Two AM Encounter

Someone Hutch helped in the past now has a chance to help Hutch.

I’ve always loved minor characters in Starsky and Hutch and this is an exploration of just how Hutch wound up touching one of those lives.

She noticed him sitting at the table near the windows.

It was dark, of course, even though the lights along the path winding through the courtyard provided some illumination. But it didn’t seem to bother him—he stared out with an intense gaze as if he was watching for something.

“We got a fresh pot of coffee?” she asked.

“Sure, hon,” Elaine told her. “You’ll learn to keep plenty of it going, ‘specially for the night shift.”

“Thank you,” she said. Elaine smiled at her and it made her feel important and valued—something she was only learning now as she approached young adulthood.

She liked working the night shift at the hospital. It gave her time for schooling during part of the day now and the little bit extra money she got for taking a shift most people couldn’t do was helpful too. She almost had enough to move into her own apartment instead of living at the halfway house.

She grabbed almost full coffee pot and walked across the nearly empty cafeteria. A few nurses and doctors sat eating, cleaning staff worked at the other end, getting ready for another day, and a couple sat in a corner, talking softly, the woman wringing a handkerchief in her hands.

“Excuse me,” she said, cleared her throat. “I thought maybe you’d like a refill.”

He looked at her with the blue eyes she remembered from the hearing—they reminded her of the ocean the few times she’d seen it. But now, those blue eyes were rimmed red and there were dark smudges beneath them.

He pushed the cup towards her. “Thanks.” He looked at her again and frowned, his brow creased.

He’d shaved off the mustache, cut his hair. She wondered how he could look both older and younger at the same time. She knew what had happened—his partner shot, the powerful James Gunther brought down by a cop on a mission to demand justice. But his partner was alive. At least she thought he was. There was no longer the heavy police presence at the hospital as there had been the first weeks after the shooting.

He rubbed at the crease with an index finger. She wasn’t sure if it meant he had a headache or was thinking. Maybe both.

“Vivian?”

His voice was the same. Rich and soft and strong all at the same time.

She smiled—smiles came so much easier now. “Detective Hutchinson.”

“I didn’t know you worked here.” He pushed out a chair with one foot. “Do you have time?”

She looked back to Elaine who motioned for her to sit. “A little.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have kept up after…”

She shook her head. “Why? You got me out of a bad situation when you argued for no prosecution.”

He took a sip of coffee and leaned back in his chair. “You were just a kid. Caught up in something you couldn’t control.”

She was quiet, thinking of the first true kindness she had known for years, when Detective Hutchinson asked for her to be given a chance for a new, fresh start. “I got my GED.”

He smiled and he looked just a little less tired. “That’s great. And you’re working here?”

She nodded. “I am. Full time and I’m studying to be a nursing assistant to start.”

He leaned forward, placed his hand over hers. “Fantastic. To start?”

“I want to do more,” she told him. “You gave me that dream.”

He shook his head. “I’d say you did all the work, turned your life around.”

She laughed then. “It helps a lot when someone believes you’re a better person than you think are.”

His hands trembled slightly as he picked up the cup to take another sip of coffee. She filled it when he set it down.

“You okay?” she asked.

He was back to staring out the window. “Starsky…my partner.”

She caught her breath. She remembered tying him and the woman detective up. “He’s not…”

He shook his head. “No. Just…a setback. Again. One step forward, two steps back.”

“I’m sorry.” She meant it.

“Yeah. Everyone seems to be except the guy responsible for it all.” He pushed the coffee away after another sip.

Elaine was motioning for her and she noticed the group of nurses coming in. And they had a whole lot of prep to get done for the morning shifts. “I gotta get back to work.”

“Vivian,” he said as she stood. “Thanks. And good luck.”

“Detective Hutchinson,” she said and then nodded. She took the coffee pot and walked back to Elaine.

The next few minutes were busy with getting the nurses their food. When she looked back over to the table where Detective Hutchinson had been, he was gone, only the slightly out of place chair showing he’d ever been there.

“You know him?” Elaine asked as they prepped the carrots and celery for salads. “Isn’t he that cop whose partner was nearly killed?”

“Yeah.” Vivian focused on chopping each carrot precisely. “He’s that cop.”

That cop who saw the worth in someone who hadn’t seen the worth in herself. Vivian blinked back the tears and hoped he knew how much he mattered too.