Fractal 3: Broken Silence
By TLR

Plot: Starsky is looking for a missing Hutch, and their autistic artist friend Bray Hamilton knows where he is.

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

Starsky's Point of View:

It was Monday evening before sunset and I was on the phone with Huggy, pacing back and forth in my kitchen, the anxiety chewing at my insides like a hungry rat. Hutch had been missing all weekend and I'd spent it combing the streets, questioning informants, and hitting every dead end Bay City had to offer. I was running on fumes, fueled by the grinding knowledge that something was seriously wrong.

"What about Mickey the Stoolie?" Huggy asked. "You talk to him?"

"Twice. No luck."

The knock on my front door was loud, more of a pounding.

"Later," I told Hug, and hung up.

Pulling my gun, I yanked the door open and aimed straight at Bray Hamilton, Hutch's autistic roommate from college, now artist...a faint copy of the mostly carefully composed and regimented guy we knew. Today, though, his eyes were blue terror, his clothes torn and disheveled, and his usually neat blond hair matted and unkempt.

"Starsky!" he said pushing past my gun as if he didn't even see it, an example of how Hutch explained his friend, although smart, was sometimes naive and didn't always understand danger. "It's Hutch..." His voice cracked. "He's in trouble."

I holstered my gun and pulled him inside, but forgot about his distaste for touch until he stepped away.

"What do you mean?"

He looked over his shoulder as if afraid someone might be watching or following.

"Dr. Oldman has him," he panted as he turned back to me, his voice trembling. "At his home clinic. He's there because of me. Hutch went there to help me when I called him from there secretly after the doctor...treated me. I was trapped. And Hutch came to help me, but...the doctor didn't like Hutch showing up...drugged him. And I climbed out a window..."

He pressed the palms of his hands together, his self-calming habit, but it didn't seem to be doing much good right now.

My heart drummed in my chest. "Slow down, Bray. Start from the beginning."

He sank into a chair, stuffing his fists into his lap to keep them from shaking. "Okay. The beginning. I had an art show Friday night at the Pier Point Gallery. After, I was attacked by some thugs when I was walking home. It triggered some bad memories of when I was bullied and beaten up as a kid and teenager. Friday night's attack caused me to have a nervous breakdown of sorts. I must have blacked out trying to get back home. I don't know how I ended up at Dr. Oldman's...maybe he saw me walking home and picked me up in his car? I don't know."

He paused to catch his breath, calm himself. I didn't interrupt him.

"I woke up in Dr. Oldman's clinic, but it isn't a real one anymore. It's his underground bunker, like a shelter. I recognized him from when my parents took me to him for those treatments when I was young, until I ran away. I thought the officials closed him down and took his medical license away. Dr. Oldman gave me the same treatments as before, this time without my consent. But this time I got to his phone and called Hutch. I shouldn't have. The doctor found out, and was ready for him. He...gave Hutch the treatments too. I escaped just now when he let me go to the john. I wanted to stay and help Hutch, but I couldn't. I didn't have a gun, and I didn't have time to look for Hutch's. I knew you could help."

My heart skipped beats. "What kind of treatments?"

His breathing escalated, and for a second I thought he was going to hyperventilate.

"Electroconvulsive therapy."

ECT. I knew of it from Cabrillo State. I'm surprised Dr. Matwick hadn't used it on me there. But that wasn't Matwick's game. He preferred his own idea of treatment and needles.

Bray continued. "He gave me one treatment. Friday night. But, Starsky..." His eyes reflected the pain I felt. "He gave Hutch treatments all weekend."

Bray leaned forward and put his face in his hands, stiffening.

"Bray? Are you okay? What can I do to help you?"

"I'm all right," he said into his hands, obviously used to calming himself in his own way. "I'll be all right. I just want to help Hutch."

My mind threatened to fall apart, but I couldn't let it. Hutch needed me.

"Show me," I said, and we hurried to the Torino.

::

The drive to Oldman's was a streak of colors, my mind racing with worst-case scenarios.

Near meltdown at my house, Bray was now a picture of calm and focus, eyes fixed on the traffic ahead, satisfied help for Hutch was underway, in the form of me, as if I were some kind of superhero. I could only wish.

"I want a gun, Starsk," he said holding his hand out without looking at me. "Do you have another one?"

"In the trunk. But you aren't getting it. And don't touch mine unless something happens to me. Got that?"

Although he had a steady hand, his aim was off and he wasn't an accurate shot, plus he was impulsive and wasn't all that conscious of his own safety.

He didn't answer. His eyes stayed fixed ahead, as if counting the blocks and miles till we'd get to Oldman's home.

"Bray..."

"All right," he finally said. "I won't touch your gun unless something happens to you."

::

Oldman's home was just outside of Bay City. By the time we got there, it was dark, and his gated two-story house situated on the back end of the property looked silent, no lights on, no vehicle in the drive. Too quiet.

Bray and I climbed over the gate and we headed for the backyard. He pointed to a garage.

"There is a set of double doors in the floor of the garage," he explained. "They lead under the ground."

I added two plus two. Sometime in the past, after Oldman had "treated" Bray as a young patient for a breakdown, his practice was shut down and his license taken away. Then he took it upon himself to set up an independent office literally underground, to continue his practice for whatever reason. Most likely to push pills for income, but maybe to continue the shock treatments too.

When I reached the double doors in the floor of the garage, I pulled my gun and motioned for Bray to step back, for his own safety, but he slowly moved his head no. He reached for a long screwdriver on a tool bench and looked at me with conviction. He was going to help whether I liked it or not. He was fearless, I'll give him that.

He took one door, I took the other, and we pulled the doors up and quietly rested them on the concrete floor, then I went down the dimly lit steps first, Bray at my heels.

The bunker was sectioned off into three rooms. The first one was a combo office and john, where we found Oldman slumped over his desk, a spilled bottle of heart pills near his elbow, as if he had had a fatal heart attack before he could swallow the pills. Or maybe it was suicide, knowing the authorities were on their way. If so, he'd left no note. That was to be sorted out later.

Either way, I took his pulse and found zero, his skin cool to the touch.

Bray started for the second room, but I pulled him back, in case Oldman had an accomplice or there was a booby trap.

I entered first, seeing that it was a pharmacy room, where big jars of pills and liquids and other medical supplies were stacked on tall metal shelves that reached the low ceiling: Oldman's source of income, and storage area for drugs that he used for the unethical and illegal treatment of patients without a license.

I swept my gun around to make sure no one else was here, and found it clear.

Bray moved past me again to go to the third and final room, and again I pulled him back, putting him behind me, where he briskly rubbed his arm up and down where I'd grabbed him, as if my hand had contaminated him.

I turned the doorknob of the door labeled "Treatment" and found it locked, so I kicked it in, but I wasn't at all prepared to find Hutch this way.

There were two tables with straps. One table was empty, the one Bray had apparently been restrained to. The other one, Hutch was lying on, turned onto his side where we could see the frontside of him, but wasn't strapped.

He could have gotten off the table and gotten away, if he'd been able to move. But he was beyond that, his eyes vacant as if unseeing. Memories of Cabrillo State forced their way in. I didn't think I had it in me to move.

The sight of him like that – it broke something inside me. The vibrant, life-filled man I knew was gone, reduced to a hollowed-out shell by Oldman's treatments.

Bray picked up a few bottles on a nearby cart littered with syringes so that I could read the labels: Metho-quinine, and metrazol.

"Causes seizures," Bray told me.

I glanced a bottle of Thorazine on the cart too, among some other drugs I'd never heard of, which was probably how Oldman incapacitated him. Hutch was very strong and could fight his way out of almost anything, but Oldman was a big man, so even though Hutch must've fought, he was no match for the doctor and his chemical weapons.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Electrodes were still attached to his temples where his hair had been shaved back a little, the wires leading to a machine with knobs and dials and gauges labeled various things like Voltage 60 -120, Current, Test, Treat, and Electroshock.

The words themselves clutched my heart, almost like I had been the one electrocuted. How many electroshock seizures had he been given during the course of a weekend?

Hutch's name came out of my mouth in a breath as I stumbled over to the table and took his head in my hands, trying to see the friend I knew in his lost eyes.

"Hutch?"

He couldn't answer. I took the electrodes off, noticing that he couldn't move, nor did he offer to. When I gripped his hand, he had no strength in his hand or arm, weak as a kitten all over. He was dressed in pajamas with the shirt unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up, a view of the contusions and abrasions on his arms and chest where he'd flailed against the sink and bed during seizures. His mouth was bleeding a little where he'd bitten his tongue.

"It's torture," Bray said simply, almost clinically as he stood next to me at the table. I looked up at him. He was right. He would know. I knew him well enough to know by now that his neutral tone was his way of distancing himself from his own torture.

"Hutch," I said as I leaned over him and smoothed his hair. "Gonna get you out of here, boy. Everything will be okay."

I didn't expect an answer, though he did begin to tremble with chills. I moved Bray closer and put my handkerchief in his hand, grabbed a light blanket from a stool.

"Stay with him, Bray. Keep him covered, and try to stop the bleeding in his mouth. Keep him on his side. I'll radio an ambulance and Captain Dobey. Don't touch anything else."

As I ran for the Torino, I could only pray that Oldman hadn't rendered Hutch this helpless for the rest of his life.

::

Getting Hutch to the hospital was a blur of motion and urgency. The psychiatric floor of Memorial Hospital became our new reality, the doctors cautious in their approach and prognosis.

ECT, they explained, could have lasting effects, but the extent of the damage was still unknown. One treatment like Bray's didn't seem to affect someone too badly except for some short-term memory loss that got better as time went on, but multiple shocks in a short length of time like Hutch's could leave permanent and irreversible damage.

He wasn't in a coma. More of a catatonic state, where we didn't know how much he understood, or if or when he would be able to communicate.

I sat by Hutch's side every day, talking to him, reading to him – anything to bring him back.

Bray came and went. Although Bray loved Hutch, he could only stand to be around Hutch in his condition for brief periods at a time. It was retraumatizing for him, and everybody understood. No one wanted to see him have a breakdown again. Often he went for walks, went home to draw fractals, or ran errands for me or Hutch, like bringing us a newspaper or a coffee or some clothes or food.

The future seemed uncertain, and the fear that Hutch might never fully recover hung over me like a shadow. Oldman's madness had shattered something precious, leaving us to pick up the pieces.

"Full recovery is quite possible," the neurologist Dr. Bolder told me in the hospital room. "He could have some short-term memory loss, but that should improve. It just takes time."

Captain Dobey and Huggy came by to relieve me, but I couldn't leave the room. They visited or called almost every day. Dobey took care of the case while Huggy kept an eye on Bray.

Slowly, I began to see glimpses of the man I knew. A flicker of recognition, a squeeze of my hand, an attempt at a smile.

As I watched Hutch struggle to rebuild himself from the ruins Oldman had left him in, I made a silent vow. I would be there for him, every step of the way, no matter what it took. Because that's what we do. We hold on to each other, even when the world is falling apart.

::

As the days grew into weeks, the atmosphere in Hutch's hospital room gradually shifted from one of anxious uncertainty to cautious optimism. Doctors and physical therapists came in to check him and work with him.

He was looking around more often, which made me stick by his side even more. Then he was moving around, responding to stimuli and yes-and-no questions.

Then one morning, as I sat reading outlandish headlines in the pages of a supermarket tabloid in hopes of irritating him awake, his voice pushed through the silence.

"Starsk?"

It was weak and raspy, but it was the best sound I'd ever heard.

I dropped the magazine, turning to him with near disbelief. I wondered if this day would really come.

"Hutch? You're back?"

His eyes, clearer now, met mine, and I could see a little confusion there, but also a connection.

"Starsk?" he repeated as he reached for my hand.

"Yeah, buddy, I'm here," I assured him, grasping his hand. "You've been out of it for some time, but you're gonna be okay. This is a good sign. Welcome back."

Dr. Bolder's visit that day confirmed what we'd started to hope. "His recovery is looking very good," he told me, a smile breaking through his usually objective demeanor. "He's showing remarkable resiliency. With time and therapy, I expect he'll regain most if not all of his strength and memory."

The news felt like birds tweeting, the first real breath of fresh air in weeks. And it kept getting better.

I called the people that needed to be called, to let them know of the positive turn.

Bray came by later that day, looking more like his old self than I'd seen since this whole nightmare began. He hesitated at the door, a familiar hesitance in his stance, but when Hutch called out a soft "Hey, Bray," our artist friend visibly brightened.

"Hi, Hutch. Starsky," Bray greeted, stepping closer. "I...started seeing a trauma therapist. About what happened with my attack, and Dr. Oldman. I think it's helping."

"That's great, Bray," I said, truly happy for him.

Hutch nodded, his voice still faint but warm. "I'm glad, friend."

"And I'm sorry, Hutch. For calling you for help and getting you into all of this."

"It's okay. I'm glad you called me. You helped me too."

The final chapter of our ordeal came weeks later, when Hutch was officially discharged from the hospital. His recovery wasn't just a medical victory; it felt like our friendship had won.

To celebrate, Captain Dobey and his wife Edith invited us over for dinner, including Huggy and Bray. Cal and Rosie were there too.

The ordeal of the past weeks seemed like a distant nightmare. Hutch was here, smiling and joking, albeit a bit gentler than usual. Bray was a little nervous but engaged, talking about a new art show coming up, and even Dobey seemed more relaxed, his usual boss attitude turned softie by Hutch being okay.

As the evening wound down, I caught Hutch's eye, seeing there, not just the partner I'd known for years, but a strength and depth that makes me respect him all over again.

"We made it, huh?" I said to him as I raised my glass.

He returned the smile and raised his glass too, his eyes shining with a mixture of health and happiness. "Sure did, partner."

In that moment, we knew. No matter what life threw at us, we'd face it together, stronger for the trials we'd overcome. This wasn't just an ending to the story; it was a hopeful start to whatever came next.

It was a nice feeling. Having Hutch back, felt like home.

End