With Regards to John and Paul

Hutch’s annual CPR certification class brings bad memories of a certain day in May–and there’s a Beatles song, too.

A gray haired woman walked to the front of the auditorium, her face as bright and shining as a fresh convert to the faith.

Jaded and cynical, Hutch almost expected the assembled group to shout ‘alleluia’ when she raised her hand to get their attention.

“Welcome,” she said loudly, gesturing to a few stragglers entering the utility room. “On behalf of the American Heart Association, welcome to the Basic Life Support and Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation class. My name is Brenda and I will be your instructor today.” She smiled beatifically, her round cheeks rosy. “This is my first time leading a class since I got my certification, so bear with me.”

There were a few chuckles at her confession, the initiated ready to begin their baptism–if not under fire, than to prepare for future emergencies.

Hutch took a long swallow of coffee, needing the caffeine to stay awake. Too many long hours, too much tension lately-he was stretched to his limit. He really did not want to be here. Dobey was bending backwards to keep Hutch off the streets now that Starsky was out of the coma. With Gunther’s lawyers haggling in the courts over bail and plea bargaining, Hutch had to wait for his turn to testify at the Grand Jury hearing. In the last two weeks, he had been relegated to low stress assignments, thus this class two months before the expiration date on his CPR card.

“This for recertification only,” Brenda continued with perky confidence. “If you are starting from scratch, the full class is down the hall with Macie-ann.” She waited while three people got up and scuttled out of the room.

Hutch finished his coffee and stowed the cup under his chair, glancing over at the plastic resuscitation dummies lined up in a row on the floor. Something in his chest tightened and he turned back to Brenda.

She was fumbling with a movie projector, threading the end of the film into the slot. “We’ll watch this movie to review the steps of BLS and CPR, then break into groups–one group will do the quiz, the other will practice, and then switch. At ten, we’ll have a break and two other instructors will be here to watch you all demonstrate what you have learned on the dummies. We should all be out of here by noon.”

There were murmurs of approval over her announcement just as the lights went out and the filmstrip began. Staring at the flickering images, Hutch tried to focus on the information, filtering out the memories that plagued him day and night.

On the screen, a middle-aged couple strolled along a green verge: the woman chatting happily, the man with a worried expression. Suddenly, the man clutched his chest, gasped once and tumbled to the ground.

The woman screamed, attracting attention from other people in the park.

Hutch saw Starsky go down. Didn’t matter that the dramatized heart attack was absolutely nothing like the way Starsky had fallen in a hail of bullets. Hutch’s heart accelerated, the now familiar anxiety smothering him.

Damn. Not here. Please…

“I know CPR!” a blond teen on the screen cried, dropping down beside the fallen man. “Sir?” He began the steps of basic life support, first trying to get the man’s attention while listening and looking for a breath.

“Bill!” the older woman wailed.

The young rescuer tilted Bill’s head back, while a voiceover explained the ABCs: airway, breathing and circulation.

Hutch closed his eyes to shut out the overwhelming performance. Seeing Starsky lying in the wheel well of the Torino, he’d been initially paralyzed. Ten years on the police force, ten refresher courses on life saving, but the rote lessons of CPR meant nothing in that moment. He’d remembered the steps on other occasions: had actually used the Heimlich maneuver twice and begun CPR on an unconscious woman once. In the latter case, paramedics had finished the job and whisked her to hospital. On his own partner, his own best friend, he’d forgotten everything.

Sinking to his knees in a widening puddle of Starsky’s blood, he’d touched his partner’s forehead and remembered how to establish an airway. As easy as ABC.

He choked at the memory, the coffee in his stomach churning like acid.

Starsky’s eyes had opened abruptly, communicating terror.

Hutch had stared at his partner, so terrified that he couldn’t press his hands into Starsky’s chest, into the shredded skin and gushing blood. Luckily, Starsky had been breathing: Hutch could still hear the gurgling.

Hutch’s memory was far more real, far more visceral than the dramatization on the portable screen. He could feel the way Starsky’s chest was heaving, Starsky frantically trying to breathe past the blood welling inside his lungs. He felt the warm wetness on his fingertips when he’d finally touched the raw wounds.

He’d leaned down to Starsky, desperate for some last words, some way to communicate his desire, his wants, and waited for what seemed like centuries.

Starsky never said anything, but his eyes had conveyed all the same needs plus one more: to live. Hutch had put his lips on Starsky’s mouth, blowing air into his lungs.

When the paramedics arrived to take over, Dobey pulled him away, Hutch’s head swimming from lack of oxygen.

Lost in the past, Hutch jumped when the lights came up in the room. People around him stretched, muttering the steps of rescue breathing and CPR to remind themselves as Brenda motioned them to quiet.

“Left half of the room, you’ll take the test first and the right side of the room can do their skills demos, then we’ll switch,” Brenda called out.

Hutch had to look down at his own hands and then at the walls in the room to figure out which side he was on. He was truly losing it. How could he possibly pass the test when he hadn’t seen more than a moment of the film, hadn’t read the book and…

He had saved a man’s life. Or, at least, kept Starsky alive until he had more competent medical care. Did that count for anything?

He clenched his fists to keep from crying out, challenging the universe for his right to hold Starsky again, whole and alive. He’d kept his distance since those few moments on the blacktop, surrounded by cop cars and far too much blood. Had sat at Starsky’s bedside but hadn’t touched, afraid that he’d go too far there in the ICU where every member of the medical staff could see him.

Joining the line of life-saving hopefuls, Hutch felt isolated, an island buffeted on all sides by humanity. Their voices rang in his ears, “one and two and three and…” Followed by labored grunts as they pressed both hands over the dummy’s lifelike sternum and attempted to bring life to a rubber manikin.

Never going to happen.

“Mr. Hutchinson?” Brenda invited him to kneel beside her, her smile bright with promise. He could do this--she seemed so sure of that. “You find a man on the sidewalk…” His scenario, the imagined script he was to follow was so mundane. Not trivial, because this had the potential to save a life.

But his reality had been so much more brutal and messy than this tidy rehearsal in a fluorescent lighted conference room with beige carpeting under his knees. Bile rose in his throat. Hutch had to swallow twice before he could lean down, listen for non-existent breaths and put his mouth over the dummy’s.

His muscles knew what his brain could not recollect. Tilt the head back, two breaths, feel for pulse, place the hands over the sternum and press down firmly.

Keep the air moving into the brain and circulatory system. Keep the victim alive until help arrives.

He’d done that, hadn’t he?

Had preserved something so very precious and rare. Life.

Love.

Exhausted, Hutch stumbled out of the building an hour later, once again up to date on his Basic Life Support and Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation skills. He had recertified.

He stood in the smog filtered sunlight, wincing from the headache that threatened to take off the top of his skull. Tilted his neck, twisted his tense shoulders until he heard a distinct pop.

All he wanted to do was see Starsky. Reconnect.

He didn’t even have to drive. The Red Cross class was held in the medical building across from Memorial Hospital. A walk across the road and up in the elevator to Starsky’s new room on the fourth floor–no longer in the ICU.

As easy as ABC.

The fear of walking into that hospital assailed him each and every time. Sweat dripped down his spine in the late May midday heat and his knees trembled. He was such a coward! Starsky was awake–some of the time, and in that vague medical parlance stable. He lived: drugged to the gills and still on IV fluids instead of real food, but he could breathe on his own and had sat up in bed for the first time the day before.

Hutch wanted to feel happy, wanted the thrill of his partner’s return from near death. Instead, he had such dread, such anticipation of danger that plastering on a smile and going up there to the third floor was getting more difficult by the day.

As he was going into through the front doors, he spied Minnie Kaplan coming out.

“Hutch!” Minnie cried, pushing her glasses up her nose. “I was visiting Starsky. Brought him a comic book.”

“Great, that’s his kind of literature,” he replied, digging for enthusiasm. He was happy, really he was, that Starsky was improving enough to have visitors. So why was he scared to be away from Starsky’s room and equally as scared to go see his best friend?

“He really wanted to see you.” Minnie covered Hutch’s hand with one of her own, giving him a squeeze and a wink. “He didn’t say much, but I could see it in his eyes.”

Feeling the joy bubble up inside him, Hutch smiled for the first time all day. “I want to see him, too.”

“If he’s asleep, just hold his hand.” Minnie looked back over her shoulder as she started through the door. “He’ll know it’s you.”

Nodding, Hutch walked to the bank of elevators. Of course Starsky would know it was him, just as he’d felt Starsky’s enduring presences whenever he was in dire straits. The long nights he’d spent in the isolation ward even after the antidote, his lungs straining to breathe, the feel of Starsky’s hand holding on so strongly, keeping him attached to the present. To life.

He inhaled, a calm coming over him that seemed to increase the closer he came to Starsky. Stepping into the elevator, he mashed the third floor button. As the cabin began to ascend, he hummed absently along with the muzak. It took two or three bars of the symphonic version of the tune for Hutch to recognize the early Beatles’ music.

“I wanna hold your hand!” Hutch sang out loud, since he was the only one in the elevator.

The physical desire to be with Starsky, to hold him and feel his masculine body against Hutch’s was incredibly strong. He practically sprinted down the hall once the elevator doors slid open.

Love. Pure, honest and so very true. Nothing like he’d ever felt for Van, or any of his other girlfriends. This love: love for Starsky, was so intrinsic, so vital to Hutch’s own life that he couldn’t imagine ever being without it. Couldn’t understand why he had never truly recognized his feelings for Starsky as romantic.

The poignant words written over fifteen years earlier had never been so right. Hutch heard them tumbling over in his head, solidifying his longing into a tangible objective.

“Hey,” Starsky whispered when Hutch took a single step into the room.

Didn’t matter that Starsky hardly had enough breath to puff out the H because he was alive and there.

Hutch dropped into the chair beside the bed with no memory of crossing the length of linoleum. “Hey yourself.” He sounded raspy to his own ears. To do something, he tugged the blanket up more firmly around Starsky, feeling the throb of his love’s heart under his palm.

“Been waiting for you,” Starsky said simply, the corners of his mouth strained with the effort it took to speak.

“Ssh,” Hutch whispered, taking Starsky’s hand in his. He curled his fingers around his partner’s, protecting, holding on, finding courage to sing. “Oh please, say to me, you’ll let me be your man…”

“You already are,” Starsky promised.

The end