Two Seconds Before Oblivion

It’s been a week since the shooting. And Starsky doesn’t remember a thing–but he wants to.

Written for the 20 second fic challenge.

Starsky spooned green Jell-O into his mouth, happier than he’d been in days. Well, since May 15th when he didn’t get the proposed steak dinner he’d hoped for.

Honestly, everything that happened after that was hazy, as if he hadn’t been involved in the events of the day—or week—whatsoever.

It was just as well he didn’t remember three bullets into his back. He could feel the pain, feel the devastation those automatic weapons had done to his body. And see the effect the shooting had had on Hutch.

Hutch looked like he’d aged ten years in seven days. As if he’d been sitting Shiva beside Starsky’s hospital bed.

Starsky felt like he’d aged that much, although, getting to eat Jell-O assuaged some of his trauma. Just a little. Not as much as seeing Hutch smile every time he took another bite. That was like—well, heaven. Not that Starsky really wanted to think about heaven after almost visiting that fabled place.

He was happy here with Hutch. Even if the nurses interrupted them far too often and poked him in every uncomfortable spot.

He had Jell-O. And Hutch.

The TV flickered behind Hutch’s head, catching Starsky’s attention. Had he just seen what he thought he’d seen?

“Try another bite, Starsk,” Hutch encouraged. “Nurse Wilma said if you finished that you could graduate to more food.”

“Turn up the volume,” Starsky rasped, his voice still scratchy after being on a ventilator. He pointed to the TV.

“What?” Hutch swiveled around, staring at the commercial for Pillsbury dinner rolls.

“Sixty Minutes is on,” Starsky said, totally forgetting his dinner, such as it was. “Watch.”

“Tonight, Mike Wallace brings you the story of James Gunther, once considered one of the most powerful men in the country, arrested and charged not only of attempted murder of a police officer, but numerous drug charges, money laundering and countless other crimes,” the announcer of the top rated TV series said solemnly.

“Starsky, no—I can’t watch that.” Hutch reached up to turn off the television.

“I need to,” Starsky announced. He could barely sit up on his own, could only eat Jell-O when stoned on morphine and had to pee in a plastic jar, but damn it, he wanted to know what had happened.

Hutch turned away, his face gone pale and drawn, mouth tight.

Starsky stared up at the unsettling image of a man lying in a pool of blood, cops and paramedics gathered around him. That didn’t look like him, did it?

He looked dead.

He was lying near the Torino. It was a photograph, probably the only one that existed of him so soon after the shooting.

He didn’t remember any of it. Didn’t remember a paramedic sliding a needle into his arm, or bandages heaped on his chest as they hefted him onto a gurney.

He knew that had to have happened, because how else would he have gotten to the hospital, to surgery, to survive?

He remembered Hutch.

Only Hutch. Two seconds of Hutch’s terrorized blue eyes before all hell broke loose. Hutch had yelled, but Starsky didn’t remember his words. Just the look in his eyes.

The same look he had now.

“Turn it off,” Starsky said softly. “And talk to me. Tell me what you saw.”

FIN