of Torino and saw his body blown apart , the holes gaping in his chest and back, his lifeblood pouring onto the garage floor…I knew this time was different. Screams and yells and running feet all permeated my clouding vision as I stood transfixed by the sight of Starsky’s limp, doll like body. Everyone was running, crowding him, touching him, assessing him, screaming for assistance and yelling out directives. I had staggered toward him and fallen to his side. Aghast, afraid, annihilated. He and I were a little tableau, frozen in time. He with his blood pumping out of his slumped and blown apart form, me with my useless, stunned and totally shocked face. We were so still the both of us. Totally still amidst a cacophony of noise and a screenplay of total drama.

Everyone was claiming him, wanting a part of him, wanting to make him better. In contrast I could do nothing but slump beside him and look at everyone else for assistance. Never had I seen my partner so ripped apart physically, so dismantled, so fragile. Never had I been so disempowered, felt so futile, so fucking weak, so alone – already. It was if it was I who had been decimated by the bullets, my blood pouring out of my chest, my body weakening with every passing second.

As the paramedics arrived and began to work on Starsky, I felt the shift, the severance…our bond had been broken. I was adrift and Starsky was already in a sphere where I could no longer reach him. As they gently lifted his bloody, pulverized body onto the stretcher – I stood back. The fear mounted and overtook me and I just stood, crumpled and overwhelmed as they loaded him with a great sense of urgency into the ambulance.

No one asked me if I wished to travel with him and there seemed no point in requesting it…such was the magnitude of the operation. He was critically injured and every moment counted. There was no time for emotional considerations. A partner’s rights did not figure in the scheme of saving someone’s life and at that moment, Starsky’s life was hanging by a thread. The doors of the ambulance slammed shut with such a finality. Starsky was inside and I was outside. Starsky was alone and I was not with him.

I just backed weakly away from the vehicle and the crowded mayhem began to disperse. People were enquiring as to how I was, what the hell had happened and making suggestions about getting me somewhere to sit down. Did they not see? Did they not realize the enormity at what had just transpired? Did they not realize as I realized, that I was not with him, I was not beside him as I always was in such terrible times.

As kind hands were bundling me toward the door of the building and holding my shaking form upright, I uttered my first words since the shocking event.

“Who is holding his hand in the ambulance?”

It was not me and never before had it not been.

SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH

Hours later the medical powers that be had finally allowed me to go to him. I did not even have to read between the lines of their unspoken words. There was those distinctive sympathetic looks and whispered words that told so much. They were already communicating to me that I had undergone a loss and were trying their best to make it as painless as possible. But such a loss could never be thought of as painless. I was filled up with it, was brimming over with it and when I started toward the room that held Starsky, the only part of me that I could sense was that loss.

Kind wistful smiles and comforting pats to my shoulder were omens of what was to come. I was ushered into the desolate white cavernous room that held the still body of my fallen friend. I wanted to tell them that they need not try to prepare me or to convey to me the gravity of the situation. They did not have to tell me, I already knew. I knew when I heard the rapid retort of the gunfire in the garage, when I could not see my partner, when he did not answer my frantic screams to him. I knew when I rounded the back of his beloved car and caught that first nauseating, heart stopping image of him strewn across the ground, head flung into his car wheel, his battered leather jacket already glistening with red red blood. I knew. I knew that this time was different to all of the other times. This time was climactic beyond anything we had ever encountered together as a dual force.

I could not win this battle for Starsky.

I could not win this battle for us.

This time we would not be Lazarus.

This time we were not going to rise up.

I haven’t got you, Gordo. I am so so sorry, but I haven’t got you this time.

The sharp medicinal smell of the hospital room permeated my head. Starsky hated and feared that smell so much. In the past I would have fretted that the same strong distinctive odor would be unsettling him and causing him undue distress. He hated the smell of hospitals so much and I knew that more than anyone else. Of course I did. I knew him better than anyone else, better I think than he even knew himself. But this time the hospital stink and the hospital atmosphere was low on my scale of worries.

Every fiber of my being and mental functioning was directed solely at just trying to assimilate the pure disorder in my world. It was all I could do just to sit and be. Sit and look and try not to think, not to evaluate, not to imagine what might come next.

For if I did, the discovery would be too much for me to bear.

How long did I remain there and keep vigil over his ethereal form? Time lost all perspective. For what is time when there is no life to spend it? My partner was leaving this world and time would mean nothing to him anymore. And, if Starsky left this world, time would no longer have any meaning to me either.

My world without Starsky would not be my world anymore.

The white sterile room with its white bed, its white linen and its white lifeless form burned its image into my brain. It was as though I had become part of a still life shot and I could not find the strength to pull myself away from its morbid hold on me. I knew that I needed to move, to leave, to allow the white nurses and the white doctors to go about their jobs. To go about touching my friend and prodding him and measuring him. I wanted to tell them to all go away and leave him be.

It is all useless anyway, for Starsky is going to die. Please do not hurt him anymore with your needles and your tubes and your mechanical equipment. Please just leave him be now. He is frightened of hospitals and medicine. He is terrified of doctors and procedures. My partner is brave and strong beyond words but there is something about white hospital rooms that put the fear of God into him. So please do not frighten him anymore unless your actions can help him, only if you can help to save him.

Don’t you all see, that if I can’t help him, no-one can? And I can’t help him.

I haven’t got him. I haven’t got him, and if I am not joined with him, no amount of your medicine will help him either.

But I didn’t say it. I did not say any of these things. I stayed still and I stayed silent. I watched and I waited, waited for death to come and claim my friend. I saw it whispering around his head, drifting above his mechanically driven rising and falling chest, could feel it settling on the white sheets and taunting me from every corner of the sterile room. My solitary vigil could not hold it back. Did I possibly think I could? Other times I had thought so and other times I had been successful. Starsky and I had lived on to be partners for another day. Other times. Not this time.

This time I did not have him. This time, he was not going to be alright. Nothing would be alright ever again.

Me and Thee was finished.

Our mantra to each other had been blown away with the gunfire that had ripped through Starsky’s back and chest. The blood we shared as brothers in spirit and love, had been bled out onto the garage floor. Our life-force was depleted and anemic.

Much later I was moved away from his bedside by the whispering, white staff. They needed to “work on him.” They told me that I needed to have a break. They told me that there was nothing that I could do for him right now. Once that phrase would have meant little to me. Once that phrase would only have provoked me into forcing myself into an even closer proximity with my friend.

No one would ever separate us.

Now, I just walked quietly away.

I walked away and I had not even touched him. Not once since he had fallen.

Dobey and some of the other staff were waiting outside. I mindlessly walked out of the room toward them . I left him there alone. I left Starsky on that narrow bed in that sterile, white room.

For the first time in my life with Starsky, I did not feel able to help him.

The reflection in the bathroom mirror showed me the pain that I could not allow myself to feel just yet. Shaking hands fumbled with the tap. I stared at my hands and turn them over. These same hands that had not reached out to him. These hands that I had withheld from Starsky because once they had touched him I would be touching deep inside of myself. I was not brave enough or prepared enough to do that just yet.

The cold water on my face was wet but brought no comfort. The shaking hands that raked down my tortured features could not erase the fear behind them. Faded dull blue eyes looked back at me – all vibrancy gone. All vibrancy dead. Dead, dead, dead like my shining, vibrant friend.

My eyes filled then and I could no longer push down the surging despair and grief. Tears fell and mingled with the tap water and it was impossible to scrub them away or to stop their flow. Head in my hands, trying to hold the weight of my overwhelming agony, I cried and washed, cried and washed. I fell to the floor, gagging, dry retching and gasping for breath. Hot tears burned down my cold cheeks – I was wracked by the jagged sobs that could not be quelled. My chest, my heart, my guts were being twisted and wrung out.

Oh Christ, help me!

What to do with all of this pain? What to do with this ripping sorrow, this gut wrenching fear and grief?

I must have known that one day it would come to this. That one day we would lose each other. But if this was it and we were here now, I could not accept it.

I can’t let you go, Starsky. You cannot go.

Make this go away! Someone make this go away. Someone please make Starsky able to stay with me…please.

I knew then that I had to harness all of this immense silent rage. The battle for Starsky’s life was out of my hands. My hands could not help him now. I knew then that I had to do the only thing I could do for us while I still had some strength left in me. I had to avenge what had been done to us. My soul partner was being wrenched away from me, his body blown apart from evil forces.

I would find those forces and I would crush them. I would destroy them, as they were right now destroying my closest, lifetime friend. As they were destroying me.

The revenge would be total and it would be mine alone.

SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH

As I pushed out of the mens room and shouldered my way past a few milling cleaners and orderlies I moved with a firmer conviction than I had in the past few hours – than I had since my partner had been brought down in front of me. I needed to get to Dobey, get a vehicle and to galvanize my thoughts into hard action. I knew Dobey would be obstructive to me and my mission. I sensed that he too was terrified of losing not just one of us, but the both of us. He would not want me out on the streets gunning for whoever had taken Starsky down. But Dobey would be no obstacle for me right now.

There would be no obstacles.

With each minute my conviction was hardening and my resolve was sharper and more lethal. I was still here and I would find who had done this to my partner, even if I died in the process. For death no longer worried me. Only the thought of dying without exacting my revenge on who had taken Starsky from me, worried me now. If death was going to claim my other half, then it could damn well have me too, but not until I was ready for it. Not until I could look into the eyes of the force that had ripped my universe apart.

As I almost ran toward the bank of lifts, I automatically felt for my gun, reassuring myself of its bulky presence against my side. The gun was there for me when I might need it. No partner now, just me and my magnum.

I will always have your back, Hutch.

I could hear his voice so close to me then. I turned expectantly, almost as if I would find him by my side.

But he was not there. There was no one standing by me, no deep blue eyes searching out my lighter ones. No sturdy, firm, familiar presence striding along beside me. No Starsky. It was just me by myself as it must be from now on. Till the job was done.

I couldn’t think about what I was doing and why I was leaving now. Leaving the hospital, leaving the Intensive Care Unit, leaving my partner. I was going to walk away without touching him as I left, without reassuring him that I would be back soon, back by his side again. I had to go and leave behind all hope. Never had I left Starsky like this before. Never had I abandoned him to the care of doctors and nurses, to the clinical trappings that he so hated and secretly feared.

Why couldn’t I touch him? Why couldn’t I sense him?

I’m scared, Hutch. I’m scared. It hurts so much, Oh God it hurts.

I whirled around to scan the lift area.

“Starsky? Starsk?” I spoke out loud, but softly and drew the attention of some nurses.

Then I felt it.

The warm glow was there. Faint and weak, but it was there. That inexplicable sense that he was right next to be, inside my head, speaking to me so that only I could hear. His presence, his essence was with me again and in discerning it, I turned back.

I turned back toward the room where he lay waiting for me.

SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH

The lift doors swooshed open behind me and beckoned me into their cold compartment but I had already turned my back on them, my mind now on the room I had come from earlier.

My breath hitched in that moment and I stumbled, grabbing the wall for support. I had a sensation of my heart lurching inside of me. It was as though I was on the outside looking in at myself, an eerie depersonalization. I stayed like that for a moment or two waiting for the strange feeling to pass, clutching my chest and pressing hard to try to stop the weird feeling of my heart seeming to flip inside my chest.

A voice sounded over the intercom, calm but urgent in it’s directive.

All hell broke loose beyond the lift well at the nurse’s station. Staff who moments before had been busy at desk tasks now were galvanized into action. Their organized and united performance had been perfected. Their quick, quiet behavior was a set of trained responses to a medical emergency.

The medical emergency of course was Starsky.

The blue flashing light above the doorway of his room was the flashing light of death.

He had coded.

Flat-lined.

Died.

I knew then that what I had been feeling a second before had been his body. Starsky. My heart had stopped and then kicked into an aberrant rhythm. As Starsky’s had. The sense of alienation and suspension of myself in time and space was my connection to my soul partner’s plight.

The pain at this realization was immense.

I had felt him, I had sensed him. Starsky had tried to call to me, to bring me back to him. I had been leaving him. I had left him alone when he needed me more than he ever had. The connection was still there and we had been together again, but now it was all too late.

He could not hold on anymore for me. He had waited and waited and tried to reach out to me – and I had not been there by his side for him. Where I had always been. Where I should have been.

So frightened of losing him I could not watch him suffer and had been too weak, too selfish to allow him to go. So centered on my own pain that I had not heard him pleading with me to reach out and comfort him.

He would not allow himself to go without me being with him and he had held on and held on. Now he was too tired to hold on anymore. Now he was going to die without me – either way he was going to die.

The magnitude of this awareness was huge for me, and coalesced within a moment. Realization of the impact of my own selfish weakness rose up before me.

I had risked our last moments together. I had denied us both our last chance to be as one.

I stood frozen by a shaft of utter grief at what I had done. It kept me planted at the doorway looking in at what was a monumental point in my life.

The doorway to his ICU room was blocked by nurses and technicians who were rolling in pieces of resuscitative equipment and medical trolleys. I could see that once more Starsky’s bed was surrounded by white. The heavy bandages that had bound his shattered chest had been cut away and he lay exposed and vulnerable, a mass of lines and sutures, bruising and raw skin. His muscular, strong chest was glistening with wet gel and dried blood and it seemed to me then that everyone had their hands on his broken body.

Medical jargon and staccato dialogue filled the room and it’s pace was measured and controlled. How could everyone be so controlled and methodical when my closest friend was dying?

The white coated doctor shot out an order, held out his hands to the nurses and turned to watch the monitor. He was being handed the defibrillator pads. There was counting and beeping and then..

Oh my God No!

As I surged forward through the doorway, I was pulled back violently. I struggled but more hands plied me and directed me back outside to the viewing window, away from the interior of the room.

I heard my own anguished howl as I smashed my hands against the glass of the ICU viewing window. “Star…sssss…kyy. Star…sk. Noooooo…Please…NO…”

My howls were uncontainable and my anguish was wild and pulsing. Now more arms were around me again. This time they were trying to pull me away from the window and voices were trying to reason with me, to calm me, to reassure me. I could not be calmed and no one could reassure me.

My partner was dying at this moment, his body convulsing on the narrow bed as the electrical currents burned and coursed through his unresponsive heart. It was though they were torturing him, assaulting him with the merciless medical equipment. I wanted at once to pull them off him and throw my own body over his to try to protect him from the violence they were unleashing on his defenseless form.

But I also wanted them to save him. Please save him. Please bring him back to me.

I wanted to see the flat-line that was Starsky’s heartbeat jump and peak and promise me hope that there was a chance for his life.

When I heard the doctor yell loudly for the third time “Stand clear”! I could take it no more. With a violent shove I rid myself of the two orderlies and the nurse who were restraining my arms and lower body and broke through the door and into the room. Everyone was yelling but I did not stop and pushed through the knot of people surrounding the bed.

“Please. Please, just let me touch him.”

“Please…let me be with him…I need to touch him. I haven’t touched him and he wants me to touch him, don’t you see?” Struggling to utter the words through my broken sobs, I kept pushing forward.

The few staff that were not caught up in the horror show that was playing out in the room descended on me and started grappling with my writhing body. I fought and struggled, pushed and begged. The doctor paused for one moment and looked directly at me. As he held the two defibrillator paddles high and off to the side so as to avoid me, I took my opportunity. I only had a second, but I was able to reach out my shaking hand and touch him. My fingers brushed across his white dry cheek. There was no time to linger or to leave my hand there as I would have once done.

It was such a fleeting touch. One last caress.

I am here buddy, by your side. I am with you Starsk. I am with you. I want you to be peaceful. You can go now because I am here. I will always, always love you.

It was all over so quickly…it was over in a heartbeat. Then I was pulled gently aside.

Did the doctor actually give me space and time to do that? I saw his eyes looking at me with a resigned, tired compassion and thought fleetingly that perhaps he did. Did he allow me this last chance for contact with my partner while he was still alive? Of course, he did, he knew Starsky was gone, that there was no hope. If there had been he would never have allowed me anywhere near his patient.

If there had been a chance for Starsky. But there were no chances left for him, for us.

Our luck had run out.

I quietened now, exhausted from my internal battle. I leaned heavily into the wall sobbing softly as the nightmare scene played out as if in slow motion. Everyone’s eyes were on the monitor watching the unresponsive graph of his heartbeat, the line of Starsky’s heart that could not be brought back. Watching the flat line. Watching my partner’s heart, the heart that I had held for so long in my own. He had mine in his too, and as if to prove this, if I had ever doubted it, I could feel my own life-force ebbing further away as I kept my tear washed eyes on his achingly familiar face.

The doctors command was repeated. “We will go again, one final time…everyone please. Stand clear.”

As the room began to darken, my vision tunneled and the voices and actions around me became muted and distant. I knew I was going to fall and as I slid bonelessly down the wall, I thought I saw it. I thought I saw hope, but it was just my own consuming grief that was taunting me.

The seductive illusion of hope.

As the room disappeared from my awareness altogether I focused on that slim green line that was Starsky’s heartbeat.

A blip, a trough and then a peak.

Illusions.

The room was disappearing from my vision now, my mind closing down as each of my senses did too. When the darkness took over and pulled me under, my final thought was that I was going with Starsky. To where he was now.

We were together again.

We were together in the darkness.

SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH

The darkness had lifted but I still felt its shroud wrapped around me.

It had been a comforting shroud but I could not remember why.

As the lightness came and my consciousness broke through completely, I remained very still as each of my senses returned. Instinctively I turned toward the wall seeking out more of the darkness.

Oblivion.

Denial.

I knew what the light meant. I knew what it brought.

The light brought awareness and pain. The knifing pain was reality and it ripped through me with a brutal ferocity. The light meant that I was not with Starsky and he was not with me.

Starsky had gone into the darkness and the darkness did not take me too. I was left here. Behind in the light.

The doctor who had been working on Starsky was standing beside me, looking over a chart. I watched him through half closed eyes. I moaned softly and tried to roll back into where I had come from. Back into nothingness. I needed to go back to that place. Where I could not know and I could not feel.

I simply lay and watched the serious faced, white coated man as he read and jotted notes. I did not move, I did not speak. We were in some sort of small room with a desk and I was lying on some sort of examination table. “They” must have brought me here when I fell down, when Starsky…

I was brought here away from my friend, when he…

I baulked at the word, would not let it to even form in my mind. I pushed hard against the word, the effort of keeping it at bay was huge for it was ruthless in its intent to force my mind its way. Face it head on.

I knew that I wanted to be with Starsky soon, to sit and hold him again before he would be taken away from me, but right now the pain of his loss effectively paralyzed every fiber of me.

The doctor turned then, suddenly aware that I was awake. I could not meet his eyes. I felt him hesitate. He was going to address me.

“Don’t speak to me. Don’t you say it. Don’t, Oh God, please do not say what you are going to say to me. Until you say the words it won’t be true.”

Those compassionate eyes were back in place and he paused to place his hand on my arm. I would have flinched if I had been capable of moving or reacting, but I was dead inside.

It was then that he gave me a very small smile. I looked down to where his hand rested on my arm. The symbolism of that touch evoked more pain in me.

He will never feel me touch him again and I will never feel his warm touch on me again.

I stared at the strange hand, the unfamiliar hand. I could not look up at him because then he would speak. Then he would tell me what could never be unsaid.

I am sorry but your partner is dead.

“Detective Hutchinson, your partner is alive.”

My eyes instantly shot up to latch onto his face. Searching his face for something more tangible.

What? What? What was he telling me? Cruel dream. It was all a cruel dream.

I saw him die. I wanted to die with him, but I am still here. What are you saying to me?

“…I do not know how, I am damned if I can figure it…but then in this job I get to be surprised a lot by human spirit and strength. Now I do not want to give you false hope, as he remains very much in a critical state, but for the moment he has rallied and there are some signs of stabilization.”

This was real, and these words were real. The words he spoke, the beautiful, glorious words he spoke washed over my defeated body like a balm. For a moment I could only take them and hold them in my head, trying to make sense of them even while the joyous buoyancy of them filled me. These beautiful words jolted me – my own flatline was broken. I could start to feel my heart beating fiercely now – with hope and gratitude, not with fear and dread.

I could see that he was taking in my range of emotions. If I had been able to watch my own face I am sure that the relief that blossomed there must have been a dramatic contrast to the mask of dead grief that was falling away with his words.

“Bu…ttt I ….I…thought that …..the monitor…his heart would not respond?” I was pushing myself up now and struggling to gain my equilibrium.

“Yes, I know. The situation had been grim, but on the last effort to resuscitate him, there was a response and he slipped back into sinus rhythm…his heart started to beat normally again.”

He paused then and gave me a searching look as he helped me remain upright, my body threatening to tilt over again, my head swimming with so many emotions.

“I do not like to dwell on certain things, Detective, ahh, Ken, for I am a scientific man foremost and I know that science prevails. But…your partner was really a very poor risk for resuscitation, there was little hope to bring him back. His final response and regaining of some strength, astounds me.”

He paused as if deciding whether to say more.

“Ken, I do believe that your presence was the catalyst. Patients, even those very close to death can sense and respond to loved ones. Your friend pulled himself back, and I cannot deny that it may have something to do with you being in the room at that moment. He may well have felt or sensed you when you – ah – managed to touch him.”

He rubbed his eyes and adjusted his glasses. “I am sure you know whether there is any truth in that or not. The two of you are obviously extremely close and this closeness is sometimes what makes the difference for a patient who is critically ill. Sergeant Starsky came back, I think because of you. Not terribly scientific I know.” He smiled again. “But then there it is. The human spirit is a force that sometimes cannot be bested by science.”

There were many things I could have said to this man. I could have attempted to describe the bond that Starsky and I had always shared and the depth of our connection on so many levels. But he would never comprehend the extent of our relationship and there was little to be gained now in trying to rationalize what had transpired in that ICU room. Enough that he had given me the space and time to allow me to touch Starsk that one last time – to make that vital contact that I had not been able to make earlier. Not until Starsky had reached out to me as only he could.

I was eternally grateful and indebted to this man for his expertise and determination in keeping my partner’s life at the forefront of his efforts, but right now I pushed most of that aside.

All I wanted was not to be found in this room.

“Doctor – Starsky and I…we have always been together and in the past being together has helped us to get strong. Thank you for allowing me to…to…be with him. I don’t know…I…I am sorry…please…but can I just go to him now? I need to go to him.” These last words came out in a desperate strangled plea.

I was standing and testing my legs. I did not want to end up back on a trolley horizontal again when Starsky was waiting.

Alive. Waiting for me.

A warm smile again from this surprisingly insightful man. While I had been drowning in grief he had been working me out, or rather working Starsky and I out. He could try forever and never get it. Only we understood what were together and what we could never be apart.

But this man, this doctor surprised me. Even jaded as I was with society, sometimes life could still surprise me. To think that he could have done all of that while working on Starsky’s life. I felt a warmth for him even though my mind was elsewhere.

“I thought as much. It won’t be a problem. I knew that you would want to be with him.” He motioned to me and we began to walk toward the door together.

“You must remember Ken, your partner is still not out of the woods and the next hours and days will be critical. There are still so many things that can go wrong, so many medical and surgical complications that can test us and the degree of damage his body has undergone. But…”

He stopped for a second when he saw that I was not going to be contained here. He saw that I was not open for objectivity, or rationale argument. My partner was alive for Christ Sake!

Starsky is alive. Please just let me have that for now. It is enough. Enough for now. Don’t take it away from me or try to minimize my joy. Let me just have this for now.

“……there is more hope than we have had so far and he is looking stronger than he has since the surgery. We can only continue to hope.”

Hope. Hope that I did not have and had given up. I had given up on my friend. Given up on us.

He led me into the room and stopped at the entrance. I believe he sensed my renewed fear at the sight of the room and spoke now in a firm voice. “Stay as long as you like. I will clear it with the nursing staff so that you don’t get you muscled out of here after fifteen minutes. Go on, be with your friend, I am sure he has been expecting you.” With that he turned and left me. I am sure that he knew that this was an intensely personal time for me.

Anxiety again bubbled up as I scanned the room. Deja vu pervaded me as I walked through the doorway and everything felt dream like. What if this was all a terrible nightmare? What if the bed bed was empty, the monitor black, Starsky taken away.

Starsky dead.

But he was there in the narrow white bed and he was alive. I felt him there before I saw him. I felt his breath in my ear.

My eyes found him and rested on his face and I walked quickly now to his side. No hesitation now, my hands out in front of me seeking his face, touching his hair, caressing his cheek. There was so much medical paraphernalia in him and on him and he was heavily wrapped in dressings and tape. Eager hands urgently sought any pieces of bared skin to touch and gently press. Confirming for myself that his skin was warmer than it had been when I last touched him.

I sank into the chair that had been placed by his bed. I gently lifted his hand into mine and then covered it with my other as best I could with the cannula in place. My eyes locked onto his pale face and focused on each well known feature at a time.

His dark lashed eyes closed against his cheeks. Those dark blue eyes were like Morse code to me. He could speak to me with them and I to him with mine. We drew strength from each other by using our eyes and ensured that our communications were not conveyed to anyone else but each other. Our eyes were our own private channel. His eyes were closed to me now and I was denied their deep blue depths, but still I was beyond happy to be able to watch them closed and flickering behind his lids.

I gently traced my fingers over his lips. Such a strong and often obstinate mouth that could so easily slide into a devilishly smile, a never ending chuckle, a grim faced threat, and a soft concerned pout.

His nose that I cannot believe had retained its shape despite the number of times I know it had been busted, likewise his planed cheeks that had caught too many blows to count.

I looked down at our joined hands and thumbed the back of his hand. My thumb ran over the roughened scarred knuckles where small white lines and ridges were the badges for the numerous times he had used his fists to fight our way out of trouble or danger. After our eyes our hands were the other way we talked together. A touch, a tap, a squeeze, a caress…our hands often sought to comfort, encourage or protect each other. My light golden skinned hand with its long tapering fingers fitted like a glove into his capable olive skinned one. I rubbed my finger over his small finger where his rings had been taped over for the surgery, making a mental note that should they be removed I would ask to have them with me. Already in my pocket I was aware of the light weight of his Chinese coin necklace and I would be sure to put it around my neck and wear it close to me until I could give it back to him.

Finally, my eyes came to rest on his chest. This was the hardest part for me to look at. I still felt my stomach clench and my breath hitch when I saw what had been done to him by the bullets and the surgery. His chest was bound and bandaged again, but the memory of him on the bed, wet with the gel for the defibrillator pads, his fresh raw wounds stark against his denuded chest had me closing my eyes again now. This chest and back area bore the brunt of his assault. The center of his body, the center of his being. It was hard, but I brought my hand up from the side of his body to gingerly touch the stricken center of him. I lay it gently, gently, no more than a breath on to where I had seen the sutures. I was terrified of hurting him even though I knew that was illogical. This was by far the most traumatic moment of me dealing with the reality of what had happened to my friend so far. I knew that under the bandages there would be even more marks now. The faint pink burn marks from the defibrillator paddles.

I risked a study of the monitor and I breathed a sigh of relief. The green line was forming a steady, regular run of troughs and peaks. Then I remembered the flash of the peak before I passed out.

Not an illusion after all.

The image of his convulsing body swam in front of my eyes and I had to concentrate hard for a moment to push the fear away again. To think that Starsky’s heart had stopped, had failed, that he had died…without me ever having touched his tortured body one last time.

I did not want to cry anymore. Choking, racking sobs had exhausted me and I did not want to be any more depleted than I felt. I wanted to stay strong now for Starsky. To be here for him whenever he was able to come back to me. I didn’t care how long it took, just as long as he was able to return to me. I touched his face again and marveled at what had transpired.

So close, so close to losing him…and then I felt it welling again. The uncontainable emotion, the tears. But this time I knew that the tears were healing tears…the tears of joy and gratitude.

Starsky hadn’t died after all. I believed that he had felt me, had felt my touch. Knowing I was there for him, he had pulled himself away from the line between life and death. It hadn’t been too late after all.

I hadn’t been too late.

I found the strength now to say it. Starsky would listen and he would understand. He had one flaw, a weakness really. It was me. He believed in me implicitly and was forever loyal. In his eyes I could do no wrong and when it involved me he was always so ready to forgive and forget. I knew there were too many times where I had wronged him and hurt him – intolerably – never knowing why I even did it. I hated myself for those few times when I had hurt him. Stupid, self centered acts that had threatened the integrity of our relationship. If I could take them back, take back my betrayal of his trust, I would. But we had healed. We came back as one. Starsky’s generous and loving nature would never allow me to stay outside of our bond for too long.

This time the hurt I had inflicted was passive. I had withheld myself from him. I had not been there for him when he needed me more than he ever had. When I got, if I got, to the other side of all of this, with Starsky still with me, I would need to do some hard self examination.

So frightened of losing him that my fear had nearly cost me the chance of keeping him.

“I am so sorry, Starsk. I am so very sorry. I am not as brave or as strong as you. I was so scared of losing you that I could not watch it happen. I was so fucking terrified of you leaving me. You know that I can’t go on in life without you buddy. My life would be …”

I put my head down on the side of the bed, my head and hair brushing against his arm and lay my arms as gently as I could manage to do so over his body. I so much wanted to feel his hand reach up and touch the back of my head, I so much wanted to feel his touch on me. I needed him to absolve me of what was overtaking me now but of course he couldn’t. A deep shuddering breath and I let it all wash over me, into me.

The self remorse, the guilt and … almost … self hate.

“I was walking away, Starsk. I was leaving you. Sure I was going to find out who did this to you and kill them…that’s what I wanted to do. But I should never have left you alone. I should never have given up hope.”

But I knew that Starsk would not want me to have any of that. Both of us were intolerant of guilt or self blame in each other. I could hear his voice, firm and strong and yet gentle and understanding at the same time.

Don’t do this Hutch…just shut up already will ya? Enough of the guilt, ya big blond lug. So you didn’t get around to putting your big hand on mine for a while. So what? Ya here now aren’t ya? Don’t matter coz you know I still would have said “what took you so long”? anyway…

He would have said this with that lop-sided smile and with his head tipped slightly to the side, his eyes telling me that it was all ok… we were ok.

His voice was so real and presence so strong that it undid me completely. God help me I was missing him so much already. How would I ever cope if he…

I was losing the battle with the tears again.

“Christ! Starsk! There will be nothing left of me soon if I keep this up!” I sniffed and choked and then gave a watery smile when I thought of how Starsky might respond to that one if he could. “Probably thinking of some smart-assed comeback right now aren’t you, Gordo?”

Something moved, settled, relaxed in me and I felt a little lighter in myself.

“See buddy, even unconscious you know just what to say to me to make me feel better.”

I couldn’t resist…I picked up a curl of his dark hair and fingered it as I smiled fondly down at him.

“Well buddy. The doctor says its going to be a while before you wake up so you had better get used to this blubbering act of mine.”

There were things that I had to do and I was no less intent on finding who had done this to Starsky, to the two of us…but for the moment all I wanted to do was sit here.

Be with him. Be here for him. Be at one with him.

I had thought that this time was different. That this time I did not have him.

But I was wrong and Starsky knew it. He knew that I had him deep inside me and I was deep inside him.

We would always have each other.

The darkness was gone and we were still together.

Together… in the light.

The End