Part 1

Hutch could feel the painful tug of his muscles as they made contact with the floor. He had no idea how long he had been running, or how hard he would push himself to reach his friend in time… in time for him to say goodbye.

Doctors, nurses, patients alike scattered as they passed him by in a flash of grey and white – in that moment Hutch was blind to all that was going on around him; colour faded into darkness as the hope it represented was carelessly swallowed up by the black hole in his heart.

It had not been half an hour since he had received the devastating call from Captain Dobey, who had been keeping close vigil at Starsky's bedside since the early hours of the morning – since Hutch had been sent home to get some rest. He'd been exhausted, but now his captain's words resonated in his mind like a mocking echo. There was a painful screech of rubber tyres over tarmac as he sped his way to the hospital, siren flaring, the adrenaline pumping in his veins.

"You'd better get down here… now!"

'…now!' Was the only word Hutch had heard. He'd known what it had meant, he hadn't had to ask the reason why.

He could feel the emptiness within his own heart as Starsky lay dying, and he could feel the darkness taking hold – stealing away his own will to live. In that moment he hoped that the fates would see fit to take him too – for what was the point of living a mere physical life? Nothing more than a half-life? An existence? A body without a soul?

As he slammed the car into a standstill in front of the hospital and plunged through the front doors he felt the world begin to close in around him. He could just make out Captain Dobey approaching him from the other end of the corridor…

"I'm sorry Hutch."

…his voice sounded hollow, tormented by grief.

"No!" Hutch cried out, unable to contain his anguish – not now, not yet, not before he had had the chance to say goodbye. He should never have gone home.

They had always said that when the time came for them to go they would go together, 'me and thee' – but now for Hutch there was only 'me', there would only ever be 'me'.

He continued to run, faster, harder now, without seeming to get any closer. He wasn't even sure why he was running anymore – Starsky was already gone.

Blood… Starsky's blood… stained the walls either side of him, as if to serve as a macabre reminder of all that the pair had been through together – and of the pain from which one of them at least had now been set free.

Hutch stumbled, feeling himself freefalling as the ground gave way beneath him. Gravity seemed to have taken control of his body as he reached out helplessly to steady himself – inadvertently soaking himself with his partner's blood upon impact with the floor. It was cold, chilling him to the core.

"No!"

"No!" Hutch screamed as he awoke in a pool of his own cold sweat, his heart was pounding and his head throbbed painfully. He quickly threw himself over the edge of the bed, breathing deeply as he felt as though he may vomit – the bile rising from his belly and burning his throat. He'd woken the same way these past few evenings, and it wasn't getting any easier.

A dream… it had all just been dream… another bad one, but a dream none the less!

…but he had to be sure.

Reaching over to the bedside table he dragged the phone closer to him – the dialling tone added to his headache, it reminded him too much of the mechanical drone of the hospital heart monitor.

With a shaky hand and sickness in his heart he dialled the number for the hospital and waited. He hardly dared to breathe as flashbacks of his dream filled his head, and he felt as though he might drown in the sea of painful images. He looked down and for a moment could still picture himself covered in Starsky's blood. In the semi-darkness it was easy to let his imagination run away with him, and to lose touch with what was real, and what was not.

So absorbed had he been in his own waking nightmare that the voice that finally answered caught him a little off guard.

"Memorial hospital, Intensive Care Unit, how can I help you?" The young woman asked him.

Hutch froze. A sudden weakness of mind overcame him and he considered putting the phone down on her. Pain clawed at his heart, and he forced himself to speak through anxious gulps of air.

"Ummm, yes, my name is Detective Kenneth Hutchinson." He explained, clearing his throat, which now felt so tight that he could barely speak in little more than a hoarse whisper. "I'm calling to enquire about the condition of my partner, Detective David Starsky."

"I'm afraid it's very late Detective," the nurse – at least he presumed that she must be a nurse – replied politely, "visiting hours ended earlier this evening. If you could call back sometime tomorrow someone should be able to deal with your enquiry then."

"Please," Hutch found himself pleading with her, failing to keep the desperation out of his tone as he glanced at the bedside clock. It had just turned 3 o' clock in the morning. "Today is already tomorrow miss, and if you could just find it in your heart to check for me and help to put my mind at ease before your hospital dictates to me that I am once again allowed to visit my partner, you might just make a difference to whether I am going to get any sleep tonight."

"Detective…" She sighed.

"Please!" He begged her.

An awkward silence elapsed between them. Hutch hoped that the young woman would be understanding, but waited tentatively for her response. The pain in his chest was getting progressively worse the longer he had to wait, and he found himself gasping for breath as he heard her mutter something inaudible down the receiver. The pain was excruciating – crushing, cramping – as though a very large part of him had somehow died along with the Starsky of his dreams. He knew it for what is was however – simply just another symptom of the intense anxiety which had plagued him over the past few weeks, and he tried not to focus too hard on how difficult it was becoming for him to breathe.

"Well this is extremely unorthodox Detective." She responded, at last. "But if you hang on the line for a moment I will see what I can do."

"Thank You." Hutch nodded, failing to disguise the relief in his voice.

"What was the name of your partner again?" She asked.

"Starsky… David… Detective David Starsky." He gulped, before her end of the line fell completely silent.

Hutch ran a cold and clammy hand over his face, rubbing at his tired eyes. He was exhausted. He hadn't slept properly in weeks – plagued by nightmares which kept him awake at night – and when he did manage to sleep the unpleasant dreams woke him in the early hours of the morning. The nightmare was always the same, and always resulted in the same outcome. Usually he woke up just after he reached the hospital, to Captain Dobey telling him he was too late. The image of his partner's blood staining the walls was a new addition to the dream, and he wondered whether it was a sign that the nightmares were getting worse.

This hadn't been the first time he'd had to call the hospital in the early hours of the morning just to reassure himself that Starsky was in fact still alive, and on the mend – just as he'd left him the previous day.

Following Gunther's assassination attempt Starsky had spent weeks in the hospital. The bullets had caused massive damage, such injuries that nobody could have expected a human body to survive. He'd sustained a punctured lung, perforated diaphragm and intestines, ruptured spleen, lacerated liver and had lost a portion of his stomach in the attack. Even after he'd woken up from the coma nobody had known just how much of a recovery they could have expected him to make, or if he'd ever regain enough condition to go back to work.

Hutch had cried – seeing his partner in so much pain had been almost too much for him to bear – but never in front of Starsky. During the day, whenever he'd found himself struggling to hold back the layers of fear and sadness which had taken root inside his heart, he would calmly excuse himself from his best friend's room and make his way to the nearest restroom, where he would quietly break down out of sight and sound of anyone. More often than not Starsky was too out of it, especially in the early days, to even notice his absence, but even if he ever did comment with concern on Hutch's pale appearance or sunken and bloodshot eyes it had been easy enough to pacify him with some generalised comment about just being tired.

Hutch had almost questioned whether it had been selfish of him to prey that Starsky survive, when all survival seemed to have condemned him to was an indefinite state of pain. He'd slept a lot for the first couple of weeks after waking up from the coma, and had remained blissfully unaware of the trial which awaited him. As he'd been gradually weaned off some of the drugs keeping him sedated however, and had slowly started to regain a little strength, his renewed sense of awareness had brought with it the inevitable realisation that he wasn't just going to be able to hop out of bed and back into living. He had a long and painful recovery ahead of him, but Starsky had initially tried to remain positive about this – convinced that with hard work he could prove the doctors wrong about his chances of making a full recovery. When progress hadn't come quite as swiftly as he'd hoped however disillusionment had inevitably turned to frustration, and frustration eventually into anger – an anger which had frequently been directed at Hutch, being the one who spent most of his days at his best friend's bedside.

Hutch had never taken any of Starsky's biting comments personally – he knew that he didn't mean them – but the past few weeks had taken it out of him too. He was both physically and emotionally exhausted, but still found himself with very little time for sleep. Being there for Starsky had been a full-time job, and he'd found himself unable to relax, refusing to relinquish the reins of responsibility to either Huggy or Captain Dobey, who had both offered to take over from Hutch and keep Starsky company.

It was only after Starsky had found his way through the cloud of bitterness which had temporarily possessed him that Hutch had come to see for himself that it hadn't been selfish or unfair on his part for him to wish that Starsky survive – his best friend had wanted to live too. Starsky had found his way through the darkness which had enveloped him and had discovered a renewed strength and desire to fight.

Hutch squeezed the receiver, his fingers turning a pale grey as his tight grip forced the blood from his cold hands. He waited for what seemed like an impossibly long amount of time, his heart hammering inside his chest, as his anxiety continued to grow. He tried to focus on the background noise, and lost himself in the confused cacophony of other muffled voices on the other end of the line. His brain – already foggy – didn't seem to notice the fact that after a while they all blurred into one, and he didn't initially register the young woman's return.

"Detective… detective are you still there?" She asked him.

"Yeah… yeah I'm still here." Hutch jumped.

"I couldn't find any current records of your partner within our unit." The girl explained slowly, sensing the fragile state of Hutch's nerves. "So I contacted the administration department… David Starsky was transferred to a private room in one of our main wards earlier this evening." She explained. "You've probably been told this already but he's going to be fine."

'He's going to be fine' – Hutch smiled to himself, but he didn't respond. He couldn't. Instead – finding himself unable to reply to her he simply put the phone down – leaving the broken connection to say what he could not.