Important Author Note: This is a sequel to "Affirmation." Please read that story first. Even if you did read "Affirmation" when it was posted as a Holiday Creative Writing Assignment submission at The Pits in January, a quick read of the updated, edited version posted in the story files is advised. ;-) In order for the "Affirmation II" plotline to be more realistic, I had to change the time setting and Hutch's status from intern to resident in "Affirmation."

Also, "Affirmation II: Life and Death" was conceived and written before the tragic fires in Rhode Island, New York, and Connecticut, and the Alabama shooting took place. Since the events in my story differ significantly from those tragedies, I decided it was safe to post my story unaltered. My heartfelt sympathy and prayers go out to those affected by the recent disasters, and any similarities in "Affirmation II" to current events are wholly unintentional, so please excuse them. Thank you.

Contact for feedback/critique: kam2003sh@excite.com

A second round of special thanks go to Karen-Leigh for beta-edit and to Ellis Murdock for encouragement, medical edit, and tech support in uploading the files. You ladies rock!

Affirmation II: Life and Death

By Kaye Austen Michaels

The unbroken string of lights in the night-blackened city rained down on the speeding car in appropriate colors for the Season: green, gold, and red in rapid succession. Starsky barely noticed. As long as the other cars allotted the Torino a few feet of space, red and green lights at the intersections meant the same thing to her driver. They meant even less to her passenger.

Hutch practically huddled in his seat, a disturbing reversal of his usual lanky sprawl. Starsky spared him glances in the split second intervals between dodging traffic obstacles and frowned at the ghostly clamminess of high fever. The glossy whiteness was most pronounced around Hutch's lips, now gray instead of healthy rose, but Starsky knew that fever had help in producing the effect. The distracted blond, staring blankly out the windshield, murmured sentences that held no meaning for Starsky, who only caught a few words out of the jumble. AV block…ST elevation…Lasix contraindicated in patients sensitive to sulfanomide…

"Hutch?"

"…Ventricular arrhythmia secondary to MI indicates--" Hutch jerked in the seat and half turned, licking his lips and smearing a droplet of blood on the chapped bottom one. "Hm? What?"

Starsky forced a smile to battle his intense divided worry for the man at his side and the man who waited for them to bring rescue and medical salvation. "Love ya, know it?"

Hutch's lips twitched, but his eyes did the smiling. "Drive faster."

Starsky's foot slammed harder on the accelerator of its own accord and the Torino lunged crazily close to the Volvo station wagon ahead before careening around it with nothing but spit and a prayer to guide the car back into the safe line before the oncoming Ford F-150 flew by honking its horn and flashing lights in protest.

"Jesus, Starsky!"

"You said drive faster," Starsky said grimly, attention focused on the road.

"That I did. Starsk?"

"Yeah?"

"Love you, too."

The wail of a competing siren impacted each man differently. Hutch flung a hunted look out the rear window; Starsky balled his fists and beat them against the steering wheel without a touch on the brakes. "Shit!"

"Any hope he's been ordered to ride escort?"

"Nah," Starsky said. "He's in pursuit mode."

"You can outrun him." Though shaky from fever and tension, Hutch's voice held marked respect for his lover's driving skill. "Can't afford to pull over and explain the situation."

"Outrunning him's not the problem." He didn't elaborate, for Hutch knew the danger as well as he did. "Helluva time for the Mars light to malfunction."

"It's out of practice," Hutch remarked wryly. "You'd think the siren would give them a clue."

"Not with this car. Not anymore." Starsky gripped the wheel tighter, muscles tensing along his arms, and hoped Hutch couldn't hear the regret. It was sobering to have proof that the Torino no longer commanded the immediate respect of every law enforcement vehicle on the streets. "Only got one chance."

"Starsk?" Hutch's eyes widened as Starsky spared one hand to grope blindly for the radio mike. "Oh, hell, might as well put our necks into the nooses," he conceded and slipped the mike into the questing hand. Flipping the appropriate switch and adjusting the volume, muttering his certainty that the "antiquated" device wouldn't even work, Hutch gasped at the resulting squawk and growl of police radio traffic.

Starsky cleared his throat. "Zebra-7. Come in, Zebra-7. This is Zebra-3 calling Zebra-7. Repeat. Zebra-3 calling--"

The radio chirped and gurgled, and a disembodied voice crackled, "Zebra-what?"

Another voice followed this with a raspy shout, "Christ's birthday, is that you, Starsky?"

Hutch laughed. "That's Babcock, all right. No one else swears that creatively."

The first voice came again through static but recognizable as Jeff Simmons, "You and Hutch taking a walk down memory lane this Christmas Eve?"

"Not exactly. There's a medical emergency at the captain's that I'm trying to get Hutch to ASAP, but we've picked up a black-and-white tail heading west on Oak and wiseass won't take a siren for an answer. You think you could radio in to Control and get this guy off our backs before he has one of his buddies cut us off down the road? We're racing the clock as it is."

"That bad?" Simmons sounded disturbed. "Sure thing, Starsky. We'll take care of it. You just get the doctor there in one piece so he can work his magic."

"Magic has nothing to do with it," Hutch muttered when Starsky re-cradled the mike. He sneezed, sucked in a short breath and clutched at his forehead. "If I could just think without exploding my sinuses--!"

"Ah, Hutch." Starsky couldn't risk eye contact, but he could manage the wheel one-handed and devote his spare to caressing Hutch's thigh, rubbing firmly through the thin green poplin and feeling as much heat as if he'd grasped naked flesh. He frowned again.

"You're burning up."

Hutch sniffled but made no comment until a black-and-white unit displaying full lights and sirens shot out of the upcoming cross-street and took the lead. With a backward glance at the patrol car that remained on their tail at a more judicious distance, he smiled. "We're in the cradle. Full escort. Simmons and Babcock came through."

Starsky grunted. "Well, the guy up there better glue his foot to the pedal or I'm gonna leave him in the dust."

Hutch lay back in the seat and covered his eyes. "More likely we'll be sitting in the dust when the Torino remembers she's too old for this rough treatment. I wish we hadn't left my car at Memorial tonight."

"Your car might be younger, and far be it from me to knock the first decent car you ever owned in your life, but the Torino can still outrun her standing still."

~~*~~

The Torino produced a screechy rumble on its whiplash stop at the base of the Dobeys' driveway. To Hutch it sounded eerily like a warning not to expect a repeat performance. Through the pulse of pressure above and behind his eyes, he forced himself to focus on the sedate, yellow and chocolate-trimmed Colonial, its casually neat lawn and shrubs, and the Christmas candles in the windows, reduced to specks of light by the newly arrived and flashing County fire squad. Hutch nodded approval. Firemen-paramedic first responders would be easy to work with; they were used to carrying tough calls.

A heartbeat later Hutch was halfway up the walk beside the paramedics, having introduced himself as a licensed Memorial resident and a friend of the family. Starsky had acknowledged and dismissed their escorts before the added police presence could alarm Edith; now he hurried to catch up and brushed past Hutch and the firemen to greet her at the front door, wrapping an arm around her and pushing her gently back into the warmth of the house.

Another figure replaced Edith as vigil-holder at the door. She allowed the firemen to pass through but blocked Hutch's path, looking in her worry years older than fifteen. Her enormous dark eyes pleading and her hands clasped at the velvet bodice of her Christmas pleat-skirt jumper, she said, "Oh, Hutch. Please do something for Dad."

Hutch had to blink. Ten years slipped away and he was sitting in a stairwell holding a tiny soon-to-be five-year-old worried about the "bad man" wanting to hurt her daddy. He remembered so well, he could have sewn a replica of her little robe if handed the proper materials. From that moment, Rosie had been partly his little girl. She might pal around with Starsky and adore him, but Hutch was second only to the captain in paternal trust.

He didn't have time to reassure her. He didn't have the words. Honesty made him want to explain, to soften the potential blow, but how could he tell her this was a different expectation she had of him? This wasn't police work shared with Starsky, who completed him and doubled their capabilities. This was a strange alchemy called Medicine with countless variables and a formula almost as shadowy as the recipe for turning plain rocks to gold. So many things out of his control….

Perhaps ten seconds had passed, but Hutch felt he'd been rooted to the spot minutes on end. He shook himself and, one-arm hugging Rosie to his side, left her standing in the small, dimly lit foyer. In the open living room entrance, Hutch paused and donned the sterile mask he'd brought with him; there was no sense in taking chances. A sneeze he couldn't control immediately proved his point.

The living room never changed and its homey comfort hit him in the face like a blast of painful heat in the current circumstances. Edith's plush, walnut-appointed couch and chairs and matching foot stools would never go the way of the dinosaur like fad furniture. Hutch had played countless tunes on the piano in the corner, stretched out with Starsky on the floor in front of the TV as part of the family to watch Cal's first televised college basketball game. The star of that happy memory, appearing at the entrance while Hutch adjusted his mask, looked far too young for his Bruins team sweatshirt, but at twenty he had four-inches height advantage on his blond 'uncle'.

Cal was a young man of few words, the result of years under the noisy umbrella of Dobey's bluster, but his expression said it all: fear, uncertainty, the awkwardness of a boy trying desperately to be a man and shield his mother and sister from something he understood no better than they did. Hutch clasped him by the scruff of his neck and offered a nod of solidarity. Cal joined Rosie in the foyer, and Hutch schooled his face.

Stretched on the couch, Captain Dobey's appearance and struggle for pain-free breath nearly wrecked Hutch's mask of control, but he knelt at the older man's side and patted his arm. Dobey couldn't see a smile through the mask, so Hutch opted for humor to put the patient at ease. "Hi, Cap'n. You just wanted to put Starsky and me back to work on Christmas Eve for old times' sake, right?"

The firemen looked astonished and slightly uncomfortable, and even Starsky's eyes were wide, but Edith's knowing smile was reflected on her husband's face.

The younger paramedic, as blond and baby-faced as Hutch has been in uniform, recited the vitals he'd taken during Hutch's brief delay in the foyer, "BP 190/120, respirations 28, pulse 130. Marked diaphoresis with labored breathing and severe chest pain. Sublingual nitro administered per standard."

"Any drug allergies?" Hutch asked Edith, who shook her head. "Let's get a saline IV with D5W and 5 mg morphine sulfate loaded and put him on 6 liters oxygen. EKG strip?"

"Coming up, Doc," said the older paramedic, attaching the final lead on Dobey's bared chest. Hutch fixed the oxygen mask himself while the other fireman delved into his drug box for the appropriate meds and IV bags. Stethoscope in place, Hutch bent over and listened, hoping against hope not to find what he suspected, but the rales and wheezing he heard weren't encouraging. Clamping down on a frown before it could show in his eyes and be visible to Edith, he glanced up and caught Starsky's penetrating gaze. He had to shake it off--he could never hide anything of consequence from his lover--and focus on Edith. "When was his last physical?"

"In October. He received a clean bill of health, didn't you, dear? The usual lecture about losing a few pounds and taking his fair share of time off work, but nothing alarming." Edith stared down at her husband in a desperate demand for agreement, but Dobey was beyond adding his two cents worth, caught in a semi-conscious world of his own pain.

The fireman in charge of administering meds handed his partner the IV bags to hold aloft, and Hutch nodded at Starsky. He needed no words. Starsky offered him a brief look of unconcealed admiration and confidence, and took Edith gently by the arm. "Why don't we--?"

"No!" she said, pulling at Starsky's hold. "No, let me stay--"

"EKG strip, Doc," said the blond fireman, taking over for his partner.

Hutch took the thin strip of paper and stretched it out for legibility. He called his cardiology rotation to mind in a continuous stream of charts, EKG interpretations, and patient files. Wide QRS complex, S-three abnormality, left ventricular gallop by palpation… "Seventy-five mg lidocaine IV bolus."

Noise in the foyer announced the arrival of the ambulance attendants, who wheeled in a gurney. The fireman relegated to holding IVs turned the task over to one of the white-clad new arrivals and assisted his partner in getting the new IV med loaded in haste. The speed didn't matter. In the time it took Hutch to wipe his watering eyes with his arm, Dobey's head lolled to the side and the EKG recorder emitted a stentorian beep.

"V-fib!" Hutch shouted, grabbing at the EKG strip to confirm. "Starsky!"

Starsky took the order at face value and tightened his hold on Edith's arm, propelling her with him out of the room while one of the attendants and the senior fireman quickly moved Dobey to the firmer surface of the floor for resuscitation procedures. Beginning chest compressions immediately after Dobey was situated on the CPR board, Hutch had to forget Edith's cold, terrified eyes. This was the woman who had saved her son and daughter from a would-be assassin and refused to be sent away from the danger that remained--no doubt she felt it betrayal to be shuffled aside while her husband fought for his life. Hutch couldn't explain that it was his feelings more than hers he needed to spare. No hardened doctor with years of experience in tragedy under his belt, he couldn't devote his entire attention to the patient under the scrutiny of a desperate wife. On Hutch's command, the paramedic took over the chest compressions, and Hutch grasped the prepared defibrillator paddles, willing himself to project calm and patience, and doing his best to disregard the voices rising at the edge of the foyer.

"Get back in there, David!"

"Edith--"

"My Harold needs him, and Hutch needs you. You've always soaked strength off each other. I'll--I'll stay out here like he wants. I have my children--we'll be…fine."

"One hundred…two hundred…" the fireman chanted, watching the defibrillator dial.

"Oxygen off! Clear!" Hutch ordered, placing the paddles and preparing for the upcoming jolt of Dobey's body. Dobey's chest spasmed from the paddles' discharge, his upper body lifting off the floor in an arc from the electricity, and Hutch waited breathlessly, paddles aloft, for the conversion. None came, and the EKG machine's beep merely underscored the tension while the paramedic resumed compressions. "Three hundred," Hutch said after a minute, hating the sneeze that followed on the heels of the order. His head screamed under the steel band of sinus pressure.

"One hundred…two hundred…three hundred…."

"Clear!" In the ensuing silence, Hutch's fever turned to a layer of sweating ice. He had no time to consult Mannigan via the paramedic radio; his lifesaving decision had to come within seconds, no margin for error; and he couldn't let his panic show: the unconscious hesitation in the firemen's actions that might result could be fatal for the captain.

"Asystole!" the blond paramedic announced.

"Standard Sodium Bicarb IV; give me 0.5 Epi intracardiac." While the paramedics split the duty, Hutch noted via peripheral vision that Starsky lingered well out of the way by the piano.

"Here, Doc." The senior paramedic handed Hutch the prepared syringe in exchange for the paddles. With barely a second for thought, Hutch pinpointed the precise location on the captain's chest and pushed the needle through the chest wall. He heard a soft gasp behind him, recognizable in the back of his mind as Starsky's voice, but he tuned it out, thrusting the emptied syringe to the side and initiating CPR for the third time.

After the eternal, obligatory minute, the paramedic monitoring the EKG said, "No conversion."

"Four hundred watts/second," Hutch ordered, shocked at how cold and flat his voice sounded. The whole room was chilled, he thought feverishly, as if Death were making its entrance by diffusion. He took the paddles and waited for the fireman to announce the proper charge.

"Four hundred!"

"Come on, give me a little help here, you're not a quitter!" Hutch begged his captain, careless of what the paramedics thought. He gave the all-clear command and held firm through the third jolt of Dobey's chest.

"Rhythm captured!" the young fireman announced triumphantly.

"BP is 80 palp, Doc," the other one said. "He's in sinus rhythm."

Dobey's breathing sounded oddly like the repeated crushing of cellophane in someone's fist. Hutch clutched at his forehead, shaken, and rose slowly from his uncomfortable kneeling position.

"Give me a new set of vitals and let's get a lidocaine drip on board, but we need to transport now. There's nothing else we can do for him here, and if he arrests again, I'm not--" Hutch bit off his uncertainty and took a deep breath.

Joining his partner at the piano, he spared no time to remove his mask and wipe at his runny nose with the tissue his all-knowing Starsky handed him. Starsky's eyebrows lifted in a silent question Hutch couldn't answer out loud. He watched the paramedics and ambulance attendants rapidly prepare the patient for transport and suppressed the urge to cling to Starsky for even one second to absorb some of his partner's strength and tensed vitality. Never one to ignore Hutch's silent needs, Starsky took the tissue from Hutch's hand and dabbed his pouring eyes.

"Don't want Edith to mistake sinus dripping for tears," Starsky whispered with an encouraging smile. "Amazing work, Doc."

"It's not over," Hutch replied through a snuffle. "We're walking on the edge. Stick close to Edith and the kids, Starsk." The implication hung heavy in the air above them both.

"I'll be right behind you," Starsky nodded at the recessional of the paramedics and gurney.

"Drive safely," Hutch whispered, snatching one final moment of intense eye contact to hold him during the ride to Memorial when Starsky would be out of sight. Starsky squeezed his hand and winked. It was their special signal to take courage and brace up. At Starsky's angriest or most frustrated during their years of police work, one wink from Hutch had melted the iron into something that could flow freely from Starsky's system. The gesture in reverse worked wonders; Hutch walked out of the living room under a refreshingly cool second wind.

He needed it. Once settled in the back of the ambulance with the captain and the senior paramedic, he knew he had to call in for help to keep Dobey alive long enough to reach the trauma center. The paramedic's handling of the onboard radio system gave Hutch a chance to gather his energy and assess the captain's condition.

~~*~~

Thoroughly exhausted and wondering if her husband had settled Lena to sleep for the night--a four-year-old asleep at this time of night on Christmas Eve would be a miracle worthy of record! --Nurse Caroline Maxwell waited for the tall, slate-haired doctor to release his MVA victim into the care of the surgeon who would try to salvage the patient's liver and spleen. When Dr. Mannigan turned, removing his disposable trauma smock and tossing it into the nearby waste container, Maxwell wished she had a way to soften her words. Middle age meant nothing to Mannigan, who had a seemingly endless supply of energy that irritated his med students and peers alike, but the unusually busy night's strain showed in subtle ways. A fresh Mannigan wouldn't leave a patient's side until the gurney and surgeon were out of his sight.

"You're needed at the radio base, Doctor. Hutch is en route with an MI patient, cardiac arrest, three charges prior to conversion, secondary pulmonary edema--"

"Hutch! How-- not David!" Mannigan's face remained as controlled as ever, but his green eyes could always express a thousand emotions, and the mixture of worry and alarm in them now was striking.

The nurse hadn't anticipated this assumption. She shook her head fervently. "No, not based on the patient's age given by the paramedic."

Mannigan's eyes showed his relief. "There's no telling, then. Hutch's Good Samaritan impulse is probably registered with Guinness, and his inability to recognize when he's ill is equally phenomenal." He pushed past her on a straight line for the radio base.

"The hallmarks of cops and trauma specialists," Caroline called after him, laughing.

Mannigan threw a hand in the air without looking back. "The hallmarks of burned-out cops and trauma specialists. Have Bambi set up Trauma Three. Dammit; thought I got rid of Galahad for the night."

Caroline smiled and went in search of Bambi. She found her consoling a pre-teen whose Christmas Eve had been irrevocably ruined by an allergic reaction to his grandmother's fruit cake. Caroline winced and decided the boy could realistically portray The Hive in a documentary on skin conditions. She tugged on Bambi's white tunic sleeve.

The strawberry curls were wilting, a true sign of Bambi's fatigue, but they bounced when she tossed a glance over her shoulder. "What you need, Caro?"

"Mannigan wants you to prep Trauma Three. Hutch has an MI patient--"

"Hutch is back!" Bambi said loudly. "For heaven's sake, couldn't Starsky convince him to stay in bed--" she broke off, eyeing the youngster, and flushed from curls to chin.

Caroline smirked, but Bambi's austere, minimal headshake silenced her planned innuendo. She turned serious. "He's not back on shift. He's en route in an ambulance with--" Bambi paled and brought both hands to her mouth. Caroline sighed at allowing The Assumption to happen twice. "It's not Starsky unless he aged fifteen years since he left with Hutch tonight."

"God," Bambi breathed through spread fingers. "You just about gave me a heart attack."

With one more tousle of the young patient's sandy mop, she headed in the direction of the trauma rooms. Pediatrics not her forte, and feeling the annoying urge to sympathy itch just from looking at the boy, Caroline returned to the main nurse's station.

She was there, sharing a ten-minute coffee break with Maureen, the receptionist still rigged out in full elf's costume, when commotion around the corner at the Receiving Entrance interrupted their conversation about the changing trend in nursing apparel.

Maureen cocked her head to the side, listening. "Sounds like we've got a new arrival. Anyway, my cousin is an ICU nurse in Madison, and she wears these chartreuse pants and neon pink lab coat ensembles. They can even wear sneakers instead of nursing shoes, provided the sneaks don't have any colored trimming."

"You're kidding!" Caroline was shocked. "God, when I came out of nursing school, my first nursing manager wrote us up if our caps were pinned an inch to the wrong side. I think she thought it was evidence we'd been tumbling with a doctor in a broom closet somewhere. That was her mentality--"

"Holy Mother preserve us!" Maureen burst out, and Caroline knew the sentiment wasn't directed at her first nurse manager. She followed Maureen's gaze as an attendant-pushed gurney finished rounding the corner on breakneck pace for the trauma rooms. "Is that--?"

"Yes, he came back on an ambulance."

Hutch stood on the bottom rail of the rapidly moving gurney and leaned over the heavyset black man, his hands flashing from the man's arms to his legs while Mannigan, standing on the opposite rail, performed chest compressions in counterpoint to the paramedic operating the bag attached to the patient's artificial airway.

"What's Hutch doing?"

"Alternating tourniquets," Caroline answered, scrunching her brow. "This is a bad one. I'd better go lend a hand. Bambi's good, but she's not two people."

Maureen put down her Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer antlered mug. Her face was troubled and didn't match her weak smile. "I'm headed back to Reception to do some Starsky-watching."

Caroline didn't scold her for frivolity in the face of human trauma. It was simply Maureen's way of coping with an atmosphere of pain and suffering she hadn't been trained to view clinically. "How do you know he's here?"

"If Hutch is back in his condition, you can bet Starsky isn't far behind, and he'll have to cool his heels in the waiting area while Hutch is in Trauma."

"Maureen."

"Hey, it's a harmless hobby."

"And a hopeless one," Caroline said, squeezing the tall elf's arm in passing.

~~*~~

"I just don't understand how this could happen," Edith said for the third time since they arrived at Memorial. "He's been fine. Just a couple hours before--before…he was singing carols while Rosie played the piano."

Starsky tightened his arm around her shoulders, covered the fists she clenched on her knees with his own unsteady hand. He was at a loss for words he hadn't already said three times during the lengthy wait. Rosie curled in her chair, not caring about the ladylike way of sitting in a pleated skirt, and rested her head and shoulders against Cal's chest in the circle of his embrace. Cal hadn't budged an inch except to massage his sister's back and wipe her eyes. Starsky had never been more proud of the young man.

He felt numb. He and Hutch had teased Dobey through the years about his various diet attempts, the long hours he kept, the weight of the department he carried on his shoulders. Wisdom that came of reaching forty years and facing his own potential for frailty in his mid-thirties told him those taunts had often bordered on cruel and diminished his humanity. But Dobey's very invincibility, rather than a perceived weakness, had made him a perfect target. The captain was a permanent fixture, a monolith of strength and character that couldn't be moved any easier than someone could pick up Metropolitan Division and deposit it in the suburbs. Seeing Dobey in full arrest was like watching a god proven mortal.

And Hutch. Starsky shivered, but Edith was too absorbed in her fear and anxiety to notice. He'd never seen Hutch so on fire. Even in Hutch's detective heyday, that aura of a divine calling hadn't spilled off him in waves like tonight. It was beautiful, breathtaking…terrifying to watch. It was the first thing that had ever made him regret keeping Hutch close to him on the streets for a decade. Was it a mortal sin in some cosmic religion's book to keep a butterfly in a cocoon?

A glimpse of green tights forced Starsky to look up into Maureen's concerned eyes. She held out two Styrofoam cups of coffee and whispered, "You think the young ones might like a soda? I didn't--uh--wanna--"

Starsky glanced to the side and understood Maureen's aborted comment. She hadn't wanted to disturb their rigid, silent vigil with mundane questions about soda pop. He started to reach for the cups when Edith twitched beneath his arm and Maureen stepped back.

Holding his mask limply at his side, his scrub top liberally sweat-stained, Hutch walked with the precision of having to think which foot to put in front of the other. He stopped a foot from their chairs and moved a lead-heavy arm to brush through his hair and wipe his brow.

He smiled.

Edith started crying, trembling with silent sobs and a lone trail of tears down her right cheek. Cal jumped off his seat, hauling Rosie with him. Maureen showed both her dimples. Starsky heaved a sigh of relief that had to be heard a mile away.

"He's stable," Hutch said slowly. "The consulting cardiologist is about to come down, Edith, and you can be with him for that. Katrin Huber is on call tonight. She co-founded the Neue Kardiologie Institut in Geneva and did research at Beth-Israel in New York and the Cleveland Clinic before she came here. Dr. Mannigan, the captain's primary ER physician, thinks she walks on water--" Hutch swayed in place and gripped his forehead.

"Hutch?" In his alarm, Starsky released Edith less gently than intended and hurried to his feet, arms thrust forward to steady the exhausted man. Before his hands made contact, their target buckled at the knees and crumpled to the floor.

Stunned into forgetting his whereabouts, Starsky screamed, "Medic!"

~~*~~

Hutch wasn't sure he was awake. Pitch black gave way to darkness then turned to shadowy dimness but grew no brighter. His ears picked up a vague hum of noise that sounded miles distant. He held his breath… and heard the one thing that could reassure him: the sound of breathing he would recognize anywhere under any circumstances.

"Hey gorgeous man, welcome back," said a soft, loving voice.

Hutch turned his face to the indeed welcoming sound and even more comforting sight of Starsky's eyes sparkling their own light, his handsome face a bit drawn and wooden with fatigue but no less pulse-quickening. "Starsk--"

"Well, it's nice there's no fever-induced amnesia," Starsky teased, stroking through Hutch's hair. Hutch thought of a snappy retort but promptly and purposefully forgot it. Starsky's humor rang more like shaken relief than an invitation for joking one-upmanship.

Blinking rapidly, Hutch tried to make sense of his surroundings. Still in his scrubs, he shared a bed with Starsky, who wore the same green denim and red sweater that--Hutch tried to sit up at the moment of realization. Hospital bed. What the--? Dobey!

"Dobey!"

"Easy, Hutch. He's in good hands. That cardiologist lady came; Mannigan's in and out; and I've been back and forth between here and checking on Edith and the kids until her sister arrived. They're moving him shortly--"

"To Telemetry. Right. And what--?" Hutch swallowed hard and strained his throbbing eyes to see beyond the bed in the dim lighting. They were obviously in an observation room, the panel blinds closed for privacy. Starsky lay on his side to give Hutch the lion's share of the bed. "What happened?"

"You fainted, superman. Mannigan said it's no wonder. Runnin' on fumes, high fever, chock full of meds, and single-handedly beating death--"

"Single-handedly, nothing! I'll bet those are your words not Mannigan's. When I can stand on my own two feet again, he'll cut them right out from under me, and rightly so, because--" A hand over his lips stopped the tirade. Starsky chuckled.

"Nope. Won't wash. The great man himself said you gave Dobey the chance he needed to survive. Edith swears their first male grandchild will be named Kenneth."

Hutch couldn't conceal his horror at the fate awaiting some future child. "God, no!" he mouthed against Starsky's hand.

"Ken, maybe?" Starsky suggested, grinning a return of the fiery spirit within.

"Blecch."

Starsky laughed and pretended to shake his hand dry. "Watch the spit. I'd rather us swap it than get decorated with it. All right, I'll let you argue the point with her."

"How long was I out?"

"After you fainted? Just a few minutes. You came around when they got you to an exam room, but you didn't seem to notice anything, and you conked back out. Asleep. So you were hauled in here to get some rest. Bambi's been by a couple times to check your vitals."

"Starsky, how long have I been out?"

"Oh, a few hours. It's almost three a.m."

Hutch frowned at the narrow bed space and the wall-length observation window covered only by thin flaps of glorified paper. "I'm awake now, so we need to--"

"Uh-uh," Starsky pushed him by the shoulder back down on the bed. "Bambi said she'd slap you with a sedative if you tried to vacate the premises before daybreak, and she promised something too horrible to repeat if you worried about us being in here. She said, and I quote, that Mannigan doesn't care if you have the Rams' entire defensive line in bed with you as long as you get well enough to help with the patient-load in a few days."

Hutch lay back on the slab of boulder masquerading as a pillow and stared at the ceiling. Fingertips caressed his brow, traced over and beneath his lashes, rubbed at his temples. "Say, where's the guy who crawled in my hospital bed once upon a time? We weren't even--"

"That's right," Hutch interrupted in a strange voice. "We weren't even. Now, we are."

"And Bambi knows it. So does Mannigan, apparently. You heard her tod--yesterday."

"I'm thinking about the people I work with who don't know or haven't figured it out. Starsky, it was bad enough what we would've had to deal with on the force. Yeah, it might've been dangerous for us, but not for anyone else. Not really. Here, I'm afraid it could impact patient care. If I'm treating a patient and assisted by someone who doesn't take kindly to following orders from a queer--"

"Jesus, Hutch! You think you're working with people--even one person!--who'd let a patient suffer 'cause of something petty like that? That's a heavy accusation, buddy."

"I'm not accusing anyone. I don't want to take chances."

"So, what're you gonna do? Start dating nurses as cover?" Starsky gripped both his shoulders this time and pushed him down onto the mattress with insistence born of hurt Hutch could see etching lines beneath Starsky's eyes. He saw the kiss zeroing in, and expected harshness he deserved, but Starsky's mouth was soft, pliant, and affectionate. A lit match to long dry brush. He had no choice but to cross his arms over Starsky's back and let the man ravage his mouth as only Starsky could. No fever in the world could compete with the heat of this intimacy, the unmistakable mutual hardening trying to touch through scrubs and denim, the masculine pressure of desire-roughened hands holding his shoulders like a ladder out of flame.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Starsky murmured into the corner of Hutch's mouth. "It's just… It's Christmas, darling, you're here with me, and Dobey's alive largely 'cause of you, and--"

"And I'm an asshole to let homophobia intrude at a time like this," Hutch finished, smiling and loving that Starsky would feel the smile with his own lips. He moved his mouth to feel the laughter bubbling in Starsky's throat. Starsky arched his neck in sheer instinct, and Hutch's breath came in a sharp gasp of appreciation and desire. "Starsky, you know I don't want cover, or need it--"

"I know."

"All the same--"

"All the same," Starsky agreed, glancing over his shoulder at the door. "The present accommodations inhibit me too."

Hutch snorted. "I didn't think God or man had invented anything that could inhibit you, lover."

"Well, the thought of Bambi trying to knock discreetly on the door--or someone not knowing to knock discreetly--"

"Or Mannigan," Hutch laughed.

Starsky looked adorably embarrassed. "Oh, jeez. I can just see it. He'd stand there in the doorway with that left eyebrow of his shooting up into the perfect triangle. That damn eyebrow can say more'n Dobey's yelling ever could."

"No kidding." Still, Hutch regretted Starsky resuming his safe position at the far side of the bed. He wished he'd initiated a second kiss during that brief moment of abandonment.

The wish vanished at the door's opening. Mannigan peeked his head in with an air of considering it beneath him to knock on this particular door. Finding the proprieties observed, he entered the room and closed the door behind him as an unmistakable afterthought, not desire to conceal the room's occupants. He didn't smile, but his left eyebrow remained level with its mate. "Feel better?"

Hutch knew his fair skin was giving away his discomfort. "Yes, I can't believe I--"

"Believe it," Mannigan cut in firmly. "I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. It's not, as you should know, an uncommon side effect of severe sinus infection. I thought you might appreciate an update on Captain Dobey's condition, and Mrs. Dobey agreed." He waved Hutch back to his resting pose when the "patient" tried for the third time since waking to rise.

"How's he doing, Doc?" Starsky asked clearly to deflect Mannigan's attention from his embarrassed subordinate. Hutch shot him a quick, barely visible but grateful smile.

"He's resting peacefully. Unfortunately, his tests have revealed worrisome damage to his heart. He'll undergo catheterization, but I strongly suspect he'll need bypass surgery and a fairly stiff regimen of drugs along with a drastically altered lifestyle. I'm afraid his days as a police captain are over. An easygoing, low stress retirement is his best chance of a normal lifespan."

Hutch cleared his throat to relieve the tight sinking in his chest. Why did people who beat the odds and survive always have the farthest to go? "I know I won't be well enough to scrub in and assist if he does need bypass, and I wouldn't dare intrude on Dr. Huber's team, but could it be arranged for me to be in the observation room during the captain's surgery? I'd like to be there, and perhaps it might put him at ease, on some level, if I'm in close proximity."

Mannigan nodded. "I'm sure Katrin would approve. She believes in giving a patient every chance for a flawless operation. Your presence in Observation certainly wouldn't threaten the OR environment or her team rhythm."

"The captain doesn't know that about retirement yet," Starsky guessed, his face darker than the room's ambience. "You need to be careful how you spring that on him. He'll have a tough time with that one."

"Discussions about long-range recovery won't take place until he's ready for cardiac counseling," Mannigan said. "Most heart attacks that fall into the 'massive' category are fatal. I admit I don't know Captain Dobey, but I think once he realizes that, he'll be grateful for any chance at life. I've found that a common reaction. Even someone I thought would've had tremendous difficulty coping with the limitations of life-changing injury is flourishing."

Starsky's cheeks took on a hint of pink visible to Hutch because he knew how every possible mood and emotion was physically represented on his lover's face, but he wasn't sure of the cause, and the possibility that occurred to him made him remember Starsky's earlier words and tone. Not this car. Not anymore. Concerned, he looked quickly away.

But he couldn't escape Mannigan's piercing green stare. "Katrin credits Captain Dobey's survival with the care you gave in the field--"

Hutch dared interrupt. "Thanks, Trevor, but I can't take all the credit. I had an excellent paramedic team, for one thing. And once it got to a certain point, I was out of my league. Without your assist over the radio in the ambulance, not to mention here--"

"Hutch, when it gets to a certain point, it's out of all our leagues. Katrin's point, and one I agree with, is that it's a credit to your skill as a physician that the captain made it to the ambulance in the first place. You've got a long way to go, and I'll stick you doing sutures and sponge baths if you dare take a case like that unassisted here while still in residency, but the truth is, I just might turn you into a first-rate emergency physician yet." His lips moved and showed off a speck of white enamel. "Now get some rest. Bambi's observing you until seven, and I'm not about to get on her bad side by releasing you a minute earlier." With a final nod at Starsky, Mannigan left, and once more the door drifted casually closed without his conscious effort.

Hutch let out a pent-in sigh. "I'm--stunned. I think he actually smiled there at the end!"

Starsky's grin widened dangerously close to a smirk. "He's the only guy I've ever known who can act like he's wearing tie and tails when he's in mismatched scrubs."

"He acts more Norman British than Irish, I'll give you that."

"I like him," Starsky announced. "He could've come in and acted like I wasn't here, spouted a bunch of medical terminology and left it to you to translate for me later. But he didn't."

"That was a high compliment he paid you," Hutch said, watching Starsky closely. "Not what you said--I mean, that too, but what he said about you flourishing."

"Huh?" Starsky looked blank.

"You knew he was talking about you, right? When he said--"

"Oh, yeah, that. What's so big about that?"

Hutch focused on the ceiling again, certainly safer than Starsky's confusion. "That day--" and neither man needed to voice the May 15^th that loomed in front of them like a mark on a calendar page. "Dr. Bachman, your surgeon, didn't believe you'd live. Even after he'd pulled you out of--of cardiac arrest in ICU he didn't really give you a chance. But he told me you wouldn't have made it onto his operating table without Trevor Mannigan's treatment in the ER. So I came down here shortly before you woke up. I needed to see Mannigan. Needed to hear something from him about your chances, I guess. And you know what he said? Of course, you don't know, but--"

"Tell me, Hutch."

"He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'He'll live, but he won't thank me.'"

Starsky frowned. "I don't understand."

"Don't you? Mannigan knew you, Starsk. Bambi's right: the man could probably put together a scrapbook of our careers based on the times he patched us up. He couldn't see how you'd face a world without police work, and he knew your career was over the minute he saw you wheeled in. He didn't think you'd have that 'common reaction' of being glad to just be alive."

"Oh."

"Of course, he didn't know you like I do. I might've agreed with him if I'd believed your career was over. But I knew if you lived, it wasn't. I've learned there's no such thing as impossible when it comes to you. I knew just weeks into your recovery that you'd make it back to the streets in spite of--of everything, whether you should or not. Mannigan thinks you're flourishing because you accepted the changes in your life, but I wonder--I've always wondered since…damn it, I can't help but remember you told me you wanted to work at the Academy after I told you how I felt about going back to med school."

"Hutch--"

"You knew I couldn't do this if you were still doing the Job, if there was a chance I'd have to face…." For an instant, the memory of holding the paddles over Dobey's chest escalated from frightening and painful to nightmarish-- dark brown skin morphing to paler tan and soft black pelt interspersed with the remnants of scars….

"I get it now! I should've known there was something else to your so-called career crisis. I thought this was the first thing we settled six years ago. Look, we both chased Lady Luck up and down those alleys, caught her, married her, had a couple kids by her, and then she started thinkin' about a divorce. Why keep pushing it? That's what I thought six years ago, before you said the first word about med school. I wanted us both out of the firing line. We went through all this, why's it coming back now?"

"Because I know--"

"Yeah, you know." Starsky rolled over, braced his palms on either side of Hutch and rose up to peer down at him from scant inches away. It was erotic, dominating, and distracting from everything except the man hovering above him--exactly what Hutch knew Starsky intended. "You know, or you oughta know, that being with you is where it's at for me. That's been the bottom line since about this time in '69. If someone told me that to live, I'd have to be without you, I'd balk like hell and swallow my hemlock a happy man. Giving up police work? That was a slice of pie."

"I heard you tonight in the car, and what was beneath what you said to Mannigan about Dobey." Hutch sighed, tired of drowning in the eyes that wouldn't release him. He thought of pleading the very real sinus pain throttling his head, but couldn't form the words. It wouldn't be fair to Starsky to beg off the discussion he'd started himself.

"Damn." Hardly more than a whisper, the word still bounced painfully in Hutch's ears; it sounded too much like an admission on Starsky's part. Then Starsky's lips were pressing against his forehead, the side of his nose, coming to rest on his mouth with gentleness and understanding that made Hutch want to cry. Let the entire ER staff come in to watch, who was he to care?

The kiss ended too soon for Hutch's taste, but Starsky had things to say. "You're no dummy, Hutch. You know there'll be things that make me think or remember the old times. And sometimes I'll miss the way it used to be. Doesn't mean I don't prefer the life I have now." His eyes closed, and his face took on a look Hutch had never seen before. "You have no idea what it felt like watching you tonight…."

"Watching me?"

"I've never seen you in action before," Starsky explained, showing no sign of opening his eyes and facing Hutch's puzzlement any time soon. "The part of me that wasn't panicked over Dobey and worried about Edith and the kids, the part that could just stand back and watch, oh man. Knowing I get to be the man to hold you…who has the chance to make you happy…shakes me to the core…."

Hutch kissed him then.

~~*~~

Hutch banged both sides of the vending machine in brisk cadence. This machine didn't settle for a few kicks and taps. You had to play Radetsky on the thing before it forked over the Quaker granola bar that always lodged between the shelf and glass and refused to fall.

"Tomorrow is the magic date. February 14^th. Hearts and Flowers Day," said Caroline Maxwell behind him at the ER staff-lounge's smaller table. "So tell me, Hutch. What do you get a guy for Valentine's Day?"

Hutch swore fervently at the machine and the granola bar gave way. Grinning over his victory, Hutch ducked and retrieved his snack. "You're asking me for ideas on what to give Luke?"

"Of course I'm not asking you that," Caroline laughed. "I can shop for my hubby without any help, thank you very much. You know what I'm asking you."

Hutch turned around slowly, unwrapping the snack bar. "You've known me for over two years and you're asking me this now?"

"Well…" Caroline smiled and spooned another mouthful of minestrone. "February '84, you were a graduating med student who used to be a big shot police detective, and I hadn't yet heard through the grapevine that you were living with your former partner. I mean, present partner, but…oh hell. You know what I mean. Last February you were the top intern and soon to be Mannigan's resident protégé, which made you slightly sacrosanct. But now…."

"But now, what?" Hutch asked, amused.

"But now you're just Hutch, who passed out in the waiting area on Christmas Eve from a sinus infection. Makes you much more approachable."

Hutch laughed and dropped down into the chair beside hers. "And that makes me fair game for personal questions about my love life? Wonderful. Will I have to strip for the staff party next year?"

Caroline's eyes bobbed. "Oh, don't give me ideas. I'm human, for God's sake. So tell me already."

Hutch swallowed his bite of granola prematurely and coughed, beating a fist against his chest. "Excuse me. Caroline, it's no big revelation. This year Starsky is getting a new car stereo that he's going to put in a ten-year old car that might drop any day from sheer exhaustion and a hard life."

"And--" Caroline probed, brown eyes gleaming.

"And what?"

"Oh, come on. You're getting him more than a car stereo. You're a closet romantic; got it written all over you."

"How can I be closet if it's written all over me?" Hutch raised a hand at her smirk. "No, don't answer that question. Yes, there are a couple little odds and ends…that you wouldn't want me to tell you about even if I had the inclination to."

"Try me."

Hutch stared, reddening. "Caroline! I swear, you, Bambi, and Maureen. What's with all the brazen hussies running around this place? And I know you. If you're hitting me up for fodder for that Kirk and Spock stuff you write, forget it!"

Caroline pouted prettily, then grinned and ruffled his hair. "We have a gay resident, the asexual but sexy Mannigan, not one but two Afro-American Buddhist nurses, a vegan Attending who lives in a tree-house, and