Chapter 27

Juanita spent some time with the strange man. Starsky's pain clouded indigo eyes looked around him wildly as he tried to come to terms with where he was. His head was achingly empty, his mind a void into which he could only deposit the last few hours of memories. Anything before being picked up from the ocean was a blank and try as he might he couldn't pierce the inky blackness of that void. In fact when he did try to think back to life before the ocean, a terrible pain would arc across his forehead leaving him writhing in agony on the bed, his hands gouging at his eyes in an attempt to achieve some sort of relief.

Juanita tried her best to soothe the man, shushing him as she would a small child, for that's how he seemed to be - a small child afraid of the ghosts under the bed. Starsky's eyes flashed open and she saw crescents of the deepest blue beneath his black shadowed lids. Several times he tried to tell her his name, his lips striving to form a word that seemed familiar to him and yet when a name seemed to be on the tip of his tongue, he would arch his back from the bed and scream out in pain.

'I can't...can't remember' he gasped. 'Why can't I remember? My name is.. is…my name is…fuck! Gotta have a name ... a past. Help me.'

'Shhh. You will remember in time senior. You just need to rest. Maybe you had a blow to your head. Maybe something in the water affected you. I don't know, but you must try to relax. You must try to rest and it will all be better soon.

'How'm I supposed to rest if I can't remember who I am?' Starsky muttered bitterly. 'Don't even have a name.'

Juanita looked at him critically seemingly sizing him up. 'If a name is what you seek, what about Matt? I like that and I think it suits you.'

'Matt?'

'Si. It's short and has a nice ring to it, I think, and I suppose it's better than "hey you" until your memory returns.'

Starsky considered the name. Matt. Was he a Matt? He didn't feel any attachment to that name, but there again, he couldn't think of any name he did feel an attachment to. He nodded wearily. 'Fine. Matt it is.'

'And now, Matt, you should sleep. It seems to me you've lost a lot of blood and you have lots of bruises and cuts. Maybe someone fought with you? Drink some more water and then try to rest huh? I will be nearby. I won't leave you alone.'

Rest buddy…. Aint goin' nowhere. Another voice from another time and place cut through his blackness. It seemed an achingly familiar velvety voice and he felt he should know it, and yet there was no name or face to the voice and when he tried to think, the pain returned, doubled in force. With a whimper, Starsky closed his eyes and swallowed down his fear.

'K…..sleepy. Thank you.'

Starsky lay back on the bed, his eyes already slipping closed as his exhaustion and fever overtook him once more. Soon his dreams took a hold of him, and although all were painful in some degree, there was a recurrent figure throughout them all. Starsky stood on a beach looking out to sea. Behind him two men stood talking. One was thin to the point of being skeletal. The thin man had lank dirty blond hair and a beak nose between hooded cold grey eyes. The thin man pointed out at the waves and Starsky felt compelled to walk into the ocean and to start swimming. As he began to plunge into the sea however, the other man called out to him although the wind gusted and Starsky couldn't hear the other man's voice or what he was saying. He stopped for a moment up to his waist in the cold water and looked back.

The other man was also tall, although better built than thin man. The second man had a head of flaxen coloured hair cut short and topping a handsome golden face. Strong arms reached out to Starsky, the golden man trying to recall him to land and for a moment Starsky turned back. As the thin man compelled him to swim out to sea, the golden man also had a pull on him. The golden man's face smiled at him and when he looked at it, Starsky had a feeling of warmth friendship and, yes, love. He wanted to obey the golden man as much as he felt compelled to obey the thin man, but thin man's hold over him was colder and stronger.

With a final sad wave, Starsky followed thin man's commands and once again turned to start his lonely swim out to sea. He could feel rather than see the golden man's pull and knew for sure that he was trying to get Starsky to return to shore, but the brunet's arms and legs seemed unable to obey and soon he was out in the middle of the ocean on his own, his mind empty, his body aching and the cold snatching at the strength he had left.

In his sleep, Starsky moaned and thrashed his head on the pillow and Juanita was back at his side in a moment, placing a cool cloth on his forehead and running her hand gently down the side of his face. Matt/Starsky seemed to relax a little at the touch and the woman continued talking to him in low tones, knowing instinctively that the words meant nothing, but that her voice would cut through her patient's loneliness and despair and finally Matt/Starsky slept more quietly.

OOoOoOoOoOoOo

Traff took Hutch back to the car and made sure he was once again safe inside. The drive to Memorial wasn't long - it was just around the block from the Metro and the young intern on ER duty was not impressed that the blond was back in his department so soon after his initial visit.

'What is it with you cops? Don't you know the meaning of "take it easy"? How did this happen?' he asked, easing the blood stained material away from the wound on Hutch's chest to reveal the bullet wound, reopened and seeping ruby fluid.

'Can you fix it?' Hutch asked distractedly.

'I can fix anything but a broken heart, but I don't take kindly to cops messing up our handiwork' the medic sniped.

Hutch met his eyes with a piercing crystal gaze. 'I came to get stitched up. If I'd wanted a lecture, there's the school down the street. Now fix me up an' I'll be outa your hair ok?' he snapped.

The intern was obviously not used to having his patients answer back and it looked for a moment as though he was going to walk out of the cubicle. Instead, he bit back the retort and set to cleaning the wound and inserting another three stitches into it to hold it together. When he'd finished he taped another clean white bandage over it and walked out without another word. From the corner of the small room Traff grinned.

'Wow, how to win friends and influence people. You've got a real way with you when you need, huh?'

'He needed takin' down a peg or two. When he's worked in the ER for a while longer he'll come to understand just what cops have to put up with. So as long as Dr Kildare there has finished...' Hutch shouldered back into his shirt with a barely stifled hiss '... we can be on our way.'

'Great. At least you're gonna take his advice and rest?' the soldier asked as he followed Hutch out of the cubicle.

'No, now we're gonna get the latest from the coastguard.'

'No. Hutch no.' Traff stopped still and the blond looked back at him in surprise.

'No?'

'No. I've ferried you round all day Chief. I've watched you gettin' weaker and' weaker and more an' more tired and I've said nothin'. But there comes a time when you have to listen to your body. Hutch... buddy. Look at yourself. Your face is grey, you're swaying on your feet and you can hardly keep your eyes open. You need to sleep, or at the very least you need to rest. I'm not taking you anywhere but home.'

'Fine. gimme the keys an'...'

'And nothing. I mean it buddy. D'ya want me to knock you out and drive ya home? I will do, if that's what it takes, believe me. If...when we find Curly, you're gonna want to be well enough to look after him. And that don't equate to running yourself ragged now. Dobey has the interview covered, the coastguards are out lookin' and if they find anything they'll let us know. Short of hiring a motor boat and doin' your own search, there aint a whole lot else you can do at the moment is there?'

Hutch's shoulders slumped in defeat. In truth he wondered himself just how much longer he could keep on going. His shoulder and chest were a scarlet blaze of agony, his head thumped in time with his heartbeat and his tongue felt as though it were covered in carpet. He leaned heavily against the wall and sighed. 'Fine, we go home. For a few hours, and then we start to search again, ok?'

Traff nodded. 'Good. A few hours shut eye for both of us will do very well. C'mon ya big lug, lets get ya home huh?'

Together the two men made their way out and back to the car. Traff drove them both home although neither of them spoke much, each consumed by their own thoughts but finally they pulled up outside Venice Place and Traff leaned over and prodded the blond who had fallen asleep almost the minute the engine had started.

'Hey, home again. Wakey wakey.'

Hutch jumped and opened his eyes. With a grunt of pain he looked around blearily and then without a word got himself out of the car and both he and Traff tottered up the steps to his apartment. While Hutch showered, careful not to wet his clean dressing on his shoulder, Traff poured a couple of cold beers. Hutch got himself dressed again and with a towel round his neck emerged from the shower. The soldier's turn for the bathroom came next and when he appeared after his own shower, damp and with water droplets pearling in his curls, Hutch was fast asleep on the couch, bottle of beer in one hand and TV remote in the other.

Gently the soldier tapped his buddy on the shoulder. 'Blondie, wouldn't you be more comfortable in bed?'

Hutch was dead to the world and didn't even stir as Traff tried to wake him. So peaceful did he look that finally with a shrug, Traff took the bottle from his hand and laid it and the remote down on the table. He padded into the bedroom and removed a cover from the bed, wrapped it around the blond and then tiptoed into back to the bedroom and lay down on the bed himself. With the door open, he felt sure he'd hear when Hutch finally awoke. Then he could swap places and make sure Hutch got some quality sleep.

Maybe four or five hours later, a crick in his neck awoke the blond from his sleep. He'd dreamed constantly of his partner, but Starsky was always in the distance, just out of reach and Hutch strove constantly to catch up with his buddy who had always either just crested a hill, or turned a corner.

Waking with a start, Hutch looked around his darkened apartment. For a moment he thought he was alone, but then he heard a gentle snoring from his bedroom. With a hiss, he prised himself up off the sofa, eased out the kink in his back and neck and looked in on Traff. The soldier was sound asleep, his arms flung wide as if inviting someone into an embrace. There was a small smile on his lips and for a second Hutch stood and watched him. He was eternally grateful to the man for sticking around and helping him, first with Starsky's imprisonment and now with the search for his buddy. It seemed a shame to wake him, and yet Hutch felt jumpy and restless, needing to be on the move. Always Starsky had been the one to want action, while Hutch had taken time to think and plan their investigations, but now Hutch had a gut feeling that he should be searching – that he needed to find something – some evidence that would help to nail Edgar Fisher. It may not bring his partner back, but it would be some retribution against the evil teacher.

Hurriedly scribbling a note, he laid it on the bedside table beside the sleeping soldier and then took his car keys from the hall stand, grabbed his gun and shield and set off in his car over to Edgar Fisher's apartment.