Insomnia

By TLR

Plot: An encounter with a perpetrator spells trouble.

:::::::::::::::::::::

Lunchtime.

"Get him!"

Two words from a bystander who was just coming out of a convenience store in time to witness the purse snatching of an elderly woman using a cane.

"Help!" the woman cawed as she took a step toward the fleeing robber.

But the stranger pulled her back. "No," he said putting an arm around her. "Stay back. We'll call the-"

Starsky and Hutch were at the hamburger stand across the street getting ready to order when they heard the commotion.

"Aw man!" Starsky said as they gave chase.

The purse snatcher was quick and determined, dodging around passersby and trash cans, jumping over big potted plants, discarded boxes, and children's toys that had been left out.

When he darted down an alley and latched on to the fire escape of an old office building, Starsky and Hutch followed him on their upward four-story pursuit.

"Halt!" Starsky shouted as he skittered up after him. "Police!"

"Halt?" Hutch echoed as he climbed up after his partner. "Did you just say halt?"

Once on the roof, Starsky grabbed for the fleeing man, but the man surprised him with a powerful punch that sent Starsky reeling backward and tripping toward the ledge.

"Hutch!"

Starsky was left hanging from the rooftop by his hands, trying to climb back up but was dazed from the perfectly-landed blow.

"Starsk!"

Hutch pulled his gun on the perp, but the man already had his gun drawn and fired at him. The impact to Hutch's shoulder spun him around, but he still managed to get off a well-placed headshot that dropped the man dead, the contents of the senior woman's purse scattering across the rooftop.

"Hutch! Help!"

Ignoring the explosive pain and profuse bleeding, Hutch stumbled to the ledge and tried pulling him back up. Starsky's fingers were slipping and slipping, having turned white from his effort to try to hang on.

"Hutch," Starsky gasped fearfully. "Don't let go of me."

Hutch panted "Starsk" as he held onto his hand, but the blood poured down his arm and onto his wrist and hand, making his grip slicker. "Come on."

Starsky pedaled his sneakers against the brick side of the building, but was still too stunned from the punch to find effective purchase.

Hutch reached down with his other hand, grabbing Starsky's windbreaker, but the silken nylon material ripped with a purr, and he made a desperate snatch for his other hand, wrist, arm, clothes, but it was too late. Their red, wet hands slid apart, lost contact, and separated as Starsky slipped through his fingers and dropped four stories below.

"STARSKY!"

No. I didn't see that. That didn't happen. He's all right.

Hutch scrambled down the fire escape, tripping and slipping and panting-"Please, please, please"-the loss of blood finally taking him to the sidewalk unconscious once he reached bottom.

::

Memorial Hospital. Recovery room.

"I think he's coming around."

Captain Dobey's voice, floating somewhere above him like a word bubble.

"Hutch?"

Huggy's voice, nearby too.

At first Hutch was too groggy to realize where he was or what had happened, but when he began to swim his way back to the surface of consciousness, memories trickled in-Hutch, help. Don't let go of me.

"Hutch," Dobey asked, "do you remember what happened?"

Hutch closed his eyes. How he wished he had amnesia. How he wished he had stayed unconscious, maybe forever.

(Starsky trusted me. I saw it in his eyes. He knew I wouldn't let something as absurd and mundane as a fall from a rooftop happen. He knew I would save him. But I didn't).

"You were shot in the shoulder," Huggy told him.

Pale and drowsy from medication, right arm in a sling, Hutch looked from one to the other and whispered, "He okay?"

Dr. Colton stepped up to the bed and looked at him.

"A broken ankle. A few cracked ribs. Head injury. He's in a coma, Ken. ICU. We're hoping for the best, but right now it's just too early to tell. You have a gunshot wound to the shoulder to worry about. No lasting damage, but you need to-"

Hutch raised his head, tried to get up, but the doctor put a firm hand on his good shoulder and nodded for the nurse to administer a sedative.

"Go to hell," Hutch murmured as his head fell back to the bed and his mind spiraled down to sleep again.

::

ICU.

Hutch stood at the observation glass and looked in at Starsky, unwilling to accept that the lone, still figure in the bed was his effervescent, lusty partner of just a few short hours ago.

Captain Dobey and Huggy joined him, Huggy gripping his good shoulder. "I'll go in with you if you want."

"He wouldn't blame you," Dobey said.

As if Hutch hadn't heard them, he went inside the unit and over to the bed, walking as if in a stupor, his trembling hand reaching through the machines, careful not to disturb them.

"Starsk," he whispered. "My fault. I'm sorry."

His words sounded disgusting, inadequate. He didn't feel like a best friend. He felt like a killer.

He thought of the monstrous things that had nearly killed Starsky but didn't. He had survived a gangster's bullet in a restaurant, Professor Jennings' poison, and the Simon Marcus cult.

(But this time is different. This time I'm the reason your life is hanging in the balance. I failed you and I'll never forgive myself).

A sob caught in his throat, and he turned and walked out before the tears could escape, looking down and moving past Dobey and Huggy without a word. Huggy tried to follow him, but Dobey caught his arm. "Huggy, let him go. He needs time."

::

Dr. Colton had tried to talk him out of leaving before he was ready for discharge, but there was no stopping him. The doctor watched him cross the parking lot in an urgent way, seeing a man trapped inside himself; a man trying desperately to run away from himself.

::

The first place Hutch went to was a bar for a strong drink, and it wasn't Huggy's. He slipped the sling off and threw it away, then took the bottle home and, distraught, paced the floor for hours drinking from it, until his body ached, until the pain became so great he wanted to cry out. But he didn't. He held it in, stuffed it down, enjoyed it. He was tired but couldn't sleep. Restless but couldn't get his mind on anything but Starsky's fall.

Fall?

(He didn't fall. I may as well have pushed him).

The moment he dropped played over and over like a looped film clip. One moment Hutch had him, Starsky's eyes a little fearful, but not much, because he knew Hutch had hold of him and wouldn't let him go. Only when Starsky's fingertips slipped from his, did the fear in his eyes grow bigger, along with something else: Confusion.

(Hutch, you let go. How could you let go?)

The look in his eyes of a young kid whose trust had just been broken.

The phone rang off and on for hours, but he didn't answer. People no doubt-fellow cops, friends, family, acquaintances-calling to check on Starsky.

Midnight came and went. He took a few sleeping pills, hoping that he could sleep his grief away, sleep away the sound of Starsky saying his name, the slow-motion horror of Starsky hitting the parking lot below. He wanted to wake up to a new day, a new world where Starsky was okay, where Starsky would show up on the street below his window at Venice Place in the Torino and blast the horn, or sprint up the stairs and toss him an apple, or snitch an English muffin from his breakfast table.

But the sleeping pills didn't work, and so he was left an insomniac to roam around his apartment in circles, much like a ghost, but haunting only himself with guilt, and memories, and sorrow.

Hutch had lost sleep dealing with Marcus and trying to get Starsky back.

(But there is no coming back from this).

(This night thy soul shall be required of thee).

::

Dawn.

It felt gray to Hutch, even though Starsky would say it was a beautiful sunrise. To Hutch it was a bleak filter through which he viewed his new Starsky-less world.

Still unable to sleep, he had to get out of the apartment for a while. Not to go for his usual morning run. As if he wanted to. He would never do that again. Running was a life-giver, a life preserver and extender, something to help him feel free and relaxed and worth it, and that was the last thing he felt like or deserved.

He chose instead to walk. Under normal circumstances, he would be at Starsky's side in the hospital, but this was not normal. He was not normal. He was some kind of deplorable counterpart who had no business even thinking he had a right to be with his friend.

A voice behind him-"Son of a-look what you've done."

Starsky's voice, but not the right Starsky. His brother Nick.

Hutch turned toward him, as if wanting the punch to come, and it did.

::

Bay City Police Department.

Later that day.

Hutch walked into the squad room. Fellow officers, including Minnie, walked over to him to offer words of comfort.

"Here, doll," Minnie said trying to steer him toward a chair.

But he shrugged her hand off and went into Captain Dobey's office. Dobey was gone of course. At the hospital checking on Starsky no doubt. But that didn't matter to Hutch, because he didn't need the captain's presence to place his gun, shield, police ID, and resignation letter on his desk.

Simmons and Babcock tried to follow him out.

"Hey, Hutch," Simmons said. "Wait up."

But he was out the door, consumed by his single-minded compulsion to place as much distance as possible between himself and Starsky's life, or was it his own life he was trying to avoid? They were once closer than lovers, acted as one person, so enmeshed that people couldn't tell them apart. Hard to escape a love like that. Now, he had hacked them in half. This much was true: He hated himself for what he'd done, and loved this self-imposed banishment. It felt so just and right.

::

Dusk.

The day passed in a blur. Insomnia was leaving its mark, possessing him body and soul. He wandered aimlessly in the park, passing people without seeing them or saying anything. Time seemed misshapen, something not to be grasped fully anymore. Half the time he wasn't aware of being conscious. Even the whiskey had lost most of its normal drowning Lethe effects, as if mocking him, denying him the forgetfulness he sought. His world, though never rose-colored (that would be a dream), now looked imperfect, as if captured in lomography.

Then, somehow, maybe guided by some inner compass, he found himself at the door of Sweet Alice.

"Hi, Handsome Hutch," she murmured sweetly, but with a touch of sadness in her voice. "Heard about Starsk."

He leaned heavily in her doorway and took the last drink of whiskey in the bottle.

"Alice, I'm not...here. To talk about him."

She looked into his eyes for a long time, seeing troubled blue seas, an ache and a love that he couldn't hide. She had seen it before, when Starsky was sick and had mere hours to live unless they found an antidote, and she understood it.

His fingers came up to caress her cheek. She gently placed her hand on his. "No, darlin'. Not tonight. If you need a place to sleep, you can come in. Otherwise..."

Swaying now, he moved his head no and turned away.

"Not tired," he murmured.

Before he slipped away completely, she reached and carefully took the empty bottle from him and watched him leave, thinking she had never seen a man look so alone.

::

Near midnight.

The dark alleys provided the perfect ambiance. The perfect backdrop for a man allowing his mind, heart, and soul to be absorbed into permanent blackness. It was as if he were sinking into a coma too. One where he wouldn't have to feel, or think, or hurt, or regret. If that's where Starsky was, that's where Ken Hutchinson wanted to be. Maybe pain would be his best friend now. He wanted it to end, but he didn't know how to get away from himself, or the memory of his dearest friend.

Until he saw the gathering of young men down one of the alleys, lounging casually around a doorway as they prepared their needles for injections of heroin. That would do the trick. That would ease his anguish.

He walked down the alley toward them in a fugue state. They looked up. Should have recognized him, because he had talked to each and every one of them before about what they were doing, but he was in such an altered reality both physically and emotionally tonight, and it was so dark except for a few lit candles, that they didn't. One was Chucky, a young hustler supporting his habit by turning tricks. Now eighteen, Chucky was the one who studied Hutch the closest.

"Hey, aren't you..?" But Chucky didn't finish. He waited to see what Hutch was going to say or do.

Hutch held his arm out and rolled up his sleeve.

"I want it," he said as his lost, sleepy eyes looked toward the needles. He leaned against the dumpster. "I have money," he said as he reached into his pocket and dropped some large bills onto the ground. But when Chucky picked up the money and brought the syringe over, Hutch moved his head no and backed up a few steps.

"What's matter?" Chucky asked.

Hutch couldn't really answer, or verbalize it. He just knew that he couldn't follow through because he remembered how Starsky helped him through the maddening withdrawal.

(Can't do that to you, Starsk)

(I've done enough)

Shoulders fallen, he turned and shuffled from the alley and back to the sidewalk, accepting that he was even a failure at relapse and self-destruction.

::

Venice Place.

3 a.m.

Hutch resumed his pacing. He still couldn't sleep, even though his body craved it, even with a few more sleeping pills. Sleeping pills Huggy had given him after he'd gotten Starsky back from Marcus, when he was still too wired to sleep even though his partner was safe, too proud to admit that he didn't have as much control over himself as he thought. Forest was the beginning of that lesson; Marcus was the closer.

This was worse. He couldn't feel his body. His head felt three sizes too big, and full of wool. He was beyond exhausted, existing in a dreamlike state-short-circuiting, his biorhythm at the critical point of triple zero. Flux.

Sleep was a wonderful thing. Such a refreshing time that recharged you so you could go at it again. A full, deep, good night's sleep could feel as good as a good time with a woman in bed. A different kind of pleasure, but a pleasure just the same. That respite between a hard day's work of criminal cases and the next one. Between the hell of a dead child on a living room floor and the next morning's cup of coffee. Between hating and loving. Dying and living.

Would he ever sleep again?

At this point, he didn't really know, and didn't really care.

Ironic: He couldn't sleep, and Starsky couldn't wake up.

::

Memorial Hospital.

ICU.

5 a.m.

He stood at the observation window in disguise: A long coat, old-man work-pants, a white undershirt, heavy Army boots, a big bandana tied around his head, tinted eyeglasses. He wanted to see Starsky. Needed to see him. Even though he had no right to, this time around. But he wanted to avoid contact with anyone who might try to talk to him, like a doctor, or a nurse. If they recognized him, they might call Captain Dobey, or Huggy.

Maybe he could live in disguise forever. No one would recognize him. It always felt so good to be in disguise. You could hide from the world, do what you want, say what you want. Nobody knows the real Hutch. You can put on an act. You can be you. You can be free. You could get away from others, even loved ones. But there is one thing you can't do, and that's get away from yourself.

How sick is it? Am I a sadist or am I a masochist? Maybe I'm both.

Purely instinctual, purely unaware, both hands came up and his palms pressed the glass, willing, begging. His best friend lay as if in eternal rest, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. The same machines were doing the same things. He looked today as he'd looked the other day. Or was that yesterday, or last night? He didn't know anymore.

A sound came from down the hall. Activity and conversation from the nurses.

I have to go now.

Please forgive me.

Walking quickly to avoid detection, he moved around the corner and stepped into the elevator.

You used to call me your guardian angel. What am I now? Torn wings. Broken halo. Fallen. A fallen angel. Like Lucifer. Yes, that's it. I'm a devil now.

He took the bandana off and covered his face with it to muffle a sob.

::

Was it dusk or dawn?

Another day, another dollar, another gray sunrise.

Hutch stood at his window, staring outward in a trance. How long he'd been standing there he didn't know. He wasn't waiting for the coffee water to get hot. He wasn't waiting on the morning paper. Nor his partner, even though his insomnia was getting so bad he thought he saw Starsky sitting on the sofa, and another time thought he saw his plants move, and perhaps the worst was when he thought he saw just Starsky's hand by itself clutching the edge of the kitchen table. Hutch was time standing still. If he stood still long enough, maybe he would turn into someone else. Something not human would be even better. An inanimate object such as a totem pole or an idol, with eyes that couldn't see, ears that couldn't hear, a heart that couldn't feel.

But a knock came at the door just the same.

At first he didn't hear it, lost in his wide-awake blackout.

Maybe it was the radio. Had he turned it on?

The second knock seeped through his membrane, but just like he was through answering his phone, he was also through answering his door.

But the third knock was accompanied by a voice.

"Hutch. Open up."

A familiar voice.

"Hutch? You in there?"

(What difference does it make? The outcome is the same. The world keeps turning. I keep receding. Just as it should be)

This was his shell, his wall, his comfort.

"Hutch, I'm comin' in."

"Like hell you are," Hutch said as he headed for the door, tripping on the way.

A couple of thuds against the apartment door, and Huggy was spilling inside, his tactic of drawing Hutch out through anger working like a charm. He was no shrink, but instinct told him an angry Hutch was better than no Hutch at all, and could be the catalyst for the deliverance he needed.

Huggy tried to ignore the beautiful monster in front of him-hair messed, clothes rumpled and stained, body wilted and defeated, eyes dark and haunted. He took Hutch by the shoulders. "You need sleep, Hutch. Starsky needs you rested, and alert, and together."

"Sleep? Maybe I don't deserve sleep. Or rest. Or Starsky."

"He's a fighter. He's going to pull through."

"He's going to die! I can feel him slipping away!"

Huggy shook him. "How do you think he'd feel if-"

"Don't! Stop talking about him!"

Hutch tried to wrench away, but the man fit enough and healthy enough to rebound from a heroin addiction in record time, was now too weak, his zest for life having flown.

The phone rang. Hutch was so used to ignoring it now, it didn't even register, but it did with Huggy.

It rang and rang.

Huggy looked toward it.

"Don't," came Hutch half-plea, his voice faint and dry.

Huggy went to answer it, leaving Hutch to lean over with a hand to his chest, dreading the words he didn't want to hear. (He's gone).

Huggy hung up and looked at Hutch, who was slowly sinking to his knees, as if into the floor, as if disappearing into it, his body wooden, face vacant and lost.

Huggy moved over to him, pace quickening with each step, since Hutch was now collapsing to the floor on his side, hand still over his heart, as if imploding with the weight of fear, guilt, grief, and love.

"That was Captain Dobey."

But Hutch's eyes were closed.

Huggy ran to the phone and called an ambulance, then rushed back to him again.

::

ICU.

From his hospital bed, Hutch's eyes worked open and he gazed at Dr. Colton, Captain Dobey, and Huggy, who were hovering around him like drones.

"Ken," Colton said. "You've had a heart attack. But you're going to be all right."

"And," Dobey said with a twinkle of delight in his eyes. "Good news. Starsky's awake."

"Still weak," Colton added. "He has some healing to do too. But he's going to be all right. Both of you are."

Hutch tried to raise his head to get out of bed, but Dr. Colton had already prepared for it. Hutch wore restraints on his wrists and ankles.

"Easy there," Dobey said patting his hand.

Hutch tried to speak, but words failed him. The tears in his lashes and the smile in his eyes spoke for him.

::

Three days later.

They didn't know which one would get to his partner first, but as it happened, it was Starsky who was strong enough to wheelchair himself into Hutch's recovery room.

"Fancy meetin' you here," he said as he touched Hutch's face

Hutch's head turned on the pillow toward him, and, now, without restraints, his hand opened palm up on the bed, and Starsky took it.

"Starsk, I'm sorry, I..."

"Hey. None of that. You were shot in the shoulder for cryin' out loud. We're even."

"How you doin'?"

"Look at me. Way better than you, Bronco. Nick told me he gave you a shiner. He wasn't kidding. Ma called, worried sick. I sent him home."

"Hey, could you give me a drink of water?"

Starsky reached for a lidded cup of ice water, but when he turned back with it to hold it for him to drink, saw that Hutch had fallen asleep.

::

Hours later.

Hutch roused awake again, blinking groggily, hand searching for Starsky's. Maybe Starsky waking up had been a dream, another sleep-deprived hallucination. Maybe he was still in a coma.

His voice came out a weak rasp. "Starsk?"

But he didn't have to search far, or for long, because Starsky was still there, already clasping his hand. "Have a good nap?" he asked in a teasing voice edged with concern.

Hutch offered a faint smile that reflected the life in his eyes. Using one of his partner's lines, he asked, "How do I look?"

"You look like hell, Hutch. We both do. But before you know it, we'll be out there cruisin', and chasin', and flirtin'...me and thee again...hey, me and thee make we, how you like that? Can't have a we without me and thee. Yeah, that rhymes. Maybe you could use it in a song...want me to serenade you?"

Still wearing his small smile, Hutch closed his eyes and drifted off again to the sound of Starsky's voice murmuring away about everything and nothing, feeling that wherever Starsky was, wherever they were together, whether it be in a car, squad room, restaurant, or each other's place, he was home. They were home again.

The end