Paula Wilshe

   From Hutch:

   Boy, that was just the worst night. To be honest, the whole day was kind of…well, it’s hard to explain, but it was just that we’d been through so much. So much. I’d been—what’s that song say? Running on Empty? I’d been doing that for such a long time, trying to do all the stuff that had to be done. Wanting to do all the stuff that had to be done, because of this wonderful gift I had been given. Starsky. He was living. Breathing. Getting well.

   It’s hard to explain, but each and every day, I’d wake up, and I couldn’t believe that my partner was alive and recovering. I know that sounds really stupid, because by then the doctors had already told us he was going to be okay, but if you’d seen him in the hospital, and heard the things the doctors were saying in the beginning, you’d...well…

   Anyhow, after what he’d been through, I was just in awe of the strength and determination that came from inside him, I’d never seen anyone work so hard to get better, which probably sounds like some stupid cliché, I’m sure. It’s not, though. This guy is amazing, and I felt…he was working so hard. It made me want to do just as much, or more, whatever I could.

   The worst, for me, was after I had to go back to work, after he was home. I mean, for me, going to work without him is mostly inconceivable anyway, we’ve been doing it for so long. But to know that he was home, and hurting, and I couldn’t be there…well…I mean, we have a lot of friends, good friends, and they were checking up on him, and doing things, like this friend of ours who owns a bar, and our captain’s wife, they’d been great.

   This will probably sound sort of egotistical, and I don’t mean it to. But when I’d get off work and come home, I found myself doing all this extra stuff, or things the others’d gladly have done if I’d asked them…except I didn’t want to ask them. I wanted to do it all myself. For Starsk. For me. Not like "thank you God for sparing him, I’ll do everything there is to do to show my gratitude," it wasn’t like that.

   Well, maybe that was part of it.

   But mostly it was because (this is the egocentric part) I felt like no one else could really do those things right but me. We have this partnership, you know, this friendship, this "me and thee" thing—we’ve depended on one another for so many…such a lot of years. Sometimes it’s just…it’s just so deep that I can’t entrust it to anyone else. Does that sound nuts? I just reread this paragraph and it made me laugh. It does sound nuts. But I can’t help it, that’s just the way it is, and he’s pretty much the same way with me.

   That day was just off kilter from the time I woke up—or rather Starsky woke me up, I’d been sleeping on his couch for weeks, and I sort of overslept. I didn’t feel that great, nothing major, just a sore throat, and my head was hurting a little, but Starsky kept looking at me weird and asking me if I was okay. Like I had any right to complain about anything after what he had been through.

   So off to work I went, and I spent the morning tying up some loose ends on a case I’d been following. It was raining by the time I got back to Metro, and I settled in for a long afternoon of updating the Starsky’s and my old files. By then, I guess, the bug or whatever was catching up to me, Dobey kept asking me if I wanted to go home, but I told him I was fine, and he backed off. Somebody…Minnie, I think, brought me tea, that was nice.

   Next thing I knew, Starsk was tugging at my elbow telling me to wake up—I can’t believe it, I dozed off over the files. That was kind of embarrassing, but I do have to admit, they were old cases and pretty boring. At first I didn’t know where I was, then I thought I must be having a dream, because we were at work, and Starsky was there. He said something about having finished up the files, and the next thing I knew we were walking out of there and driving home in his car.

   Starsk had had a really good day, I could tell. The plants were all watered, and he’d made dinner for us. I was glad that he was starting to feel more like himself at last. I felt bad that he’d made dinner, I would have done that. I wasn’t that hungry, truthfully, and I felt guilty for not eating more because I knew he’d gone to so much trouble. He kept looking at me, shaking his head, saying, "Don’t be stupid, Blintz," and grinning to let me know he wasn’t mad. But I still felt bad about it.

   I felt bad about a lot of things.

   The whole day had been kind of, I don’t know, unsettled? To be really honest, I wasn’t feeling great at all, even though I told Starsk I was fine—and I thought he was buying it. But by the time we were home, after dinner, sitting on his couch, my throat hurt so much I couldn’t talk right. Starsk started fussing over me, which was the last thing on the face of the earth I wanted, you know?

   How could he do that, when what he’d been through was so horrible? How could I give in to something this stupid, after watching him go through what he had? I tried to tell him, but the words wouldn’t…what it had been like…how it made me feel…how scared and how lonely I’d been without him to talk to…How I couldn’t stop thinking about what would’ve happened if he’d…died?

   While he was in the hospital, you know, and right after, when he came home, there was so much to do. First there was that minute-to-minute will-he-make-it-through-the-next-hour thing, and then it stretched into days and weeks of dressings and medications and PT, and all of that. It was the mechanics of living, you know, and that made all the difference, because the alternative would have been…

   But it was like a treadmill, I admit. There was always so much to do, and I was working, and I guess that night it just caught up to me because I was so tired.

   One of the things about Starsky, which is sometimes absolutely wonderful, and sometimes godawfully annoying, is that he has this…this thing with me. Doesn’t matter what I say, it’s like he almost knows what I’m thinking. Or why I’m thinking it, which, I think, is worse. Of course, I think I think too much sometimes anyway, and he says that sometimes. But, I was… I couldn’t manage get my thoughts into words that night, and he’s sitting over there offering me cough drops. As usual, he knew exactly what I was trying to say, and probably before I did, but hat’s just the way we are with each other, you know?

   Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t trying to say what I was feeling was no big deal, that wasn’t it. He kept saying, "You need a night off." Maybe I did. He can be like a train barreling down the track sometimes, and that’s how he was that night. I was so tired, and feeling crummier by the minute that I couldn’t keep up with him, he just kept talking. He always tells me that’s "Starsky’s Law," which cracks me up.

   Before I knew it, I found myself curled up in his bed, lights off, just the hum of the football game he was watching filtering in from the living room. I should have felt safe and secure, my shift was over, and my partner was on watch… But I didn’t.

   I don’t know what happened then. I just lost it.

   Everything came flooding into my brain—and these tears started that I couldn’t, absolutely could not, control. I was trying to be so quiet, I just didn’t want him to know, didn’t want him to be worried, or upset. But no matter what I did, it just got worse, and once I’d started, I couldn’t turn it off.

   You know, I didn’t even hear him come into the room. I don’t know how I knew he was there, but I did somehow. He sat down next to me, and he was holding my hand real tight. Before I knew it, he’d pulled me up and was hugging me, hard, and I pushed my face into his shoulder thinking I could turn off the waterworks.

   Dumb, huh? So there I was, bawling like a baby, and up against his neck, and he felt so strong, and so healthy and so alive, and he was comforting me, that it made me cry even harder, just terrified me when I thought about what I’d almost lost. And how I was failing him, because I just wanted to be strong for him, but I was...I was…

   Starsk kept mumbling all these things, "sh, babe…sh…" in that same voice he uses when something really horrible has happened—to me, sometimes, or to families of victims we meet on the job. He told me once that was the way his mom used to be with him and his brother, that same voice.

   I never had that, see, because if my parents had seen me cry like this all they’d have done was tell me to stop acting like a baby, and to "be a man." Always hated that phrase, "be a man," it hurt me worse than anything else they could have done to me because I was never allowed to…well…be a kid.

   Starsk never lost that inner child thing, you know? I think he cultivates it, truthfully, and it’s one of the things about him that I admire most. That, and his determination, his strength…and you know, this is what makes me feel like my parents were way off track a lot of the time, since they always felt equated childlike with childish. Or something, I don’t know. But Starsky’s playful and likes to have fun, and yet he’s mature and responsible…and his family seems to like him just fine. They like me too, for some reason, which is kind of cool. I used to wish that they were my family. In a way, though, they are.

   I really got hung up in this, didn’t I? Didn’t mean to, sorry. So there I was, crying my eyes out, and feeling sad and guilty, and kind of sick (but don’t tell Starsk that part), and he just kept holding me and letting it happen. I wanted to tell him how thankful I was to have him back, and to have him in my life, always there for me. I wanted to thank him for not dying, and let him know how much I admire him, and how much I love him, but I couldn’t get the words to come out.

   Finally, I could feel myself winding down, like there just weren’t any tears left inside me. Of course there weren’t, they were all over Starsky’s shirt, which was soaked. Then you know what he did? In this perfectly normal voice, he says, "You want some ice cream?"

   I could feel myself starting to smile, jammed there against his neck.

   And I knew then that the words were not necessary. He already knew.

THE END