This was originally part of a Five Times thing on the theme of “What if Starsky and Hutch had never gotten to know each other?” While each piece can be completely read on its own, they do fit together.

 

The order of this Five Times, called “Between Strangers” is:

1. “Shipping Out”

2. “Better Late”

3. “Bedford Falls All Over Again”

4. “Than Never”

5. “The Journey Itself Is Home”

 

“Better Late”

By Pepper Ckua

 

He’d been coming down to this place once a day now for the past week. Sometimes, if he was lucky, and his favorite orderly was on-shift, Starsky could stretch it to twice a day.

“The Healing Garden. I don’t know what’s healin’ about it, unless you count getting’ out of that room for a little while. Maybe there are some plants growin’ here that are supposed to be good for you.” Brown turned the wheelchair around to face the small fountain and kicked the two brakes down. “I’d stay and have a cig with you, but I need to get back upstairs.”

Starsky waved him off with his good arm. “Don’t worry about it. The company’s nice, but so’s the quiet. Two weeks in this noisy place is carving a hole in my brain.”

“I hear ya.” The orderly looked at his watch. “Be back in about a half hour. That will give you just enough time to get ready for your shower.”

Starsky took cigarettes out of his pocket. He knocked the pack against his leg to send one up far enough to grab it with his teeth. Brown was there with a lighter.

“Thanks, buddy,” Starsky said as he took a long draw and leaned back in the chair.

He didn’t look up as he heard the orderly’s footsteps move away.

The tinkle of the fountain actually was relaxing, Starsky admitted. And the smell of the outdoors, even if the ever-present Bay City smog tainted it, was a nice break from the antiseptic odors he’d been subjected for too long.

Eyes closed, head back, he took another draw on his Marlboro.

Starsky heard someone coming up the garden walk, a squeak of shoes a dead giveaway. He opened his eyes just in time to see a blond man in a long, white jacket trip over a segment of the sidewalk, barely catching himself before he fell.

“Shit,” the man muttered as he made his way to the bench next to Starsky’s wheelchair. Sitting down heavily, the man pulled out a pack of cigarettes and patted his chest.

“I’d give you a light, but I don’t have one either,” Starsky said, turning back to watch the water.

“Figures. I get a break and forget to bring the essentials.” Starsky recognized the man’s Midwestern accent, the same long vowels and inflection one of his uncles had. Uncle Starkinson had made one visit to New York when Starsky was a boy. He never returned.

He remembered his father laughing about that uncle’s visit with Nicky, telling him of the man’s deflection to Minnesota and subsequent name change. “They add “son” to all their names there, Nicko. Maybe it’s to make up for the fact they’re all bastards at heart.”

Nicky had laughed, along with his dad. Starsky, his back to the kitchen table and washing dishes, didn’t think it was that funny.

“You a doctor?” Starsky asked. “Because if you are, I’d have to say I’d be disappointed. I came out here to get away from your sort for a while.”

The man laughed. The man’s face seemed to hesitate for a moment as if he were trying to remember how to do it. Starsky figured it wasn’t something he did often enough. Starsky thought it was a sound and look he could get used to.

“No. I’m not a doctor. Well, I mean I’m pretty much one, but just an intern. I got another few years to go.” The man put out his hand far enough for Starsky to shake it. “The name’s Hutchinson.”

“Starsky,” he replied, putting his cigarette in his mouth and shaking Hutchinson’s hand.

“So, what you in for, Starsky?”

“Got shot. Been here two weeks, should get out in one.”

“There’s a story there, but I’m too smart to ask.”

“Thank God, ‘cause I’m too smart to tell you.”

Hutchinson asked, “So how’d you get shot?”

“Wrong place, wrong time, wrong brother,” Starsky snubbed his cigarette out in the planter next to him. He could see about a hundred other people had done the same thing. For some reason, it made him feel sad.

The intern put his hands behind his head and stretched his neck. “There’s a lot of wrongness in the world, that’s for sure.”

And before he realized what he was doing, Starsky began to tell him of this particular wrongness.

“My ma died when my brother Nicky was born. My dad was a rascal, but basically a good man.  He worked long hours at the docks, making just enough to keep a two bedroom walk-up and enough food in the icebox. Not a bad life, and certainly better than a lot of kids I knew.” Starsky shook his head. “My dad. I don’t think…” Suddenly, he didn’t want to tell Hutchinson what had just popped into his head.

Instead, he told him about his own two-year stint in Vietnam, the year he spent driving a taxi, the two years he was a bouncer at the Nomad Bar on 109th Street. And finally, of last year, the year he’d spent taking care of his father.

Starsky told him of Nicky working a series of shady jobs, each one increasingly darker. Starsky had kept busy trying to keep his head together after his South Asian tour, keeping a paycheck coming and from stopping just getting up and walking away. All of those things got in the way of paying a whole lot of attention to Nicky’s life.

His father’s last week of life was at Bellevue ward with three other dying men. Starsky had sat at his side, wanting to hold his hand but had gripped the bed rail instead.

“Davy, you gotta promise me something.” His father’s voice had sounded like water poured into a soggy, paper cup. Starsky had to lean right up next to his face to hear him. He had smelled the chemical taint to his father’s breath. “Promise me you’ll straighten that kid out. It’s something your mom would have …” His words were interrupted by alarms going off by the next bed. The man there was shouting something and pulling at his IV.

By the time the nurse had come in to see what the problem was, Starsky realized his father had taken his last breath.

“He died, Hutchinson, without hearing me promise.” Starsky felt like working another cigarette out of the pack but remembered he had no way to light it. “A week after my dad died, Nicky said he had a big deal goin’ on in Bay City, running numbers for some dude named Gunther. Christ, he was going to go all the way across the country. Maybe that was the idea?” Starsky kicked at the ground, flattening the grass with his heel.

“To make a long story a little bit shorter, as usual, Nicky bumped up against the wrong heads.” Starsky closed his eyes and looked up. The sunlight made the back of his eyelids a blood red. Even closed, the glare was enough to make his eyes water.

“Getting gunned down by Gunther was probably the most important thing Nicky ever did. If nothing else, I’m sure it’s improved his street credibility back home. Too bad he’s not alive to appreciate it.”

“I heard read about in the paper. It happened at the underground garage by the Randall Building.” Hutch looked him straight in the eye. “I don’t remember there being two victims.”

Starsky shrugged. “My brother took three slugs in the back from a gun pointed out of the window of a moving car. All I could do was yell, ‘Nicky, get down!’ It was dark, and with me between the wall and the car, the cops said they don’t even think the shooters knew I was there.” Starsky nodded towards his shoulder. “A ricocheted bullet is what hit me. It isn’t even that bad, really. Gene Autry gets it there all the time and hops right back up on Champion.”

“More than two weeks in the Veteran’s Hospital sounds pretty bad to me,” Hutchinson remarked dryly.

“Half of that time is because they want me to keep a low profile while they work on my brother’s case. That and…” Starsky didn’t want to tell the intern the VA was keeping him a little longer than needed as a favor; with the New York walk-up gone, Starsky had no where else to go. Administration was working on housing, but so far it was all too expensive.

Hutchinson didn’t pursue the rest of Starsky’s sentence. “You want to take a little walk?”

“What time is it?”

“Beats me. I never wear a watch.”

Starsky snorted. “That’s a character flaw if I ever heard one. How do you know when you got to go back to work?”

Hutchinson patted his pant pocket. “Beeper,” he said.

‘Yeah, a walk sounds good,” Starsky said as he started to stand. Hutch pushed him back down into the wheelchair.

“You may be able to use your own two feet, but if an orderly brought you down like this, then this is how you got to stay.” Hutchinson reached down and flipped off the left brake. He gave the wheelchair a push and succeeded in going in a circle.

“The other brake, cowboy,” Starsky laughed.

“Yeah, right.”

They moved out of the garden and worked their way along the sidewalk by the parking lot.

“So, you gonna tell me, Hutchinson, how a nice Midwestern boy like you ended up out here in Bay City?”

“It’s only fair, I guess. I was a smart kid in high school. A friend and I, Jack, had made a pact one night. We promised each other we’d go to medical school in Minneapolis together, if nothing to get the hell out of Duluth. So we did. We finished up and applied for internships. Jack was all hot to go to Bay City. He was always a bright lights type of guy. Me? I didn’t have a big opinion of where to finish the program. So I followed Jack. We got an apartment together here. Things were fine until Jack met a girl.”

“Isn’t that always the case?”

“No kidding.”

“Vicky was a showgirl. She was divorced, had a little girl. Jack and Vicky started to talk about getting married, getting a place together.”

Starsky wished he could see Hutchinson’s face. He wondered if the man had planned to tell him his story while pushing him in a wheelchair with the intent they both be facing forward.

“Sounds like things were pretty good.”

“They were. They were pretty good times, that’s for sure.”

“So what happened? The two of them get hitched?”

“No. A week after Jack told me he was getting married, things started to get weird. At first I didn’t think too much about it. An intern’s life is pretty intense. Neither of us had gotten enough sleep in a year, we were working double, sometimes triple shifts. A lot of crazy things can happen, right?”

Starsky thought it sounded a little bit like a tour of Vietnam, except the food was probably better and someone wasn’t always trying to kill you. Then again, he probably ended up getting more sleep there than Hutchinson did as an intern.

They turned the corner by the hospital’s loading dock.

“I started finding things in odd places, the phone in a closet, a jar of pickles dumped out on the coffee table, then my shoes in the oven. At first I though he was playing tricks on me; Jack’s sense of humor was always an odd one. But after he was late to work because he couldn’t find his car and accused me of hiding his it, I knew something was wrong. Later, the cops found his car by a pool hall in Bankering. Jack said it must have been stolen.” Hutch stopped the wheelchair by the hospital’s front entrance.

“This is nice,” Starsky said, sensing the man needed a moment. “I can watch all these cars and pretend I’m going home, just like all these people.”  He gestured towards the sedan that pulled up. A man got out of the car, opened up the front passenger door and ushered a woman in. The woman was carrying a baby in a pink blanket.

“Minus the rug rat, of course,” he said, turning and grinning.

Hutchinson didn’t smile back. Starsky even wondered if he’d even heard what he’d said.

The intern swung the chair around so it was facing the front doors. Then he sat down on a bench.  “Jack’s behavior became weirder and weirder. He’d pick fights, lose his temper, and disappear for days. Vicky came to me and begged me to get him in to see a doctor. She was getting afraid to have him around her little girl, Cary. That’s when I knew I needed to do something.” Hutchinson released a long sigh. “Too little, too late. Vicky’s ex-husband, Lloyd, had stopped by to pick up Cary for the weekend. Jack followed him to his car and started a fight. One thing led to another, and Jack ended up getting his head slammed up against the side of a building. He died a few days later. Cary saw the whole thing.”

Starsky felt sick to his stomach. A little girl seeing her father beat a man to death? For all the things his own dad did, nothing came close to that horror.

“So Lloyd went to jail?”

“No. No he didn’t. In fact, he was cleared of all charges.”

“What? How?”

Hutchinson put his hands in the air. “Lloyd didn’t kill Jack. The autopsy said that Jack’s erratic behavior was due to a brain tumor. The hit on the head wouldn’t have killed him otherwise. The doctor said by the looks of it, Jack had only a few more weeks to live anyway.”

“Sounds like Lloyd got off lucky.”

“Lucky if you include how to explain that to a three-year old,” Hutchinson sat up a little straighter and rolled his neck. Starsky could hear the small bones creak.

“So now six months later, I’m living in a city I didn’t really intend to settle in, working in a job that I’m increasingly unhappy with and wondering just how the hell this all happened.”

“Look at us, Doctor Hutchinson. We’re a couple of stowaways.”

“That’s for sure.” He looked at Starsky. “What are you going to do when you get out of here?”

Starsky shrugged. “I’m not really sure. New York’s out. There’s nothing for me there except for a handful of accident-prone uncles. I’ve got an Uncle Al out here. He owns a car lot south of Belle Plain. I might hit him up for a job. I was also thinking of…”

A taxi pulled up and a group of old women got out. One of them argued with the driver about the fee. The other three squabbled with each other about where to eat lunch after their visit.

After they’d gone inside, Hutchinson laughed. “Like a flock of chickens.”

“Yeah.” Starsky turned and looked the intern in the eyes. “What else would you want to do if you didn’t have this job? You want to be a doctor somewhere else?”

“No. That’s something I know for sure.  What I’ve done is something really crazy, so crazy it feels right.”

“What? Join the military? Trust me, the war may be supposedly over, but you don’t want to do that.”

“No, not the military. I put an application into the Police Academy. They have an intake every three months. I expect to hear the answer sometime next week.”

“The Police Academy? That’s, well, that’s…”

“I know. Really, really different than what I’m doing now. Maybe that’s what’s appealing. I know medicine isn’t for me. Here I am, a year into my internship, and I feel like a novice in a nunnery. Good thing, too, to have this time to realize this isn’t for me before I took my vows, as it were.”

“But the Police Academy?”

“What? You got a thing against cops?”

“No. Surprisingly, with my family background, I don’t. In fact…”

“In fact what?”

“If you’d quit interrupting me, blondie, I’d tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“That’s what I’m thinking of doing, too. I have the application sitting in my room upstairs. It’s just about finished. I was going to have my favorite orderly, Brown, get me an envelope and stamp so I could send it in by the end of the week.”

Starsky almost laughed at the look on Hutchinson’s face. “Close your mouth, pal, before you catch flies in it.”

Hutchinson did. “The Police Academy? You?”

“Yeah, me. You got a problem with that. And don’t think my lack of a college degree is going to set me back; my military experience will put me, assuming you get in, Hutch, will put me right along next to you.”

Hutchinson smiled. “Hutch. Jack used to call me that. I like it, but Doctor Hutch over the hospital P.A. lacks a certain professionalism.”

“Hey, there you are! I thought you’d done a runner, my man.” Brown came ambling out the front door. “Then again, how far could you get being a cripple in a wheelchair and all?”

Starsky gave him the finger. “Let’s just say I’d had enough of the Healing Garden.”

“I’d say so. And here you are, making a new friend and everything.”

This time it was Hutchinson who gave the orderly the finger.

Brown just laughed. “You’re lucky I put up with you. My skills are in high demand, don’t you know. As they say, ‘Hourly, daily, quarterly, you need a damn good orderly? Stop your lookin’, ‘cause Brown’s what’s cookin’, from the east, west, south or northerly’.”

Starsky smiled as Hutch grimaced. “Trust me, he’s got worse. Say,” he tilted his head toward Hutch. “This is Hutchinson. It sounds like he and I just might be classmates together.”

“Didn’t think Hutchinson here looked like the type to enroll in the school of hard knocks,” Brown’s elastic face was sly. “Looks a little too white bread to me.”

Before Hutch could reply, Starsky said, “I have a feeling you underestimate him, Brown.”

The orderly nodded. “I just think I might be doin’ just that. Hey, blood, did I tell you I’m just about to become a small business owner?”

Starsky grinned. “Your cousin Marcus come through?”

“What did I tell you? When I get in cahoots with my roots, anything is possible. Marcus is leaving’ for Venezuela where’s he’s gonna check into some amphibian futures.” Brown put his hand in the air. “Don’t ask about what that really means. But that’s what you got to know about the Browns. The cahooting is moot.”

“So, what’s this new plan of yours, Brown? It must be good to leave the lucrative career of an orderly.”

Brown grabbed his jacket’s white lapels. “You’re lookin’ at the new owner of a dip and sip.”

“A what?” Hutch asked.

“A bar, dummy,” Starsky said. He turned back to Brown. “So what’s it called?”

The orderly grimaced. “It’s got a lame name. The Play Pen. Right away, that’s gonna change.”

“To what?” Hutch smiled. “The Doctor’s Lounge?”

Brown puffed his chest up. “Huggy Bear’s the Pits. How’s that for a name?”

“Huggy Bear’s? The Pits?” Starsky nodded his head. “I like it. I like it.”

Hutch gave a little jump. Then he reached down and dug something out of his pocket. Starsky supposed it was the beeper. Hutch pushed a button and peered at the device.

“I’m needed on the fourth floor. Gotta run.” He looked down at Starsky. Hutch pulled a piece of paper out of his pant’s pocket. Then he patted the pockets of his white coat.

Starsky said, “Brown, give him a pen or pencil would you? It looks like blondie here is tryin’ to write something down.”

The orderly reached above his ear and handed Hutch a pen. Hutch scribbled something down and handed it to Starsky.

Starsky looked at the slip. “I can tell you’re a doctor, pal; I can hardly read this.”

Hutch quickly took it back and added some more writing.

Giving it back to Starsky, he said, “Call me. I have an apartment with an extra bedroom. If we’re gonna be classmates, we can share expenses.”

Starsky smiled. “Gotcha.” Hutch started a quick jog up to the lobby doors.

“Hey,” he said, turning around. “What’s your name?”

“Starsky, David Starsky.”

Hutch gave him a two-fingered salute and disappeared through the double-doors.

Brown looked down at Starsky. “You ready for that shower?”

“Yeah.”

“You hope meatloaf and creamed corn’s on the menu tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“The Dodgers gonna win the pennant?”

“Nope.”

“You gonna call this Hutch guy?”

“Yeah.”