Chapter 6

'Nurse, could you go and check on the patient in 402? He's had a bad day and Mark gave him a sedative earlier. Just check his vitals and tell me if he looks like he'll be needing another dose soon'.

The young nurse relished the task and smiled. Her usual workload did not include tanned, muscular extremely handsome men in the prime of their lives. She compared her patient against her other main man in 403, the overweight, sweating and pale Mr Ledgard. Hm….which should she check on first? No argument really. She'd been looking after Detective David Starsky since he'd been admitted and although usually extremely professional, the sight of a normally vital and virile man in a vulnerable condition made her feel distinctly hot under her collar

'Is his friend still in there?' she asked, thinking she may as well get a two for one. Although she had a preference for dark curly types, she wasn't averse to blondes and this Hutch guy was cute in his own way too.

'Mark sent him home. He needs his rest too. How the hell he ever recovered so quickly from that bullet! It's a miracle!'

The nurse set off down the corridor from the nurses' station, stopping outside the door of 402 to straighten her apron and tweak her hair. He may be sedated, but there was no point in taking chances! She opened the door and went in.

Starsky was laid as Hutch had left him, his ruggedly handsome face almost buried in the pillow and his hands still up by the sides of his head as if in surrender. The nurse took a moment just to admire her patient as she straightened his bed sheets. She reached out and took hold of the right hand feeling for the radial pulse, checking the beats against the second finger of her watch. 15 seconds later, she placed the hand back on the bed, mentally multiplying the beats by 4 to calculate his pulse rate. She reached for the chart and wrote 64.

As she watched she saw the eyes beneath the lids moving randomly and the lips moving as thought Starsky was talking to himself in his sleep. Leaning over the bed, she put a soothing hand on the brunette's slightly damp brow and used her thumb to lift the left eyelid, shining her penlight onto the staggeringly dark blue iris.

The light galvanised her patient into action. Although Starsky had been sedated he'd been dreaming. They were painful dreams where once again he was tied brutally to the hard wooden table as Quinn beat him mercilessly, asking time and time again how many lights there were. But it went further than that. The evil man morphed into Dobey's face asking how many arrests he'd made. Each time he tried to add them up, someone would stop him and both Dobey and Hutch laughed at his increasingly frantic attempts to calculate the sum. Then he was back with Quinn, the gangster holding the Tazer to his side again and again as he saw a sparkling bright light. He tried to shy away from it, but the light got brighter and brighter and he felt a hand on his head, stopping him from moving away.

As the nurse lifted his eyelid, she felt the body on the bed buck away from her and suddenly the brunette brought up his left fist, slamming it into the young woman's chin, knocking her backwards and to the floor. As his assailant was knocked away. Starsky sprang from the bed, staggering in his confusion and leaning weakly against the bedframe. Frantically looking left and right for somewhere to hide, he saw the door, but also saw a shadow fall across it as the other nurses on the ward came to see what all the commotion was about.

The nurse in charge peaked into the room, seeing her nurse on the floor. As she was about to go in, Mark appeared, pulling her back by the shoulder. 'Let me' he said, knowing the state his patient had been in earlier. 'And get me two male orderlies, I think I'm gonna need reinforcements'.

Stopping only to load a syringe with 100mg Thorazine, which he pushed into the pocket of his white coat, he stepped into the room.

Mark saw the body of the nurse on the floor by the now vacant bed and knelt down slowly to check on her. She blinked her eyes at him and he whispered to her to get out of the room. He watched as she crawled towards the door, then stood glancing around the room to find his patient.

Starsky was huddled in a corner, hunkered down on the ground, his arms held protectively around his body as his eyes stared wildly at the approaching doctor. He panted heavily; sweat trickling down the sides of his face as he fought his inner demons. Mark held out his hand in a friendly manner.

'David? Are you alright?' he asked.

Starsky stared at him, fear in his stormy blue eyes, his fingers twitching convulsively against his side. 'Stay away from me Quinn' he growled, levering himself up to a standing position with his back against the wall, hands flat on the smooth surface.

Mark realised what was going on in the curly head and kept his voice non confrontational and low. 'It's me, David. It's Mark, the doctor. Remember?'

But the brunette was lost in his own world of pain and misery. 'You're not gonna get me again. I can't go back to that. I'll kill ya, you son of a bitch. Stay back or I swear I'll kill ya' the cop's voice was getting louder as his fear and anger vied with each other.

The doctor took a step forward, his hand still outstretched and his voice low and level as he tried to penetrate Starsky's tortured ramblings.

'David, try to concentrate on my voice. That's right. You're in the hospital. Remember the hospital? You've been sick and you need to rest. I'm only going to help you. Nothing more. No-one here is going to hurt you, we just want to help you get well again. Will you let me help you?' he asked.

There was indecision in the suffering eyes now and Starsky stared hard at the doctor as if trying to decide if he knew him or not. Mark felt as though he may be making some headway with the tormented cop and took another measured step forward, seeing Starsky press himself harder into the wall behind him as if wanting the wall to swallow him up and protect him.

'It's OK David. No problems, it's just me; just Mark. Will you come with…'

He saw the eyes glance over his shoulder and knew he'd lost the momentum as Starsky braced himself against the wall again, panting harder now as the two orderlies came into the room and towards the doctor and his patient. Desperately Mark tried again as he saw the sweat glinting on the bare chest in front of him and leaving trails down the wall.

'David….Dave. Fight this. You're in the hospital. Remember the hospital? You're with friends. Hutch was here. He'll be back soon. Remember your partner? Quinn is gone. All the bad guys are gone, its just us' Mark pressed, his voice a little louder and more insistent.

'GET AWAY FROM ME' Starsky yelled, looking left and right for some means of escape. He was scared of the three men coming towards him. He'd had two weeks of brutality and he couldn't face more of the same treatment. They wanted him to tell them how many lights there were. He'd counted them time after time. There were three. He was sure of that, but they kept insisting there were four and his tired mind was just too confused to argue any more. He wanted to get out of the room. He needed to get out to stop these men from brutalising him again, but the men were coming closer to him.

Starsky let out a forlorn sob, unable to see any means of escape. The man in the centre of the group reached towards him and he punched out with all his strength. If he couldn't escape, he'd go down fighting.

Mark and the orderlies cornered the sick detective and Mark reached out a friendly hand.

'S'ok Detective. Just take some deep breaths and everything will be fine. Just concentrate on my voice ok?'

He saw the fear in his patient's eyes and Starsky yelled at him

'There are three fuckin' lights and you won't make me change my mind'.

Mark stopped. 'That's fine David. Three lights, that's right, there are three. Now lets get you back to the bed huh?' he motioned to the hospital bed, but all Starsky's deranged mind saw was the hard wooden Altar table again, remembering his painful experiences while tied to it.

As Mark watched he let out a strangled yell and lunged at the doctor, almost knocking Mark off his feet. Immediately the two orderlies were upon the brunette holding him pinned against the wall. Starsky fought with all his strength and at one point looked as though he stood a remarkable chance of fighting off the two burly men, madness adding strength to his muscles, but inexorable, they drew him down onto the floor, and pinned him beneath their bodes

As the two men straddled the still fighting cop on the ground, Mark brought the syringe from his pocket and tried to get himself into a position to inject it into the appropriate part of Starsky's anatomy. Sadly he looked at the still struggling, sobbing form on the ground. He'd been anxious that the cops mind would be damaged by his experiences, but he'd never imagined that it would be quite this bad. He knelt down near Starsky's head, trying to see into the indigo eyes.

'Dave stop this. Stop it now and they'll let you up' he pleaded as the two orderlies struggled.

'Leave me alone…..just leave……please?...no more……..no more, please?' the brunette pleaded, his words tugging at the doctors heart. Reluctantly, Mark drew out the syringe, knocking the air bubbles out of the barrel with his knuckle. He reached into the tangle of limbs and found the struggling cop's arm, drawing it towards him.

Starsky felt the hand on his arm and saw the syringe. 'Noo……please don't…..be good…..don't give me that…..……lights?...three lights…..three……three' the voice tailed off as the plunger of the syringe forced the Thorazine into the muscle.

Gradually the struggling ceased and the mumbles tailed of into a final exhausted sob and the brunette's body lay limply on the ground. The orderlies got up and gently moved Starsky back to the bed, laying him on his back. As Mark looked sadly on, they fastened the brown leather, sheepskin lined medical restraints around the cops wrists, ankles and chest and left their patient immobilised and defenceless.

The nurse who Starsky had hit came back into the room, a huge bruise blossoming on her chin. She smiled wanly at Mark and moved to the bed.

'Will he be ok?' she asked, stroking the wet curl away from the brunette's brow. His face was still wet with the sweat from his struggles and she wiped it tenderly with a clean cloth.

'I don't know' Mark said in a troubled voice. 'It's out of our hands now. He can't stay here. I'll go and make the necessary arrangements'.

He left the room leaving the nurse alone with her patient. Although she's been scared, she understood the hurt this man was enduring. She leant down low by the unconscious man's ear and whispered.

'Just sleep, its ok. I forgive you'.