Loss

K Hanna Korossy

Written: 2000

Of Dreams & Schemes 17 (2002)

  The sounds were too bright; the light grated on his skin. Everything was a confusion of senses, of which the only thing he was sure was that he wanted no part of it. Pain was skulking through his head with every throb of his heart already, and turning it up seemed a lousy idea. Instead, he drifted in a semi-awareness that was merely miserable instead of agonizing.

  The sensory wave around him grew overwhelming just as he began to be moved, jostled rudely up and down until he groaned a protest.

  “We’re almost there, Detective Starsky.”

  He couldn’t care less where they were, as long as they stopped the whirlpool of noise and disorientation around him.

  It slowed, at least, as his body stopped moving even if his head didn’t. While he couldn’t seem to make the thoughts connect at all, he was pretty sure he’d never felt this lousy before, not after any bender, not even after he’d been shot...sometime. Retrieving the memory was far too taxing.

  The lights and sound around him dimmed and focusing became less painful. He found himself more aware as clinical hands roamed his body, skimming bruises and aching spots, gently bending joints that complained but cooperated. It was all fine until they got to his head, which threatened to come off at the touch and roll away. He groaned again, only wincing his eyes tighter shut because he couldn’t bear the thought of moving even to pull away.

  His head was released, but then a finger suddenly pulled his eye open and light as cutting as a laser shot into it.

  Oh, God, he’d never survive this. They should’ve just left him...left him...

  The sadist repeated the torture with his other eye, leaving, he was certain, twin holes bored in his head, and then he was released altogether, even the quiet background voices dimming.

  “It’s all right, Detective...just a concussion...”

  The words were patchy but he was pretty sure he had heard that much right. “Just”? There was nothing “just” about the way his head was pounding away seconds until detonation.

  A pat on his shoulder. “Rest.”

  Yeah, right.

  He wafted yearningly back toward the haze of before. That at least was tolerable. Then he could forget about pain and hospitals and the truck...

  The pick-up truck.

  Starsky’s eyes snapped open. The truck that had been heading directly toward them. Toward Hutch’s side of the car...

  The beating pain dimmed, sublimated by an awful new worry, and Starsky frantically felt along the side of his bed for a call button, a glass to break, something to get attention. There was nothing, though, his stretcher still in the emergency room they’d brought him into. But there were a pair of blurry white nurses with their backs to him only steps away...or maybe just one nurse, as he realized the blonde twins moved in unison in front of two identical medicine cabinets. The double vision was hardly a concern now.

  “Nurse?” he croaked, the dry whisper barely carrying to his own ears. Yet the pair turned, smiling identical smiles at him.

  “Yes, Detective Starsky? Can I get something for you?”

  “My partner...” Lifting his head was a major accomplishment, but all Starsky could feel was frustration with his weakness. “How’s he?”

  The bright smiles faltered. “The other officer who was brought in? Tall, blond?”

  Talking still hurt less than nodding. “Yeah.”

  “I...I’m so sorry, Detective. He was already gone when they brought him in.”

  That couldn’t be right. This time he did shake his head, hardly feeling the resulting strong protest. “He can’t be,” Starsky said blankly. “He was just...” Sitting there. Where the truck hit.

  She was frowning, both of her. “Try to rest, please, Detective. I’ll find out what I can, but you have to rest and let your body heal.” She fussed around him.

  He finally closed his eyes just to get rid of her. What else was there to learn? If what she said was true, what did the details matter?

  Hutch was dead? Funny, his head didn’t seem to hurt so much anymore. The numbness continued to spread, sweeping all cognizant thought and emotion into limbo.

  Hutch was dead. It should’ve hurt more, Starsky thought absently. Maybe it was the concussion, or maybe it was that a series of words didn’t have the immediate power to turn his life upside-down.

  Hutch was gone, forever. Put like that, his mind refused to go any further, his heart locking up tight against a reality it couldn’t bear. Starsky shivered, a purely physical reaction that made his head spin again. No, it was just refusing to sink in now. He was on the edge of the nadir already but wouldn’t fall into it just yet.

  And he had no intention of being in a hospital when it did. Besides, what was the point of hurrying to get back on his feet and return to work when there was no one...

  Starsky opened his eyes again. The room was empty, the woman who had swiftly ruined his life gone. Good. It would make things easier.

  The grinding ache in his head wasn’t blunted altogether. He had to clamp his teeth just to get upright on the stretcher, and by the time he stood, stooped and swaying, beside it, his clothes were already damp with the sweat of effort. No matter. It was surprising how little anything did matter when the bedrock underneath it was crumbling.

  No one seemed to notice as he tottered out of the room and down the short hall to the emergency entrance, too busy with a string of other casualties, car accident victims, D.O.A.s, whatever, to pay heed to one errant patient. Without pause, he stumbled out into the falling night.

  Night in LA. Mulholland Drive was where the real view was, of course, yet how many times he and Hutch had sat in front of that very window where Starsky sat alone now. They’d watched the dark outside, talking only when they felt like it, just content to be.

  To be or not to be...

  Starsky sighed unsteadily, taking another gulp from the glass in his hand. The alcohol wasn’t doing much good, never in his stomach for too long before the nausea would catch up to him and he’d lurch back into the bathroom. Each time, he was sure he was going to die and glad of it, but no such luck. When enough strength would trickle back, he’d pull himself up off the tile floor and out into the living room again to continue his wake. Maybe if he did it over and over, enough alcohol would end up in his bloodstream to deaden the brutal pain in his head and the even worse one in his soul.

  Hutch was dead. The words still seemed alien, distant, not nearly powerful enough to sever the partnership that bound them, the day-to-day strength of the blond’s presence. After all, they were just words, right?

  And yet they loomed over him, too big to see past, huge and black and filling the horizon. No future beyond them. The helpless suffocation of it pressed down on him, weighting his limbs, his tongue, his mind. It wasn’t sinking in because it was too overwhelming to process. Instead, he was sinking into it. Starsky only hoped the alcohol would smooth the way.

  He wasn’t trying, but the memories came anyway, filling in the blankness of his thoughts. Reminding him of what he’d just lost, trying to make it tangible because he certainly couldn’t seem to grasp it. Surely if he drove that familiar ten minute route to Venice, he’d find that rat-trap of a car at the curb in front, the light on in the top floor window, his blond partner waiting inside as he always was when Starsky needed him. Why would a stranger’s words change that?

  If he was lucky, maybe the alcohol would drown the memories, too.

  Headlights lit the road briefly, attached to a shape not unlike Hutch’s squash, and Starsky raised his glass in salute to the old Ford. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t drinking a wake--that was to celebrate a life. He was being selfish, trying to forget one. Starsky wasn’t sure he could survive anything else.

  The toast made, he got down another swallow. And shut his burning eyes.

  The front door rattled, a muffled call from beyond it.

  Maybe they’d finally noticed he wasn’t at the hospital anymore? Nah--who was there left to care? Dobey maybe, but he had no key like--

  The lock clicked and the door swung open, and Hutch’s ghost walked in.

  Starsky stared at it with some curiosity. Okay, was that the alcohol, the head injury, or the grief? Whichever, it was pretty accurate, right down to the clothes Hutch had been wearing earlier that day. Of course, the real tan slacks and denim shirt had probably been cut off and were stuffed in some bag now, awaiting disposal.

  “Starsky, what the...what’re you doing?”

  It talked, too. Starsky was fairly impressed; he had no idea he’d lose it this quickly. Even the tone, half exasperation and half serious worry, was just right. At least there was only one of the hallucination, if slightly blurred at the edges.

  “‘M drinkin’,” he slurred carefully in answer.

  The blond phantom strode across the living room, only absently shoving the door shut in its wake--nice touch, that--to stand before him. Then suddenly, it grabbed the glass out of his hand, sloshing the remaining contents onto his fingers.

  A physical  ghost, and a pushy one. Starsky frowned at it, not sure if he wanted it to go away…or stay forever.

  It was already talking again. “You know you can’t have liquor when you have a head injury. You shouldn’t even be out of the hospital--what’re you doing here?”

  He peered into those worried blue eyes and felt the first hint of the terrible grief that was yet to come. “‘M drinkin’,” he answered again, softer this time.

  The exasperation was winning in his partner’s expression, but the concern in his eyes only grew. “You said that already. You must’ve hit your head harder than they thought. I’m taking you back to the hospital--”

  “Uh-uh.” He shook his head, then realized that was not such a good thing to do as it set his balance off-kilter. His visitor separated into two, then joined into one again as a warm hand steadied his shoulder. He shut his eyes, less against the visual confusion than against the lump in his throat the touch caused. This was cruel comfort at best, the numbness wearing away under the constant reminders of his best friend, leaving him as exposed to dark sorrow as an open wound to sea water.

  “Starsky?” The soft voice made him wince, another swipe at his denial, but he could never refuse it. He opened his eyes to meet Hutch’s gently studying gaze. “What’s going on, buddy?”

  His eyes felt hot, then wet. Damn nosy, stubborn spirits who didn’t know when to leave, anyway. “Go ‘way,” he muttered. He didn’t want to lose it in front of someone, even someone who was there only in his bruised brain. Ironically, he’d let himself cry before his partner before, but that was the real thing, not this mockery that was only making things worse. If that were even possible.

  “Not ‘til you tell me what’s going on,” the too-real Hutch said sternly, crouching in front of him. “Why didn’t you wait for me at the hospital?”

  Now that was almost funny. “They tol’ me,” Starsky said. “Said...D.O.A.” Like the movie D.O.A., and boy, did Edmond O’Brien meet a happy fate in that.

  “Dee-way?” Hutch repeated in confusion. Starsky was almost amused at the familiar tone of frustration. Well, he’d certainly heard it enough for his memory to draw on and portray so accurately. But then, memory was all he had left, wasn’t it?

  He sobered, reality crashing back in. “D-O-A,” he made an effort to enunciate clearly; apparently his partner was no less dense for being a ghost. “Shouldn’ve let you drive...always said that car would--” He sucked in his breath, concentrating very hard on not letting any part of him shatter.

  He couldn’t see the ghost-Hutch’s face, but there was a short, disbelieving laugh, then the voice changed, twisting into something Starsky couldn’t recognize. “They said...y-you thought--still think--I’m dead? R-right here next to you?” He always had stammered when he was stunned, Starsky thought clinically. Right before he’d grow aggressive. “Starsky--”

  Starsky swallowed hard and managed a shadow smile, but only because he kept his eyes on the reflection on the glass. It was too vague to see the grieved sympathy he knew he’d find if he turned his head. “Y’know,” he interrupted, “I always thought I would be the first to go.”

  Silence.

  Starsky shrugged. “‘S selfish, I guess, but you were right, ’s always harder on the ones...left...behind.” The realization of his own words wilted the flippancy, his throat working rapidly just to keep him from breaking down.

  “God...Starsky,” came the soft, upset voice from next to him. Gently, a hand brushed against the side of his neck, ruffling the hair that stuck out underneath his bandage.

  Sandpaper on his soul. Starsky pulled into himself more tightly, shutting his eyes and wishing fervently now the ghost would leave. The dead couldn’t comfort.

  The wraith-voice firmed. “Starsky, listen to me.”

  Starsky shook his head, headache be damned. The conversation had just about reached his limits. He was hardly in any shape to look after himself, let alone a ghost that didn’t know it was dead. Besides, convincing it would take him too near to what he wasn’t quite ready to face himself yet, the gathering dread already more than he could bear. “‘M goin’ t’bed,” he pronounced deliberately, making what he thought was a decent attempt at rising, except that he didn’t seem to move.

  Perhaps the fingers that had moved away from his face and were now digging into his arm had something to do with it. Starsky opened his eyes to blink at them in surprise, then up at their owner. Hutch’s eyes were afire, intense like Starsky had seen them few times in his life and never without serious cause. “Starsky...I’m not dead. Not even close. You always give me a hard time about that car, but it’s built like a steel cage...” He faltered, apparently as near some raw emotion as Starsky felt. “The window wasn’t meant to connect with your hard head, that’s the only reason you were even hurt, but I’m okay...Starsky, I’m sorry. I’d have ridden in with you except they needed me to stay on-scene a while to sort things out, but it scared me to death that you were still out when they left with you...Starsk?”

  He blinked at his name, the incarnation of it only his partner used, and felt the resulting warm trickle down his face. He hadn’t even realized that was why the room was blurring, but the weight seemed to grow in his chest from the unreal blond’s every word, and he didn’t want to hear anymore. Taken for granted every day, and now it was...

  He roughly blurted out the words before he thought about it. “I love you.”

  There was an awful pause. Hutch finally swallowed. “I love you, too, pal, but this isn’t good-bye, you got that?”

  No, he...something. Starsky blinked again, more slowly this time. His visitor’s face, the words, even the grief was all becoming bleary. Maybe he could finally get away from it all for a while.

  “Starsk...” He did hear the worried sigh. Then those oddly solid hands were helping him up, supporting him when he threatened to nose-dive right back onto his couch. “Let’s get you to bed and we’ll sort this out in the morning, huh?”

  Wanting to be left alone in his grief was fine in theory, but faced now with the fact, he abruptly panicked. It was Starsky’s turn to grab onto his partner. “Don’ go. Din’ mean--”

  “I’m not going anywhere, buddy, just taking you to bed.” Hutch spoke slowly, soothingly, like he did whenever Starsky’s world was falling apart and he turned to his partner to make sense of it.

  So who would make sense of it for him now?

  The short walk into the bedroom was fuzzy, and it was only when Starsky felt the cool pillow under his head that the world solidified enough again. The ghost was still there. As much as he didn’t want to take his eyes off it, knew it wouldn’t be there when he woke, his every blink grew longer, dragged down by physical and mental exhausted pain. He stared at his partner’s figure as resolutely as he could. “Promise?” he asked muzzily.

  A warm hand squeezed his in oath. “I promise.”

  Starsky’s eyes shut. His partner never broke a promise. He should’ve made Hutch promise not to die, too...

  He fell into bottomless sleep.

  There was far too much light, even with his eyes closed. Starsky started to groan and turn from it, then froze as he thought better of both. Who knew it was possible to hurt that badly?

  And even worse, as the memories of the night before returned.

  Starsky reluctantly cracked one eye open to look at the chair against the wall, and its emptiness was both unsurprising and devastating. He sucked in a breath into a too-tight chest, suddenly overwhelmed with reality. Hutch really was gone.

  “Starsky?”

  The voice was such a shock, he forgot himself and rolled onto his side to find its source.

  The blond cap of head and an arm stretched along the edge of the bed were all that were visible. Anxious blue eyes rose into view the same moment as Starsky’s stomach, still rolling over, abruptly constricted.

  A basin appeared beside him, and without further ado, Starsky emptied the ingested contents of his liquor cabinet into it.

  Either his head or his stomach was going to burst; the toss-up was just which one would go first. The blast of pain took away all reason even as the heaves subsided, and he collapsed back onto the bed, shaking and sweaty and in too much agony to even moan. The next thing he knew was the wet dabs that cleaned off his face, then the cold compress that was laid on his forehead and eyes. Capable hands eased him from his cramped position, tucking a pillow against his middle that he held on to tightly. And then one of his fists was carefully uncurled, giving him a hand to hold on to as he rode out the worst of the pain.

  A warm, alive hand.

  He was only shaking a little as he reached up to push the compress aside. And stare at the living being that sat on the edge of his bed and watched him so concernedly.

  A rueful half-smile curled Hutch’s mouth. “Feeling better? I told you head injuries and hangovers don’t go well together,” he chided sympathetically.

  “I thought you were dead,” Starsky rasped in disbelief, unable to pull his eyes away from the sight before him. He held on with all his desperate strength to the hand in his own. “They said...”

  Hutch shook his head. “I called the hospital last night. They said a D.O.A. uniform from the Tenth came in right around when you did. Six-foot, blue and blond.”

  A mistake--that was all it was. Hutch had never even been gone; it hadn’t been a ghost the night before. So why did his presence seem so miraculous? And why was Starsky’s own throat so tight he could barely take in air?

  “You’d make a lousy detective, partner,” came the gentle tease, trying to help him regain his emotional footing and put it into perspective. But upheavals that extreme weren’t so easy to right. Starsky buried his face in the pillow and tried to breathe around the catch in his throat.

  Hutch simply sat next to him, not hurrying or dismissing, waiting him out. And his presence was all the comfort Starsky could have wished for.

  Finally the raw emotion began to ease to bearable levels, and Starsky blinked up again at the blurry blond figure he’d never hoped to see again, not for real. A mistake--how could he have believed it? To write his partner off so quickly...

  Hutch was shaking his head again. “It’s hard to think straight when you’ve got a concussion, Starsk, let alone when your bloodstream’s full of alcohol. You’re gonna feel lousy for a few days--I think I’ll stick around ‘til you get back on your feet.” ‘Til you’re sure I’m not dead, he could have said, but his eyes held only comprehension, not condescension. His free hand magically appeared with a pair of pills. “Why don’tcha take these and then get some more sleep?”

  Starsky did, the cold water quelling his queasy stomach a little. It was still hard to grasp: just like that, he’d gotten back everything he thought he’d lost. “You better be here when I wake up,” he finally said roughly.

  “I will.”

  “Good. ‘D never find a partner wi’...such bad taste again.” It was getting hard to talk again, this time for reasons purely physical. Strange--he actually felt awfully good.

  Hutch snorted. “Go to sleep, dummy.” But the squeeze he gave Starsky’s hand was understanding.

  Life was good. Contented, Starsky went to sleep.