Clear

"If he is a ghost, then it's very disappointing for me, because he is banished in the story, and that could mean that he won't be coming back, and that would be terrible, wouldn't it?" - Paul Darrow

I'd been a ghost for six hours before I knew it.

I know, it sounds strange, but it isn't like the old movies where the guy is suddenly transparent, can walk through walls, rattle chains, and howl in misty castles. I was a little on the pale side but I didn't notice, and I couldn't walk through anything, or move anything. Instead my hands slipped off everything and everyone without even feeling them. And as for howling...well, they couldn't even hear me speak, let alone any moaning and groaning.

I should go back, though, and explain how I got to be like this, at least the best I remember, that is. I'm a little fuzzy on the actual - you can say it - death that came first. Forget that. It's depressing anyway, and why does it matter how I got killed? The important part is what happened next.

The last thing I truly remember is getting the call. A robbery, I think. One minute I was running up the stairs and the next I was back in the car, sitting next to Hutch. Only he looked strange, white as a sheet, mouth set in a tight line, red stains streaked across his shirt and pants. He sat rigid, eyes fixed on the street ahead as if he was Superman looking through a wall with X-Ray vision. His hands were clenched around the steering wheel so tightly I could see every tendon and vein standing out against the fair skin.

He was driving my car.

Now don't get me wrong. I love Hutch more than my brother but I draw the line at the car. No one drives it except me.

"Why are you driving?"

No answer. I must have said something that bugged him.

"Hutch?"

He didn't even twitch an eyebrow in my direction.

That's when it started to really scare me. Hutch may give me the silent treatment now and then but he never flat out ignores me. Usually he's glancing out of the corners of his eyes while I'm pretending I don't notice. I reach out to touch his arm and my fingers slip right off it.

"Hutch?" My voice is tiny, barely audible to my own ears. He doesn't even look at me. "Hutch! Hutch!"

And that's when I finally realize the truth. He isn't answering because he can't hear me. He looks odd because I'm not here. Because I'm...dead.

oooOOOooo

We - he - drove straight to the hospital and I trailed behind him, listening as he spoke his name in a quiet, hollow voice that sounded so strange, and watching as he headed for the room to claim...me. Or rather, my body.

I got a good look at myself and wished I hadn't. My good looks have been ruined, all smashed up like the side of my head. I look like wax, pale and stiff. Like the corpse I am.

He takes my hand in his, curls his long fingers around it and stands there. I guess I've been dead a few hours because the hand is stiff. I don't know how he can bear to touch it. There's always been something about stiff flesh that's made me uneasy. I've seen a lot of death but it still crawls under my skin like an itch.

He stands that way a long time, shoulders slumped forward, hand tightly gripped in his. I wish I could pull him away from my dead body, get him out of here. It isn't good for him and I can see it in that vacant stare.

"Hutch, please." My voice is hollow and silent in the room.

All day I haven't given much thought to why or how I'm a ghost. I don't know whether I'll stay this way or just disappear or...I might leave Hutch behind, alone, without me. I might be without him.

His shoulders tremble with the effort of holding in the silent mourning and my own chest starts to hurt, a rough-edged ache that seeps into my...I'm not sure what I have now.

I can't stand it anymore. I go over to him, wrap my translucent arms around his heaving shoulders. He feels bony - can people lose weight in only a few hours? - and fragile, like when I found him underneath the car. I'll never forget the sight of his eyes, half-opened slits framed by raw, sun-baked skin, latching onto my face like a tow rope.

He sobs harder now, a choked sound escaping now and then. His head sinks into the hollow of my neck, hair tickling my chin if I could feel it. He lets go of the dead hand and wraps his arms around himself, my flickering ghost-self clenched within them.

He can't feel me and I can't really feel him but it doesn't matter. We hold onto each other, across life, across death...and across something inbetween.

oooOOOooo

I followed him home, climbing in the back of the car ahead of him and sitting in silence beside him. His posture was still rigid but some of whatever had held him upright in the trip to the hospital had collapsed. He looks weak and pale.

He weaves in and out of traffic like a crazy man and a yell escapes me once as he narrowly avoids a car. He slows down a little but not enough.

"Be careful, Hutch." I lean forward and brush his hand, tightly corded around the steering wheel. "You hear me?" He doesn't, of course, but it doesn't stop me from trying.

Out of the corner of my eyes I see a car cut across the line, heading straight for us.

"Hutch, look out!"

I grab at the steering wheel but my hands slip off and I tumble hard against the back window.

There's a screech of metal and glass and my head slams into the back of his seat. The horn blares as his body strikes it and through my blurred vision I see the car spin outward before coming to a harsh and jarring stop.

"My car..." It comes out as a moan. I touch the twisted metal, run my hand through the shattered glass with sorrow like I've lost my best friend as I climb from beneath it. "Hutch?"

I throw myself into the front seat, crawling across more broken glass to reach him. He's wedged in tight against the steering wheel, one leg bent at a strange angle. I can hear his breathing, fast and wheezing, each puff of air dribbling a weak trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

"Hutch, no." I feel his chest gently, flinching myself when I find the swelling patch on his side. Broken ribs, maybe worse. "Hold on, Hutch. You're gonna be fine, you hear me?" My voice sounds strained.

His eyes open the barest fraction of an inch and I swear he looks straight at me. I wrap my arms around him, hold him upright as he slumps. I stay that way until the ambulance comes.

oooOOOooo

I've never tried making a bargain with God before. I've whispered frantic prayers through clenched teeth, mostly the Hebrew verses from the back of my memory, interlaced with "please, let him live and I'll do anything". This is different. I'm dead after all and incapable of doing anything at all except exist.

So that's what I offer. My existance in this state. I bargain for a life for another kind of life. Let him live and I don't stay like this. I can just fade away. If him living means I have to disappear and never see him again, not even the vacant touch and empty embrance of before, then I can do it.

He's lying on the operating table, face pasty and blue-tinged beneath an oxygen mask as the doctors work on his chest. I don't have to get closer to know it's bad.

I sense the blip of the heart monitor before I hear the lurching pattern of a cardiac arrest. The surgeon yells "Defib!" and my own heart - if I still had it - jerks harshly against my ribs.

Hutch's eyes open.

He steps into my world, and out of his. I see his body still lying back there on the table, doctors and nurses working on him as a machine screams out the warning of a stuttering heart.

He scans the world with a quiet lack of interest, and finally turns to see me. I give a weak smile.

"Hi, Hutch."

He stares at me as if he's seeing a ghost - excuse the bad joke - eyes wide, face chalk white. The sound that comes from his throat is a cross between a whimper and a sob.

I start to reach for him and remember his smashed up chest. Even as a ghost I might hurt him worse. I offer my hand instead.

He grabs onto my hand like a lifeline, digs his fingers into me with a grip that I know would be painful if I could feel anything. There's an odd sensation and suddenly a twitch of pain in the hand he's clamped in a vice. And I know what he's doing.

He's trying to give me his life, as if it will bring me back. He can't accept I'm dead. But he's too weak and I know it's killing him. And Hutch can't die. The world needs people like him. Sometimes I think he cares too much and I can see it eating him up inside, bruising and beating until there's nothing left to give, and he still finds more to hand out. He's special like that, and as selfish as I feel I'd like him with me. But he belongs here. So I pull my hand out of his.

"Starsk." It's only a whisper, thready with agony and desperation.

"No, Hutch." I know I'm silent to him but I talk anyway. Call it habit, or a final attempt to get through. "You gotta live. There's a whole world out there. There's so much you can give it."

His head shakes, almost imperceptibly. "Starsk." And I realize he can hear me.

"Its okay, Hutch." I feel something wet trickle down my cheeks and swat at it. Pesky dust, even in the afterlife.

Another shake, harder this time.

"One life." I force my voice to harden. "I bargained. You use it, Hutch. Now, before it's too late."

Somewhere in the distance, clear now since I'm officially a ghost, I see the doctors working on his body, arching up under the defibrillator.

"Go, Hutch! Now!"

He wraps his hand around my wrist, digging in with all the strength and willpower of a child having a tug of war with a dirty security blanket and the mother with the washing machine. I rip his fingers free, each tug a bolt of imaginary pain through where my heart used to be.

He looks at me only once, that look that can rip a heart out, all blue-eyed raw agony, begging. And I do the hardest thing I've ever done, the hardest thing I know I'll ever do over the thousands of years I've got ahead of me. I slam both hands into his shoulders and push him backwards, back toward his body and the operating room, to life. But in the instant before he falls his hand comes down around mine again, even stronger this time. I lose my balance, arms pinwheeling, tangled with him. We fall, through death, through life, I don't know. And in the instant before we slam into something I see him smile.

oooOOOooo

If there's one thing I know it's that the afterlife isn't supposed to hurt. My head is pounding like the mother of all hangovers, and my chest feels like the Torino ran over it. I remember then that it couldn't have because it's smashed up a couple miles from Venice Place, and for some reason that strikes me as absurdly funny. I laugh, but it comes out as a wheeze.

"Starsky?"

I cough and the pain in my chest builds into liquid agony.

"Starsky?" The voice is louder this time and I let my eyes drift open to find out where I've landed. A hospital from the looks of it. And Captain Dobey looking worried, standing over my bed.

Captain Dobey?

I struggle to sit up, managing to crash inelegantly back against the pillows.

"Hutch?"

My eyes search the room frantically before latching onto the bed next to him and the lanky, blond form folded into it. He's paler than usual, hair sticking up all over his head like a kid who poked a finger into an electric socket. But I can see his chest rising and falling with slow, even breaths. He's alive.

And Captain Dobey can hear me.

I stare down at me, twitch my fingers over the skimpy hospital gown they have me in. I can feel it, every fold of the fabric. I can feel my fingers, skin rubbing together, feel the sheets covering me. I can feel...I'm breathing, like Hutch, heart beating, blood pumping. I'm...alive.

"What happened?"

"A car accident." Captain Dobey sounds oddly grave. "You're both gonna be fine. Your car..well, it.." He looks nervous. "It didn't make it."

"A life." My voice is small, almost hopeful. And then I laugh until it hurts. Because it feels good to be able to hurt.

oooOOOooo

It took me a while to piece together what happened. A car accident, yes. Hutch had internal injuries, a broken leg. I was dead for about two minutes.

Or so they say. It seems crazy but I keep thinking that it wasn't a dream at all. It was real. For two days I was a ghost, and I was never in that car with Hutch, at least not in body.

How I got to be there, or alive again at all, I don't really know that. All I know is that Hutch, like me, is stubborn. He doesn't let go of me, even in death. I like that about him.