MEMORIES PART TWO

A DARK DAY IN MAY

May 15th, 1977. The worst day of the life. A day that is burned into my memory and into my soul. It's the day that I almost lost my best friend. It's the day that Starsky almost died. It had started out just like any other day. They were painting the squad room so we couldn't really use to do our reports. Someone had moved in a ping pong table and Starsky and I were playing a game, teasing each other and bantering back and forth the way we always did. Starsky won and was clowning around about his victory as we left the building and headed across the police parking lot towards his car to head out on our usual patrol.

I was on the passenger's side of the car waiting for Starsky to unlock the doors so I could get in when I heard a crunching sound, the kind of sound a car makes when it hits another car. I glanced up in time to see a black and white pull out of a parking spot behind us, hitting the car beside it as it did. Instinctively, I screamed at Starsky to get down and hit the pavement myself, pulling my gun from beneath my jacket even as I fell. I heard the sound of several gunshots as the car roared past us. I sprang to my feet and fired after the other car as it disappeared out of the parking lot but the black and white was already out of sight. Suddenly, it registered in my mind that I didn't hear Starsky returning fire along with me.

"STARSKY!" I screamed as I ran around the front of the car "STARSK!" I skidded to a stop, my heart pounding with terror when I saw Starsky lying on the pavement beside the car, his head resting in the rear wheel well. The front of his shirt was soaked in blood and a puddle was rapidly forming beneath his still body. For a moment I was too terrified to move, to terrified to even breathe. I remember falling to my knees in front of him and reaching out with a trembling hand to press my fingers against the side of his neck. I frantically searched for a pulse, positive that he was dead. I let out the breath I didn't realize that I was even holding when I felt a faint, fluttering pulse beneath my fingers. He was still alive but just barely. He was rapidly bleeding out right in front of me. I could hear the rattling sound in his chest as he struggled to breath, a sound I knew far too well. The death rattle that someone makes as they are dying.

Suddenly, I became aware of people running towards us from every direction. Uniformed officers, undercover officers, Captain Dobey, the department Doctor. Somehow, they were all there, yelling orders and trying to access the situation. I felt Dobey taking my arm and gently pulling me to my feet, away from my dying partner. Briefly, I tried to struggle out of his grasp, desperate to get back to Starsky's side. I didn't want him to die alone and I knew that he was dying right there in front of me.

"Ken," Dobey said gently "Let them take care of him now…." My knees almost gave out on me as I leaned heavily against my Captain's side. An ambulance had arrived and the paramedics were frantically trying to access Starsky's condition and get him ready to transport to the hospital. I felt Dobey pulling my arm, leading me towards his car to take me to the hospital. I followed docilely, my mind numb and my body going into shock. I barely remember the ride to the hospital. I didn't even notice that I had Starsky's blood on my hands, my shirt and my jeans until we got to the hospital and I noticed the curious stares from other visitors as we stalked into the emergency room.

The Captain guided me over to a vacant sofa at the far end of the waiting room and we sat down to wait for the news that neither one of us wanted to hear. Within half an hour, the waiting room began to fill up with people as other officers began to show up to show their support for a fellow officer who had been mortally wounded. It wasn't long before Huggy Bear showed up to join us in our lonely vigil. It was almost two hours before a doctor finally came out through the swinging doors that led to the emergency room, his scrubs stained with blood, Starsky's blood. Before he could even speak, I was on my feet with the Captain by my side, demanding to know if my partner, my best friend, was dead.

I was amazed when the doctor told us that Starsky was still hanging on and had been taken to emergency surgery. He was the one who told us that Starsky had been shot three times in the torso and had lost almost half of his blood volume before he got to the hospital. Even though he was still alive, the prognosis wasn't hopeful. Even if he survived the surgery, he still wasn't expected to live through the night. The injuries were just too massive and too severe. His lungs, his stomach, and his kidney's had all been compromised. One bullet had actually grazed the sac that surrounded his heart. My heart felt like it was being ripped out of my chest, leaving behind a gapping hole, as my mind screamed over and over that Starsky was dying. He was dying and I had to accept that.

Seven hours later found me, Huggy and the Captain sitting in the hallway on the Intensive Care Unit, staring blankly through the large glass window that looked into the room where Starsky lay on the bed. He was as white as the sheets beneath him, being kept alive by the machines that surrounded the bed and monitored his vital signs. His stomach and chest was heavily bandaged and the respirator beside him forced the air in and out of his lungs. Somehow, he had managed to survive the surgery to repair the worst of the damage to his body but the doctors still believed that he was going to die. The human body can only stand so much damage and his injuries were so devastating and so life threatening, that we all knew we were on a death watch.

There is no way to describe how it feels to have someone tell you that you are going to lose the one person that means more to you than anyone else in the world. A part dies too, especially when the doctors keep telling you that there's no hope, no medical miracle that can save him. The pain cut so deep that I felt like I was dying too and in a way I was. When Starsky died, the best part of me would die too, leaving only a hollow shell of a man behind. I had already decided that I would stay there until Starsky drew his last breath and then I would leave and go home. And my life would end to, at my own hands. A life I no longer wanted to live if Starsky wasn't there by my side.

Sometime during that long lonely night, I got up to go to the men's room. I almost collided with an intern coming out. Excusing myself, I went into the bathroom and leaned heavily against the sink, splashing some water on my face and watching with morbid fascination as the water ran red, finally rinsing Starsky's blood from my hands. Glancing at my own harried face in the mirror, from the corner of my eye I saw a man's leg sticking out from underneath one of the stalls.

Spinning around, I shoved open the door to the stall and saw a man lying unconscious on the floor, dressed in white scrub pants and a tee shirt with a stethoscope hanging around his neck. I raced out of the men's room, my eyes scanning the hallway for the intern I had almost collided with on my way into the men's room. I saw him disappearing into a room at the end of the room and barreled down the hall after him. Somehow, my cop's mind knew that he was there to finish the job on Starsky. Bursting into the room, I grabbed him and slammed him back against the wall, relishing the look of fear I saw in his eyes.

He slammed his knee into my groin, catching me by surprise, and loosening my hold on him long enough for him to slip away. Even as I staggered out of the doorway behind him, I saw him running down the hallway with two uniformed officers running after him. Captain Dobey immediately got on the phone and ordered a round the clock guard on Starsky's room. Nobody was allowed in except me, Dobey, Starsky's doctors and his primary nurses. I realized that whoever had tried to kill me and Starsky was still out there and they were looking to finish the job. The one thing I could do, the only thing I could do for my fallen partner, was to find out who they were and bring them down. Then I could end my own life at least knowing that I had brought them to justice.

Captain Dobey decided to set up a temporary command post at the hospital so he would be there when Starsky died and I'd be free to see if I could find out who had arranged the hit. With Huggy's help, I found out the name of the woman who had paid for the hit and immediately went to her apartment. She refused to tell me anything but I had enough to arrest her for paying for the hit on the two of us. When I called the hospital to report in to Captain Dobey, he told me that I needed to get back to the hospital as quickly as I could. I knew immediately that he was telling me that it was almost over, that Starsky was dying and that I needed to be there to say good-bye.

I broke every speed limit in the book to get back to the hospital, slamming though the front entrance and running through the hallways like my life depended on it. I skidded to a stop in front of Starsky's room just as the doctor was coming out of the room. In a stunned voice, he told me, the Captain and Huggy that Starsky was still alive. Still not out of the woods but still alive. I wasn't sure what had happened exactly until after the doctor left and the Captain told me that Starsky had flat lined. His heart had stopped. The trauma team had worked on him for over six minutes before they finally got his heart started again, just as I arrived on the floor. I almost collapsed on the floor myself, as my adrenaline let down. I felt the Captain slipping an arm around my shoulders and leading me over to a chair. I followed blindly, my heart still pounding frantically and close to hyperventilating. I said a silent prayer in my mind, thanking god for not taking Starsky away from me. At least not yet.

Once I was certain that he was out of danger, at least for the moment, I hit the streets again. Over the course of the next two days, I found out that a man named James Gunther was behind the assassination attempt on Starsky and myself. Gunter was a powerful and ruthless man who had managed to stay one step ahead of the law for years. Nobody had ever been able to bring him down. But I did. With every resource at my disposal, I found the evidence I needed to connect him to the hired hit. And I made sure that I was the one who went to his office to arrest him myself. By the time I arrived, he was already expecting me. He had poisoned his right hand man because Starsky had survived the attack on his life and the other man's body was still sitting in a plush chair in the luxurious office when I arrived to arrest Gunther. Gunther had a gun but he wasn't used to getting his own hands dirty, he was used to hiring someone else to do the job for him, so it wasn't hard to overpower him. I had to use every bit of restraint I could manage to keep from killing the man with my bare hands. He had almost killed my partner, my best friend, and even though Starsky was still alive, it would take him months to recover from his injuries.

Starsky was in a coma for almost a week. I was with him when he opened his eyes for the first time after the attack and I had never felt such a overwhelming surge of relief in my life. I wasn't even aware of the tears that were streaming down my face when I saw those sapphire eyes staring at me. He was only awake for a few seconds before his eyes closed again but somehow I knew in my heart that he was going to beat the odds this time. He was going to live. In spite of the doctor's dire predictions, in spite of the massive damage he had suffered, he had survived. And I swore that I would be by his side to make sure he recovered from the attack, no matter how long it took. God had given us both a second chance and I intended to make the most of it.

Starsky was in the hospital for almost two months. He was heavily medicated most of the time and didn't remember the shooting or the first couple of weeks in the hospital. But he was still alive and that was the only thing that mattered to me. Captain Dobey agreed to put me on indefinite leave to care for him until he was back on his feet. He'd lost a partner that he cared about almost as much as I cared about Starsky and he knew how I felt. And even though he didn't come right out and say it, Starsky and I both knew how the Captain felt about us too. We were all family and we were all grateful that Starsky's life had been spared.

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