Part 2
Flashback
Hutch felt the breath hitch painfully in his lungs, and then the muscles in his chest constrict. He wondered whether this was what drowning felt like. He'd never known air to feel this thick inside his lungs before, it made them ache, and he wondered whether this was how Starsky had felt just after the shooting – his lungs filling with his own blood.
It had been nearly a week now since his best friend had woken from his coma, and now that he was feeling a little stronger the doctors were already in discussion about the next stage of his rehabilitation. Personally, Hutch thought that it was still far too early for anyone to be considering anything in the way of physiotherapy. His curly haired partner was still barely strong enough to get out of bed, and tired so easily that it was painful for him to have to stand back and watch him push his broken body to the absolute limits of its capability, but Starsky was determined to start out on the long road to recovery as soon as possible – and of course Hutch would do everything he could to support him.
The truth was that some of his own apprehension stemmed from his anxiety that rather than strengthen his partner any form of physiotherapy at this stage could in fact cause him further harm in his weakened state. Hutch had been doing his best to hold things together whilst Starsky was in the coma, but now that he was no longer in any imminent danger he was finding it increasingly difficult to bare the weight of his own emotional scars. He frequently found himself overwhelmed by what he could only describe as a soul sucking black cloud of fear and desperation – he had frequent palpitations, his chest hurt, his stomach churned unpleasantly, and he would find it difficult to breathe. The first time he'd found himself in the grip of such an attack he'd feared that there may have been something seriously wrong with him, and he'd wondered briefly whether this was what dying felt like. Could one really die of a broken heart? He wondered. But he'd still refused to seek a doctor's consult, and when the attack had finally passed – leaving Hutch feeling weak and exhausted – he'd come to the conclusion that this presentation of symptoms had been nothing more than the manifestation of all of the stress and heartache of the past few weeks.
But, these attacks aside, Hutch couldn't deny that he felt ill most of the time. He couldn't eat, and he hadn't been able to sleep properly since the day of the shooting. In wakefulness he'd spent hours sitting in silence at his dying partner's bedside, not knowing what to say, but praying for him to wake up – and in sleep he'd seen his best friend's broken body lying lifeless upon the cold tarmac before him, looking down to see his own hands covered in Starsky's crimson blood.
He'd been doing his best to keep it from them all for the past few days – it had been easy to disguise how difficult he'd been finding it to cope whilst Starsky had been in the coma and everybody's attention had been focused on the fact that they didn't know whether or not he was going to survive, but now that he was awake it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his distress. Starsky still had a very long way to go, and one of them had to at least be seen to be the strong one. He couldn't expect that to be Starsky. He had to carry the weight of that day for the both of them, so that his partner was free to concentrate on his recovery – things were going to be hard enough for his best friend throughout the following weeks and months to come, without him adding to that burden. He knew that if Starsky was to find out just how seriously the shooting had affected him then it would only add to his worry, and that might have an effect on his ability to focus on his own recovery. Hutch felt sure that if Starsky's condition continued to improve then he would be able to find the strength to hold his head above the rising tide of suffocating fear.
He was still secretly harbouring the guilt he'd felt about his failing to protect Starsky from the attack – if he thought too hard about it he only ended up hating himself more for allowing his own fight or flight instincts to take over, rather than throwing himself between Starsky and the tirade of bullets which had torn through his abdomen and chest. He realised of course that even if he had have managed to reach his partner's side before being gunned down himself then the Bay City police department would almost certainly have been looking at two dead bodies that day instead of just one critically injured officer. This had done nothing to make any difference to Hutch's state of mind however, and he'd had to try very hard not to think too hard about the events of that day. He tried not to dwell for too long on what might have been – but these dark thoughts were never too far from his mind.
He could still recall every minute detail of that afternoon as if it had all happened yesterday, and yet the events directly following the shooting and the subsequent hours remained something of a blur. He relived events every evening in his nightmares, and concealed his pain as best he could during wakefulness. It was a pain which he felt unable to express – how could he when he had an even more important reason to stay silent? He'd kept it all bottled up inside him for so long now anyway that he wouldn't even know where to start… but the memory was eating him up inside, and there were moments when Hutch began to wonder whether he was beginning to lose his mind.
He remembered hearing the screech of the tyres against tarmac, and a split second before he'd thrown himself to the ground he'd caught a glimpse of the gun through the open passenger window as the man had brought it up to aim. He could still hear his own voice shouting for Starsky to get down. He'd thought Starsky was behind him, he'd almost managed to convince himself that he'd heard the sound of his partner's gun as the car had sped past the Torino and he'd leapt to his feet. He'd managed to fire off a couple of rounds himself into the back of the escaping vehicle. It had only been when he'd turned round that he'd realised that Starsky wasn't there, and he'd raced around to the other side of the vehicle terrified of what he might find – but somehow knowing in his heart that he'd find it anyway. He hadn't been prepared for the sight of Starsky's bullet ridden body.
His partner had been lying in a pool of his own blood – which had still been gushing in copious amounts from four very large bullet holes in his chest – and his head cradled within the hubcap of his beloved Ford Gran Torino. The scene had stopped him in his tracks.
Hutch had felt the panic begin to rise within him immediately and his breath had hitched as he'd started to hyperventilate. He'd known by the slight gurgling sound that he'd been making that Starsky was still alive, but he'd also been able to feel his life slowly ebbing away. For a moment he'd genuinely thought that he was going to be sick, he couldn't move, he couldn't breathe. He wanted to run to Starsky's side and comfort him. In the past they'd always been there for each other – a beacon of light in a world of darkness – but Hutch could see that Starsky was already beyond any comfort he could have offered him – there wasn't enough of him left.
Nothing again would ever come close to replicating the sheer desperation and feelings of hopelessness he'd felt in that moment.
He'd stood silently over his partner's body for a couple of seconds, paralysed by the shock and taking in the sight of the broken and crumpled form upon the ground before him. The silence was shattered by a blood curdling cry – which Hutch had later come to realise had come from him – and he'd taken a few shaky steps closer. It was after that that everything became a blur. He remembered feeling strong arms around his waist, pulling him backwards, away from Starsky, and he knew now that he'd not been able to reach his partner's side before he'd been dragged away. A flurry of people had then appeared, obscuring his view of his best friend, and Hutch had felt his legs give way beneath him – the strong arms of whomever had grabbed him had slowly lowered him to the ground. Someone had been sobbing and he'd heard another anguished, primeval scream – he'd later learned that these visceral vocalisations of grief had been his own too – and he remembered the feeling of suffocation as he struggled to breathe.
On the periphery of his vision he remembered seeing Captain Dobey appear beside him, and had heard him say something which he could not now recall. After that he could only remember snapshots of what had happened next. He recalled being helped to his feet and led away from Starsky's side as an ambulance he had no recollection of ever having arrived had sped away. He remembered finding himself seated in what had appeared at the time to be some sort of office – and which he now presumed to have been Captain Dobey's – before being assisted into the front passenger seat of a car. He remembered the sirens as they'd hurtled through the busy Bay City streets, and after that his next significant memory was of walking through the front doors of the hospital. He had a vague recollection of speaking with one of Starsky's doctors but had no memory of what had been said, before feeling the pain and the sudden shock of his body as it made contact with the ground, and he realised that he must have passed out because everything went black.
When he'd regained consciousness it had been to find himself laid out in a bed with a blanket pulled up to his chest, a drip in the back of his hand, and a young nurse leaning over him. She'd explained kindly that Starsky was still in surgery and that they were treating him for shock. They had checked him over for physical injuries but had found none, and she'd told him the reason he couldn't remember very much about the events immediately following the attack was that the shock had resulted in a sudden drop in blood pressure, causing him to become confused and disorientated. They were treating him with fluids as a precaution and she'd reassured him that once they could be significantly reassured that he wasn't going to pass out again the doctors would let him see his partner.
It was hard for him to keep the real impact of that day to himself however. Only a few days before Captain Dobey had accosted him at lunchtime. As Starsky grew in strength it was only a matter of time before he too began to notice just how pale and drawn his best friend had become.
Hutch knew that there was something wrong. It wasn't normal to feel as drained and exhausted as he did all of the time. Every morning he awoke feeling a little weaker than he had done the day before. The emotional load he'd been carrying for so long was now beginning to have a detrimental physical affect upon his body – one which Hutch felt powerless to do anything about.
Deep down the blonde realised that he was treading the edge of a very slippery slope. He knew in his heart that there was something wrong with him – his aching chest, the stomach pains, sickness, and the general weakness he'd been battling against weren't normal, and were like nothing he'd ever felt before. But he had to hold things together. Starsky's battle was only just beginning… Hutch just had no way of knowing that his was too.