Hutch's POV

I think I could have flown back to Bay City without the plane. I was so elated at the fact that I had arrested the man who ordered the attempt on our lives. I must have had a silly grin on my face or something because the woman next to me started to kind of edge away as if she thought I was a sexual obsessive or something.

Huggy met me at the airport. On the way to the hospital he brought me up to date about Starsky. He's conscious now but in a bad way. He's still paralyzed pretty much from the waist down and the damage to his arm and shoulder was far worse than they thought at first. He's scheduled for another operation on his arm tomorrow.

He was asleep. His mom was singing to him softly; it sounded a bit like German but I knew it wasn't…she sings to him in Yiddish. They speak Yiddish to each other now and then – especially when Starsky doesn't want anyone else to know what he is saying. But I understand a bit of German and more important I speak fluent Starsky. He doesn't just communicate with words. Starsky can say more than a Shakespeare soliloquy with those blue, blue eyes. He can also signal far more than most people understand by the way he says things. I can decipher the ten degrees of Starsky's anger scale; I also know his fear scale too. Most of the time he talks with his mom in Yiddish, he's scared.

I walked in and stood behind Lily. She seems so small and frail but she is as tough as her son when she has to be.

Starsky smiled wanly and Lily stood up to hug me. "Come outside for a moment," she whispered in my ear. I followed her out of the room.

"Oh Hutch!" she was fighting back the tears. "He's so unhappy. He keeps saying he doesn't want to live if he can't walk again."

I touched her arm. "He's as scared as he is angry right now, Lily, you should know that. He fought back before didn't he?"

"I know." She bowed her head to hide the tears and I pulled her into my arms. She wept softly against my chest and I just held her gently allowing her to get it out of her system.

After a couple of minutes she went to the restroom to repair the damage so that Starsky wouldn't see that she'd been crying. Some hope! He can sense these things; and his mother can't hide much from him. Funny that; Starsky can hide his emotions – and does – even from me. I understood how bad it must be for him if he was saying things like that. I took a breath and walked back into the room.

I couldn't help looking at the catheter tube and the colostomy bag hanging by the bed. Starsky said sourly "is this what I'm reduced to, Hutch, a helpless bag of shit and piss?"

I was furious with him. "Don't ever say a thing like that again David Starsky or so help me…."

"So help you what?"

"I don't know but I'll think of something." That made him laugh but the chuckle turned to sobs.

"I can't face it Hutch. I can't even think of being in a chair all my life. I don't want to spend the rest of my life helpless."

"The doctors don't know if it's permanent Starsk; have a little confidence in them."

"Don't know or don't want to tell me? I'll bet they've told you more haven't they? You and your pre-med studies…I'll bet they've told you plenty they ain't telling me!"

The outburst took me by surprise. Starsky hadn't thrown my college background at me for years and now he was turning it against me; accusing me of some kind of conspiracy with the doctors who weren't telling him the truth. I sat down by the bed and took a second to gather my anger and re-aim it where it would do some good.

"That's bullshit and you know it! Right now you are recovering from injuries that would kill most normal people." He opened his mouth and I held up a finger. "Let me finish. You took four high velocity bullets at close range; they through your body and damaged every internal organ that got in the way. Your heart stopped in the ambulance, on the operating table and again in ICU. Now add to that the fact that you aren't a kid anymore and that you've been shot and poisoned and beaten senseless in the past few years – let alone what really happened to you in Nam that you've never told me or your mom about. What I'm trying to get through that thick skull of yours and into that not-at-all thick brain is that you are a fucking medical miracle!"

He allowed himself a tight smile. I hadn't finished.

"You are also one of the most impatient people I have ever met. You were in a coma for over two weeks Starsky and you've only been fully conscious and capable of staying awake for more than a couple of hours for two days. Your body has a lot of healing to do. It isn't going to happen overnight. Ok you want to know what they haven't told you. They haven't told you that you are fucking lucky to be alive; they haven't told you that you are a pain in the ass to nurse and they haven't told you that miracles don't happen over night."

"Whoa. All I want to know is if I'm going to walk again damn it!"

I shook my head. "You'll have to wait a few more days Starsk. The doc is pretty sure that the paralysis is due to some kind of pressure on your spinal cord. If it's bruising it will get better in another few days – of not…."

"If not it's a wheelchair, right?"

"No, if not they'll open you up to see what is putting pressure there and so something about it."

"OK so supposing I believe you on that one…"

"Why shouldn't you believe me?"

"Because I'm a big grown up boy Hutch; I know about bruising, bruises heal in a few days; I've been here over two weeks."

"And you are lying on the bruise. The pressure of your body weight isn't helping. Just be patient buddy, please."

I must have put more into that 'please' than I realized. Starsky looked at me with big sad blue eyes and said quietly "OK. Now I have another question."

"Yea?"

"What have you done with my momma?"

"She's human Starsky and she doesn't have a bag or a tube to do it for her."

His eyes changed from misery to impish and I knew that Starsky had decided to fight.