July, 1979

Sometimes I thought dying would've been a whole lot easier than this.

"No," I repeated for the third time.

"Sometimes you have to take the leap, Starsk. Forget everything you think you know and just jump."

"I ain't jumping."

"I didn't mean literally, dumbass. I meant—". Hutch took a breath and I knew he was counting in his head, trying to be patient. "I mean just try to walk across the room alone."

"I can walk across the damn room tomorrow." Actually, I didn't think I could. Not alone, anyway. But I wasn't telling Detective Kenny Sunshine that.

"Starsk, the doctor says—"

"Fuck what the doctor says. Take me back to my room," I said. "Now." I tried making it an order, but it came out sounding more like a plea.

He raised his hands in surrender, waved the orderly away and pushed me down the corridor towards the elevator. While we waited, I shifted in the chair, trying to get comfortable, trying to ignore the fire in my gut. "I'm just tired, Hutch. Don't go reading something else into it. Pretty soon we'll be dancing up a storm together."

"I worry," he said. "It's what I do."

"I know. Just get me my meds when we get back, okay?"

He glanced at his watch. "You still have another hour to go, Starsk. Wish me luck prying them out of Nurse Ratched's bony white fingers."

"Fuck her if you have to. Just get them."

He leaned forward in the empty elevator and kissed me quickly before the doors opened.

A smiling Nurse Ratched gave me my shot ten minutes later.

I wasn't sure who I loved more.

~~~~~~

Most nights, while we waited for the painkillers to kick in, Hutch would pretend everything was fine, and I'd close my eyes and pretend that alien beings were not waging war in my chest. Sometimes I'd catch him giving me the look. The one he thought I never saw. The one that said "It should've been me." It broke my heart a little, that look. Which was why I never called him on it. Hutch had enough to worry about without thinking his partner had gone soft in the head.

~~~~~~

The Mayor visited one afternoon not long after I was paroled from ICU. The doctors pumped me full of morphine, wheeled me into the sunroom on the seventh floor, and smiled while he thanked them for a job well done.

No one said a word about James Gunther. The Captain told Hutch later the DA had decided there wasn't enough evidence to link Gunther directly with the parking lot hit. The rest of the charges seemed to be sticking. So far.

Gunther 1, Starsky 0.

~~~~~~

Every night after supper, Hutch read me two chapters of The Three Musketeers. He began reading it when I started getting antsy about how long I'd been here. I felt kind of silly at first, being read to like a kid, so I made him close the door and keep his voice down. But then I found out it was nothing like the Classic Comic version I'd read when I was ten, and before I knew it, I was hooked. I didn't always manage to stay awake for the whole two chapters, but Hutch never seemed to mind.

~~~~~~

I woke up most mornings to find him standing at the window, hands in his pockets, staring out. I knew I should make him go home. But he never would, not unless someone pushed him out the door. When I was up in ICU, and things were still kind of touch and go, he said that he felt like there was a string tied between both our hearts and the only way to keep it from breaking was to never get too far apart. I told him he sounded like a lovesick teenager, but truth was, I knew exactly how he felt. Like nothing really bad could ever happen as long as we had each other.

Despite everything that had happened, I still wanted to believe that...

"So what do you believe in, Starsky?"

We were two hours into an all-night stakeout outside a warehouse on Melrose, waiting for something — anything — to happen.

"I believe in Christmas, Huggy's triple chili cheeseburgers, UFOs, the Boston Red Sox, and you."

"The Boston Red Sox?"

"Yeah."

Hutch stared at me like I'd started speaking French. "What about the Yankees?"he said.

"What about them?"

"I thought you loved the Yankees."

"I do."

"But you said the Boston Red Sox."

"I love the Yankees, Hutch — but I believe in the Red Sox."

"What's the difference?"

"You asked the question, college boy — you figure it out."

~~~~~~

August, 1979

Two weeks away from busting out of this joint, it all went to hell again.

I knew right away something was wrong. I'd been playing Humpty Dumpty long enough to recognize that this new pain — like being stabbed in the chest every time I took a breath — wasn't normal.

Hutch," I said and the effort was enough to start me coughing.

He was beside me in a minute and grabbed a cup of water from the bedside table and offered me the straw. His other hand felt my forehead, and he shook his head, "You look like shit. I'll go find the doctor."

I fought the urge to apologize. "You don't have to stay—"

There was a flash of anger in Hutch's eyes and his jaw tightened. I knew that look. His digging-in, stubborn look. "If I were sick, would you leave me?"

"No. But you're not—"

"What? Not so fucking crazy about you I can't breathe when you're not around?" Hutch wiped at his eyes with one hand. "So just shut up about it."

I started coughing again and didn't stop until I tasted blood.

The doctors had a word for it. Two words, actually. Pulmonary embolism. They started me on heparin and told me it could've been worse. It could have been pneumonia.

A week later, it was.

Gunther 2, Starsky 0.

~~~~~~

"Starsk, c'mon. You've got to let them do it."

I shook my head. "No tubes," I managed before I started coughing again.

I wondered if I looked as afraid as he did.

"You wait much longer, and it won't be a choice. I swear I'll get a fucking court order."

"No."

All the fight went out of him then and he slumped down into in the chair beside the bed. Then he leaned in over me, his forehead touching mine, and whispered, "I understand, Starsk. About the Red Sox. I do. But sometimes it's not enough to just believe." His tears were damp against my face. "Please, Starsk, let us help you."

I nodded. "Do it."

~~~~~~

Things got worse before they got better — not that I remembered much of it later. I spent three weeks on the ventilator — like a man drowning on dry land — while the doctors searched desperately for the right combination of antibiotics. Hutch has never talked about those weeks, and I've never asked. We both have our scars.

I spent another month in the hospital after that. I knew I was getting better when Hutch started going home every night to sleep. He finished reading me The Three Musketeers the night before I was released — I didn't tell him I'd read the last few chapters myself a few nights earlier. I needed to know everything turned out okay. I've always been a sucker for happy endings.

~~~~~~

May, 1980

Hutch slid into the booth opposite me, two beer bottles in one hand and a plate of fries in the other. He had a shopping bag tucked under one arm and let it drop on the seat beside him.

I put down the sports page. "Huggy out of tofu again?" I asked.

"Shut up." He salted the fries and squeezed ketchup onto his plate. "Sometimes you need to indulge your vices."

I arched one eyebrow and grinned. "Thought we were going to do that later at your place."

Hutch laughed and dipped a fry into a puddle of ketchup. He lifted it to his lips and sucked on it. I swear, if I didn't have my hands wrapped around Huggy's triple chili cheeseburger, I'd have dragged him into the storeroom and fucked him standing.

"How's the burger?" he asked.

Bastard knew what I was thinking. "Amazing. I'd marry it if I could. We'd have little baby chili burgers together. Live happily ever after."

"I thought we already were." He laughed, then leaned across the table and wiped chili off my chin with one finger. "Which reminds me." He pulled a wrapped box out of the shopping bag and slid it across the table in front of me.

"What's this for?"

"It's kind of an anniversary present. It's been a year since, you know..."

It took me a minute. Even after I glanced at the date on the newspaper. "Only you would celebrate getting shot. You're fucking morbid, you know that?"

"Just open it."

I tore away the wrapping and opened the box. "It's a baseball jersey. A Boston Red Sox jersey. Why did you—" And then I knew. "Marry me," I blurted out.

A faint blush crawled up Hutch's cheeks. "Sure. How about the day after the Red Sox win the World Series?"

"Nice way of getting out of it, buddy. They haven't won it since 1918."

Hutch grinned. "You're the one who taught me that sometimes you just have to believe in miracles."

~~~~~~

San Francisco

October 28, 2004

"Do you Kenneth Hutchinson, take this man..."

End

 

Author's Note: On October 27, 2004, the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918, putting an end to an 86 year drought.