"But some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there." - Erma Bombeck
Marcato
The first time I hear his heartbeat we've been partners for two months.
It's a simple drug bust that goes wrong and before I can go for my gun the kid has his out, aiming for my chest. I feel something slam into me as the gun discharges, sending me sprawling as our backup opens fire on the teen. My partner is lying heavily on my legs, and as I reach for him I feel the warm stickiness against my hands. I hear someone yelling for doctors, and don't even know it's my own voice. I put my head down over his chest, feel my breath catch when a heartbeat answers. "Hutch.." They lift him from me before I can finish his name, and I don't see him again for six hours as the doctors try to repair the damage, try to save his life. He lives, as good as new four months later, with only a scar to remember the incident by, the first of many. But I remember and I never complete his name again, almost as if I'm not sure I'll be able to finish.
The second time I hear his heartbeat I'm slumped against him on a rooftop, and he's holding me against his chest. I can feel his heart pounding as if making up for the feeble struggles of my own heart against the poison. I know that he knows I should be in a hospital but yet I need something more. If I'm dying I'd rather go here, with him holding me against the pain, than among strangers in a white room. It isn't until later that I realize the force of will it took for him to carry me down those stairs and leave me in that hospital alone.
The third time I hear his heartbeat I'm running toward the building, to where I saw him shot and tumble through the glass. The hand he reaches to me is blood-streaked but the pulse against my head is strong and even and I know it's going to be all right.
The next time I hear his heartbeat it's running beneath my own, a stronger beat that drowns out the silence when mine stops. I hear his heart jolt with mine, faltering, and somehow I know that if I don't pull through Hutch won't either. I feel myself come back to life, my heartbeat twined with his across a fading screen as I drift away.
The last time I hear his heartbeat he's slumped in the chair next to the bed, my hand held loosely in his, the pulse running from his wrist into mine. I'm still weak but healing and I lightly squeeze his hand, not enough to wake him but enough to let him know I'm here, that I'm not going away. It's then that I notice his heart pulses at the same rate as mine, almost as if was one heart beating instead of two. Maybe it is.