Paula Wilshe

   "What took you so long?" Starsky asked weakly.

   "Stopped for ice cream. Are you okay?" I asked, running my fingers through Starsky's hair. I was ostensibly looking for the source of the blood that was running down his face, except I knew that wasn't my main motivation, and I'm pretty sure Starsk was aware of it too. Sometimes we just need to do things like that, it's how we communicate...for me, it's kind of...that's how I reassure myself that he really is okay.

   "I'll live," he said, in a quiet, tired voice, as we both watched the decompensation of one Lionel Fitzgerald, who was sprawled on the ground in front of K.C.'s car.

   I looked back at Starsky, and I squeezed his ankle where I was still holding it. "Would you call in on your radio and request an ambulance?" I asked K.C. "And tell them to call Metro and send us some back up, all right? We need to get this guy out of here, but I have a feeling I'll be at the hospital with my partner." I smiled at her, and she nodded.

   She'd been holding Starsky's hand, and was obviously still frightened by Fitzgerald, who was continuing to rant from his tiny stage. "Sure," she agreed, taking the long way back to her cab so she wouldn't have to be any closer to him than necessary.

   I leaned in close to Starsky. I knew he was hurting, but he also gets a little embarrassed admitting that in front of girls sometimes. "How you doing?" I asked him.

   "Mm," he answered, and tried to nod. "Ow..." he reached a hand up toward his head.

   "Don't touch that," I ordered, taking his wrist and pulling it away. "You have a pretty good cut." I had some napkins in my pocket left from yesterday's dinner, or was it breakfast--we'd been awake so long I'd lost track. I pressed them against the cut, and he kind of leaned into me a little bit, closing his eyes. "You okay?" I asked again. "You dizzy?"

   "Little bit," he said, but I could tell by the way he was talking that he'd got his teeth clenched, so I figured it probably hurt a lot more than he was saying.

   He was shivering a little bit too, shock, I guess, or lack of sleep, so I slipped off my jacket and put it around him.

   "Thanks," he said, looking up with a wan smile.

   Before long we began to hear sirens in the distance, soon the alley was swimming with extraneous personnel...the backup we'd requested from Metro, that stupid kid Baker, who was talking so loud I had to pull him aside and tell him to shut the hell up, he was upsetting my partner.

   Baker looked frightened to death. Starsky's not the only one who's scary when he gets mad.

   Anyhow, they let me ride in the ambulance, which was great, since I didn't have my car, and K.C. had gone back to the station to give a statement. I was trying to stay out of the way, which isn't easy in an ambulance, let me tell you, there's not a lot of room. The paramedics had started an IV, and they were kind of hanging back, not having anything else major to do till we got to the hospital.

   Starsky reached up and grabbed my shirt, kind of pulled me down to his level. "Can't see so good," he whispered.

   "Can't see so good how?" I asked him. "Like, black spots, or blurry, or what?"

   "Blurry," he said, and as soon as he said that I could see a look cross his face. "You got an emesis basin?" I asked the paramedic. "He feels sick."

   "Sure," said the medic, and before I could blink my eyes, he'd reached over, gotten one, and put it in my hands, just as Starsky started gagging a little bit, although he hadn't eaten since the day before, so nothing much came up.

   The medic grinned at me. "Good call," he said in approval, and handed me a wet cloth so I could wipe Starsky's face, because he was sweating a little bit from feeling sick.

   "Lots of experience," I told him, but I felt oddly proud that I'd been able to tell what my partner was feeling before anyone else...hell, before he'd even said anything. But, you know, that's just the way Starsk and I are with each other. Probably from so many years, we've logged so much time together...sometimes I think we know each other better than we know ourselves. And that's pretty weird, if you really think about it.

   "You done, Starsk?" I asked, rubbing his back lightly.

   "Yeah," he whispered, and flopped over on his back again.

   Once we were at the hospital the medic put in a good word for me, and they let me come in the ER while they stitched Starsky up, and did all their head games to make sure he wasn't seriously injured. He wasn't especially, hell of a headache, eight stitches, your basic run of the mill crack on the head. They gave him some compazine through the IV for the nausea, and that helped a lot, and it also made him drowsy, so I took that opportunity to go out to the waiting room to call the boss.

   Dobey was pretty cool about the whole thing, said we could fill out the reports on Monday, and they'd taken Fitzgerald for a psychiatric eval, so there was nothing more we had to do. He was really gruff with me, told me to "Take your partner home, take care of him, and the two of you get some sleep. You're no good to me if you're both dead on your feet."

   Which, of course, is his way of saying, "I'm glad you're both okay, take care, son." We were lucky to have him for a boss, for all his bluster, he's pretty supportive. Then he said something about Huggy having left some convoluted message for me, something about borrowing some record albums of mine, some country western stuff, or something. I hoped it wasn't a musical emergency, because honestly, I was too damn tired to deal with anything like that tonight.

   Finally Starsky was done, they were sending him home with detailed instructions on how to care for the laceration (like I already didn't know how to do that from the hundred times before), a couple of prescriptions, admonitions to rest and take it easy, and their blessings for a long and happy life.

   We went back to my place, and I got Starsky settled on the couch. He was exhausted, even without the head thing and the stitches, he'd been tired before. I was too, I made us each a cup of tea, and found I couldn't stop yawning while I waited for the water to boil.

   When it was finally ready, I settled down on the other end of the couch, and I pulled the blanket down from the back of it and covered him up. I had a feeling we'd both be asleep before long, probably end up spending the night right there, sprawled ungloriously on the sofa, both of us.

   "Hey, Hutch?"

   "Hm?" I said, in the middle of swallowing.

   "Ice cream, huh?"

   "Yeah," I could feel myself starting to smile.

   "Well, anyway, thanks," he said, and grinned over at me, well, sort of grinned, as much as his headache would allow.

   "You're welcome," I told him. "Drink your tea."

   "Hutch?"

   I sighed. "Yeah?"

   He frowned, like he was really concentrating on something and the effort was painful. It probably was. "You know how that guy was an actor?"

   "Yeah."

   "Well," he paused. "and Charles Dickens said something about all the world being a stage?"

   "Well," I pulled the end of the blanket up over my lap. "I think it was Shakespeare, but yeah."

   "Okay," he said. "But if all the world's a stage?"

   "Yeah, Starsk?"

   "Next time I want a better director." He closed his eyes and surrendered to sleep.

   And I couldn't stop smiling.

THE END