Part 20
Alone in his apartment Hutch sat and reflected on the day after Starsky's shooting.
The day before Starsky had left him, or was it the other way around? He'd wondered. Bullets had torn through his partner as though blood and bone were nothing – the act of taking a good man's life had meant little to the two men who'd fired the weapon. Hutch knew that his best friend had meant nothing more to either of them than the exchange of money they would receive – in the circles they moved in every life had its price.
By the time Hutch had recognised the danger and shouted for him to get down it had already been too late, there had been nowhere for him to go. Was this really all his fault? He wondered – Starsky didn't seem to think so but he believed it must have been somehow – and no matter how hard he tried he found it just too hard to convince himself otherwise. He should have had Starsky covered – he had thought that he had.
Hutch remembered all the times when they'd come so close to losing each other in the past – but nothing had compared to what he'd gone through during those first few critical days before Starsky had finally found his way back to him and had woken up. The memory still pained him, even now that he knew that everything was going to be alright – because it wasn't. Hutch didn't see how anything could ever be alright again. Gunther hadn't got to them this time, but there was always going to be someone else waiting to take his place, it was only a matter of time before their luck ran out and they lost each other for good.
They'd seemed almost bullet proof, safe so long as they were together. In the days following the shooting however Hutch had sensed that Starsky had gone to a place where he could no longer reach him, and he'd wondered whether he would ever hear his best friend's voice again. He'd never before felt so alone, even though in his heart he'd known that he could never be that, not really. They had good friends, and Captain Dobey and Huggy had done their best to rally around him, but they were not Starsky. All Hutch could do had been to hope that it was peaceful where his best friend had gone, and that he could feel no pain. Hutch however had been in incomprehensible agony – it had felt as though somebody had torn his heart out, he couldn't breathe, and he still didn't know how to handle the pain.
Sometimes during the darkest of his days, he'd wondered just how many more times they were going to have to endure this torture – one being forced to watch the other fight this life or death battle. It had somehow felt as though they'd been living their entire lives on the edge, right up until the moment of the shooting. They'd spent every day fighting for their lives without even realising it and Hutch had wondered what had brought them to return to the force once they had quit. At the time it had seemed like the worst decision of his life.
What was the point of it all? He'd wondered. There really was only so much heartache one man could take.
Inside Hutch was still crying, even now screaming for Starsky as though he had never woken up from the coma. He didn't know how to handle the pain which was tearing him apart inside. He was fighting to hold himself together for his best friend's sake, but every time he'd seen him lying motionless and unconscious in the hospital bed another small piece of him had died.
He'd wanted to scream, and cry, and shout, and take all of his pain out on those responsible for doing this to his partner – for doing it to them, for one could not hurt one without hurting them both – but every time he'd tried to say something words had failed him. He'd wanted to make them pay for what they had done, but the worst part had been knowing that none of it would have made any difference. Even being the one to slap the cuffs on Gunther hadn't given him the satisfaction he'd craved – he'd just felt numb.
Yes, the day he'd witnessed his partner's motionless body, deep bullet holes oozing blood all over the parking lot, had been the loneliest day of Hutch's life.
Even now he was still in pain – everyday. Hutch knew that his life wouldn't have been worth living without Starsky, and every night his dreams dragged him back to a place he feared – where he was forced to confront the reality of a world without his best friend. He wondered whether the pain would ever really go away.
Hutch sighed.
Starsky would be home from the hospital soon, and he couldn't allow his partner to see him like this. He could feel the bile rising in his throat again and knew immediately what it meant, but he wasn't going to let it happen for a second time that day. He swallowed hard, but this seemed to do little to help quell the unpleasant sensation, and instead he drew in a shaky breath.
His efforts to ignore the rising tide of nausea failed however, and he felt his stomach clench unpleasantly as his hand instinctively flew to his mouth and he raced for the bathroom, before heaving with quite some unexpected force into the sink. After that morning however there was nothing left for him to bring up – only a little water and sour bile – and when the spell had finally passed he sat himself down on the edge of the bathtub breathing heavily, and mopped the beads of perspiration from his face with a damp washcloth. Why wouldn't his body allow him to keep anything down?
His throat was hoarse and raw from the sickness and his stomach still ached. The sudden attack had left him feeling drained of energy, but he didn't have time to wallow. He refused to let his best friend return home to find him in this state, Starsky would only worry – and so Hutch got shakily to his feet, locking the bathroom door as he turned the shower on and waited for the water to heat up. He felt dizzy, but a few minutes later he felt the hot spray cascading over his aching back and shoulders, and somehow the water seemed to help make him feel a little better – eventually he relaxed into the soothing caress of the waterfall.