Part 11
"So how is he really doing?" Starsky asked Huggy once Hutch had gone.
His body may have been broken by Gunther's bullets, but his mind was still sharp and it hadn't escaped his notice just the kind of evening his best friend had probably had.
"Man, he's hurting." Huggy sighed with a slight shake of his head, and there was a despondency to his own tone now that he didn't have to put on an upbeat veneer for Hutch. "And I mean obviously really, really hurting… I'm worried Starsk, I've never seen Hutch the way he was last night before."
He rose from his position at the end of Starsky's bed and made his way over to the window, standing just a short distance away from where Hutch himself had stood. He too turning his gaze down towards the street below.
"What happened?" Starsky asked him.
"What hasn't been happening more like." Huggy responded, rubbing his tired face thoughtfully with the palms of his hands. He hadn't got much sleep himself the evening before following Hutch's nightmare, and he was only now beginning to realise just how tired he still was as a result. "He's exhausted Starsk. He hasn't been sleeping or eating properly, and he's having nightmares. He was sick last night." He told him. "I just wish I'd noticed something sooner. I feel like we've let him down."
Starsky sighed, his heart heavy whilst outside Hutch stood woozily beside the hospital vending machine, scrolling through the various array of coffees it had to offer – some with sugar, some without, some black, some white, some decaffeinated – yet without really seeing any of them. At that moment he had more important things on his mind than where his next caffeine fix was coming from.
Starsky was going to be alright. All the nightmares and sleepless nights of the past few weeks seemed to pale into insignificance now as he reflected on what might have been.
Only a short while ago he had been unsure whether life would ever be the same again, but if all that had been discussed that morning was to be believed then Starsky, his best friend and the other half to his whole, was going to be alright. It was still a little hard for him to get his head around the fact that he was finally coming home but he was being discharged, and would eventually make a full recovery.
So why did he feel so lousy?
As his head began to spin and his stomach forced itself into a tight knot at the sight of the hot, rich liquid in front of him he thought twice about the idea of coffee and began to make his way back down the corridor towards Starsky's room.
As he walked his vision began to blur and he tried to draw the sleep from his eyes – the resultant weariness of the night before. His hand immediately reached up towards his chest as he fought to draw breath into his aching lungs – his world beginning to fade in and out of focus.
The hospital walls began to close in around him and he picked up his pace for fear of creating a scene. Stumbling weakly in his disorientation, he could easily have fooled himself into the belief that this was all just another terrible dream, yet another figment of his confused imagination – but he knew that this time it was not.
He felt sick to his stomach and, as he finally felt himself falling, he felt the wave of shame wash over him, before everything went black.
"Nurse… nurse… somebody fetch a doctor." A disembodied voice cried out amidst his darkness as Hutch suddenly found himself becoming vaguely aware of a frenzied buzz of frantic activity going on around him, before he finally succumbed to unconsciousness…
And Hutch knew no more.