Chapter Seven

Early November and even in southern California the night air can get very cold, and I continued to lie there in the grass with over half of my body burned.

Then, suddenly, I was able to see Starsky again- was glad to be alive- but was certain death was coming to claim me at any moment.

My hands - Before I died, I wanted to be able to see them reach up to Starsky and then touch his face.

Use my hands not to say "Goodbye," but to say along with words, "Man, Starsk, how I love you so very, very, much!"

###

It was so dark outside, either way, as my hands came up, I was able to see that they looked like a biscuit that had been left in the oven way too long with how charred black they were. At the same time, the skin like it was raw dough with it rolling down to right past my wrists.

With my hands moved only half-way off the ground, Starsky instructed me to not bring them up anymore. I knew he didn't want me to bring them up anymore but either way, they couldn't stay in limbo. So, as I brought them back down to the grass, the skin fell off and like the ashes off the end of a lit cigarette would.

Not believing I was seeing this, I totally surrendered expressing in any way at all that I loved him. I wouldn't have been able to. My face felt like a stretched rubber band. I could barely move my mouth. In terror, panic, and shock, I wondered if my hands were so dreadful, what in the world did my face look like? Though I couldn't tell Starsk that I loved him, I heard myself in a hoarse whisper say, "Help."

Then, I was aware of more voices. Spectator's voices from area businesses and residential homes, and I was the number one theater movie.

Dear God! Why couldn't being burned be all just a movie!?….

A totally fictional movie!

Tons of people watching what was going on and two people-Starsky and Joe against tons…There was no way at all possible that Starsky and Joe yelling at them to go away could cause them to do that!

Then it was like a circus going on and I was the main freak show, I was being asked questions like, "Hey crispy man do you hurt?"

"How badly do you hurt?"

Did I look like I wasn't hurting and in severe pain!?

No offense to people, but sometimes they can be so cruel and so stupid!

And then my face was swelling by the minute.

I was still in shock.

I was cold. My body was trembling so much I couldn't keep any of it still. And even with Starsky's thick and insulated jacket having been put over me, did nothing to warm me.

The fire trucks, paramedics, and the ambulance finally arrived, and I started crying. Wondering where in the world they'd been all along. Though realistically it hadn't taken very long at all for their arrival, I thought they'd taken forever.

The paramedics' decision was to pick me up again and place me further away from the burning car and street, once there and lying on the sidewalk, one of them ordered Starsky to move away from me so they could do their job.

Though exhausted, my face still feeling like it was stretched like a rubber band, and a sore throat to boot, I managed to scream, "No!- There was no way at all someone was going to 'make' Starsky go away from me!"

"Hutchinson! Knock it off!" A paramedic I'd seen somewhere else before harshly chastised me.

Starsky grabbed a hold of his coat collar, "Don't you ever talk like that to him again!" Starsk yelled, then ran quickly away from me.

He was standing only about six feet from me and I took comfort in that. Then, my emotions got the best of me and suddenly I'd never felt so abandoned by him before, and shivered harder because of it.

Then one of the paramedics removed Starsky's jacket that had been placed over me.

Starsky, Joe, and the uniformed police officers who'd shown up again tried to get the gawking crowd of people to mind their own business.

To go someplace else.

But with me continuing to be the main attraction of the evening except for a few people leaving, the majority stayed put right where they were at.

Though the paramedics flocked around me, the unsympathetic gapers could still see what was going on through the gaps.

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It was even darker outside, spotlights were turned on. Then I closed my swollen eyelids as tightly as they possibly could go, but when I re-opened them, I could still see the hordes of people with a million eyes on me as a paramedic sheared open my black slacks.

In the rush to start my examination my underwear was cut off and my genitals…my 'privates' fully exposed… It was humiliating for all those strangers to be looking at them.

Not just the paramedics seeing them, but the part of the crowd that had been able to get up that close to me and totally ignoring Starsky's, Joe's, and the uniformed police officers' continued pleas to go away.

###

My new waist-length leather coat and the box it was in burned up in the rental car, the next thing some paramedics cut off me was a turquoise blue pull-over shirt with long sleeves.

I must have blanked out what happened next, but shortly after that saw a paramedic removing my shoes and socks.

"Cool man! So very cool!" I heard some people say, but it was such the opposite for me with lying there.

A paramedic placed a white sheet over me; when someone in the crowd pointed out just how stark naked I still was! I went past feeling humiliated about it to feeling degraded and down to the bottom dregs of human society.

Then, there was Starsky growling at the horde of people to just leave me alone! And still being entirely ignored… trying to keep it together, while I was attempting to do the same, while an I.V. was started.

Sterile gauze bandages were then taken and wrapped around my hands until it looked like I had on mittens.

"Get him going now!" a paramedic barked out the order and briskly I was put on a stretcher and rushed into the ambulance.