Hi everybody! I´m a newbie here. This is my first story posted in this site, so I must say it… I´m a little scared:-)

Lots of thanks to a few wonderful friends and writers for all her BIG and much appreciate help and support. Starsky's Strut, Rebel Cat and Wuemsel…

The usual disclaimer: I´m not making any money with this work of fiction and I don't own the guys...What a shame!

Reviews: Yes, please!

MISSING

Chapter 1

"I'll check out the first floor, Shelly. Why don't you go to take a look at the basement and see what, if anything, needs to be done down there" The woman told her sixteen years old daughter as she unlocked the front door to the house.

"Okay mom." Once inside the hall, Mrs. Rockford and Shelly parted ways. They had a lot of work to do to check out and clean their rental property which was located on the outskirts of Bay City, before looking for a new tenant for the house, after the last one had died in a tragic car accident about a week earlier.

"Oh! Shelly, honey, mind going back to the car and bringing in the cardboard boxes? We forgot them."

"Sure mom, be right back," The young girl answered as she headed back outside.

As Shelly went to their car to pick the boxes, her mother began rummaging through cupboards and drawers, looking for the stuff of the house's former occupant to send it back to her relatives. A moment later the girl was back there, and while her mother kept checking on the living room, she headed to the basement.

Mrs Rockford was humming absentmindedly while doing her work, when her daughter screamed. The sound came from downstairs and it made her heart to miss a beat.

"Shelly?" She asked while hurrying to the basement. "Shelly, are you okay? Answer me, dear!" The lady hollered as she ran down the stairs so fast that she almost stumbled in her haste.

When she reached the bottom, Mrs Rockford stopped in her tracks at the sight of her daughter, kneeling next to a man who was dressed in ragged and bloodstained clothes.

He was curled up in heap in the floor. His hair and beard were dirty and matted and his left leg had a frightening looking open fracture. But the most shocking sight of all was the thick metal chain that, firmly fixed to the wall encircled the ankle of his injured leg. The links bit into the swollen flesh.

"He's very sick, mom! This man is burning up with fever! Bring me a blanket or something!" Shelly urged her mother after having touched briefly the man´s forehead. Mrs. Rockford frantically scouted the dimly lit area for something to cover him with.

"Help…n-need help." He moaned in a barely audible voice, reaching out a shaking hand, blindly seeking aid and comfort.

"Take it easy sir. We´ll get help for you." Shelly soothed the unknown man, taking his hand in hers.

"Cover him with this, Shelly. I´ll try to untie him" Mrs Rockford said as she held out a crummy patchwork quilt out to her daughter.

Shelly covered the man with the old bedspread while Mrs. Rockford, kneeling down, tried carefully to get his ankle free from the chain's grip.

"What´s your name, sir? Can you say me your name?" The girl asked him.

"H-Hu… g-get Hutch…" He mumbled when, in feeling the touch of the older woman hands on his aching ankle, an agonic scream escaped from his throat.

"Sorry!…I´m very sorry sir…I didn't want to hurt you" Mrs Rockford apologized nervously, flinching back "I was just trying to untie your leg…Sorry."

"It's useless, mom. You´re not going to get that chain off" Shelly stated "His leg's too swollen."

"Okay; I´m going to call the police. They'll help him." Mrs Rockford said getting to her feet "Come with me, Shelly."

The man tightened his grip on Shelly´s hand; she could tell he was afraid she would leave him alone. "No mom. I'll stay with him" The girl was unwilling to leave the abused man alone, he had been through enough already.

"Shelly, please! He could-"

"I´m staying, mom" She cut off stubbornly "Don't worry, he's too weak to hurt me, even if he wanted to. Hurry up! Go to call the police! And don't forget to ask them for an ambulance too!"

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Hutch unlocked the front door of his house, the place he shared with Megan, his wife as of a few short months ago. He stepped tiredly inside and headed to the bedroom to find her there. She was looking at her reflection in the wardrobe mirror, checking that her make-up was perfect. Hutch kissed briefly her lips and then he noticed her attire.

"Are you going somewhere?"

Her blond hair was neatly gathered in a bun and she wore an elegant black cocktail dress along with pearl necklace and earrings. "Me? Oh, I can't believe it!" Megan snapped as she stared into her husband's eyes "You forgot it, right? You forgot my parents wedding anniversary. Didn't you?"

"Meg, honey! I´m so sorry!" Hutch apologized plopping onto the bed,

"Don't Honey me, Ken!" The woman cut off. "The fact is that you keep forgetting everything that is important to me! And you do it over and over! Tell me something… What kind of husband are you, huh? Is this the way things are going to always be in our marriage?"

"Listen Megan, right now I don't want to start an argument. I have had an awful day and I've got a monster headache now, maybe we could call…"

"NO!" The angry woman shouted out "I´m not calling my parents to excuse your rudeness once more. With or without you, I'm going to their anniversary dinner. I made myself clear?"

"Meg, look..." Hutch tried again, feeling the throbbing ache in his head increase with the volume of her voice.

"See you later Kenneth. Don't wait awake for me!" With her blue eyes shinning with anger, Megan picked up her velvet purse, storming out of the bedroom.

Hutch got to his feet when he heard the front door's slam. He sank back on the bed and ran his hand through his hair. "Damn...Okay honey, okay! Have a nice dinner!" He said sarcastically to himself as he stood up again and headed into the living room. Once there, he fetched a big glass and a bottle of bourbon from the cocktail cabinet and poured himself a nice, large drink.

Hutch sat down in his leather wing chair and sipped the bourbon slowly. He let his mind drift back to happier times. The times he shared with his partner and best friend, Dave Starsky. That was until the day that Starsky went missing.

That day had happened two years ago. After months of searching and coming up empty, the police didn't have any choice but to give up. Given all the evidence and though his body never was found, David Michael Starsky was presumed dead.

Hutch went through months of denial, but finally he had to face the grim truth. Starsky was gone. As simple as that.

Since that sad day and though his heart was broken, Hutch did his best to move on with his life for the sake of Starsky´s memory. He had thought about leaving Bay City but he just didn't have the heart to do so. There were so many memories of his best friend linked to every corner of the city and the blond one found himself unable to leave them all behind. He just hoped that, given enough time, the pain would fade to a bearable level.

Hutch had stayed on the force as well; as if in a strange way he wanted to punish himself for what he felt was his fault. He could not leave the places and things that he had shared with his partner. However, from the day that Starsky had gone missing, Hutch had begun to do only desk work. He was totally against working with another partner. So Dobey had not any other choice but to put him on permanent desk duty.

It was about a year after Starsky´s disappearance and totally by chance that he had met Megan. She was a beautiful, well-off, intelligent doctor, the chief of the Emergency Services Department in the BC General Medical center. She immediately liked the blond, handsome police officer. The first time they had met, she had not hesitated in coaxing him out to dinner.

Desperate to ease his grief and loneliness, Hutch finally accepted. They had dated that first evening. The dates had continued and despite of himself, he had really spent some good times with the woman. Megan was very intelligent and attractive and after several dates, Hutch found that, for a few brief hours, he could forget his sorrow.

That was until bad luck struck him again and Megan had found out she was pregnant. Being the decent man he was and not wanting the child to grow up without a father; Hutch asked Megan to marry him. He did not love her; the proposal was to save her reputation. And on those grounds she'd accepted. Shortly after that, they were married in a simple ceremony.

From then on, grief and loneliness were Hutch's constant companions. Day in and day out, his life stretched out before him, a long and lonely road. Also Megan turned out to be a cold-hearted woman, whose main concerns were her career and her social status. She was a lot like Vanessa. Megan's mind was too practical to realize the depth of Hutch's sorrow. Since the beginning of their marriage and after seeing a few pictures of Starsky that Hutch had shown her, the woman had made it perfectly clear her point of view of how useless and harmful it could be to live tied to past and its memories. Since the day she had shown her lack of understanding, the blond detective kept the treasured memories and pictures of his friend just to himself. The subject of his years with Starsky and their time together was never brought up between Megan and him.

The plain fact was that Hutch was painfully unhappy. His relationship with Megan had quickly turned into a train wreck. His sole joy was looking forward to the day when he could hold his baby in his arms. That child would be the only happiness in his now bleak life.

History repeating itself, that's what it was; Hutch couldn't stop wondering how he had been so stupid as to fall twice into the same trap, marrying the same kind of beautiful, elegant but ultimately worthless woman. In his darkest moments and despite the baby´s near due date, he even had thought about asking Megan for a divorce.

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"So, according to what you've told us previously, you found that man in the basement of your mother's property and he was tied to the wall by a chain secured to his ankle, is that right?" Sergeant Detective Melvin Harris from BCPD fifth precinct asked the shocked Shelly. He said this in front of his much younger partner, Detective Marcia Merrick. Shelly just nodded shyly and looked at the floor.

"Mind telling us the whole story again, Miss Rockford?" Harris asked as he sat on the corner of his desk.

"Already she has told it-" Mrs. Rockford started to say, but she was cut off by the detective.

"It doesn't matter, Ma´am. We´d like to hear it once more."

"Calm down Mrs. Rockford." Detective Merrick added in gentler tone. "I don't know if you realize it, but what we have here is a very serious case."

And it really was. After her first year as detective and despite a few serious crimes she and her partner had already worked on, young Detective Merrick had never expected to work on such a horrendous case as the one that they were currently dealing with.

"It's okay Detectives, no problem. I´ll tell you again everything that I saw." Shelly said after nervously sipping her cup of water.

"Okay, Miss Rockford. We´re listening." Harris stared into Shelly's eyes with an inscrutable expression in his face.

"Given that our tenant passed away some days ago, my mother and I went to the house to check it and to collect the stuff of that poor woman to send it to her family, besides to do some cleaning. You know, that kind of stuff. Well; as mother worked in the first floor, I went down to the basement… and as soon as I got there, I heard his moans. At first, I thought that it could be an injured pet, or something, so I looked for it, and well, you know the rest. The sound was that poor man. There he was, curled up in the floor, tied by that thick chain around his ankle. He was so sick, weak and with his leg so badly injured… he was just staring at me with such terrified eyes…" She trailed off as she remembered the scene.

"Did you see anything unusual? I don't know, maybe when you went into the house, or later, when you went back to the car to pick the cardboard boxes? Was anyone watching you? Or was there anything that you thought could be suspicious somehow?" Detective Harris asked in his usual emotionless tone of voice.

"For God sake Detective!" Mrs Rockford snapped as she surrounded her daughter's shoulders with a protective arm. "Would you mind stopping this once and for all? This might be a difficult concept for you to understand, but Shelly is just a kid. A very upset kid who only wants to go back home"

"Sorry Mrs Rockford, but I´m just doing my job" Harris said coldly before turning to look back at Shelly.

"It´s okay mom" Shelly assured to her mother. Then she turned towards Harris to keep answering his questions "My mother is right Detective. After seeing that man, I got too scared how to notice or remember anything else" She shivered at the memory "Actually, I think I'll be never able to forget his terrified eyes for the rest of my life… Sweet Jesus! I can't stop wondering how in earth someone could have done something so atrocious to another human being!"

"I'm afraid that it looks like the house's former occupant was the guilty party. As long as the victim is unable to answer all the questions that we need the answers to, we'll be unable to find it out, Shelly." Detective Merrick said getting to her feet. "Okay, I think that we are done here. We´ll call you if we need to ask you any further questions." She added as she led both women to the office's door.

Chapter 2

That evening, the ER personnel in BC General Medical Center were still very busy. In fact it had been a particularly hectic day. It had started that morning, when a new patient had been rushed in. The man was apparently in his fifties. He was brought into the ER half-unconscious, besides very thin, anemic and dehydrated as well as filthy.

The man had suffered an open fracture of his left leg, which had become gangrenous and that was giving him an extremely high fever. In addition, his back and left side were covered in large, dark bruises. The pattern of those bruises along with two cracked ribs were the specific clues that made the medical staff think that the most likely cause was that the man had fallen down some stairs recently. On top of all of that, the unlucky patient didn't have any ID, so until the police found out what his real name was, for the doctors and nurses he would be referred as John Doe.

The medical staff began by stabilizing his vitals and treating his fever and wounds. They gave him antibiotics and started an IV to replenish fluids and nutrients into his system. These were just the first steps in the treatment of dealing with the serious injuries he suffered.

Once he was sedated, the patient was carefully sponged down and shaved to help lower the risk of further infections from the filth he had been covered with. This was done before taking him to surgery where the surgeons' team would try to fix the fracture and remove the death tissues in his leg, along with attempting to improve the blood supply in the damaged area.

When his beard was shaved and his hair washed and cut, the ER nurses realized that John Doe had to be much younger than he´d looked before, in his filthy state. There was no way he could be around fifty years old. In fact, despite his worn out physical condition, the man seemed to be only in his late thirties, maybe early forties. But until he´d be able to tell them his name or the results of the police identification could be done, that was the only thing that the hospital personnel could figure out about him.

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After his third shot of bourbon Hutch was starting to feel a little dizzy, besides unhappy and alone, as usual. He headed for his bedroom. He felt like he could keep drinking himself into oblivion, but things were going bad enough with Megan that he didn't need to be drunk upon her return.

Taking off his clothes and letting them fall haphazardly onto the floor, Hutch got into bed and tried to fall asleep. He wanted to flee from his hopeless reality for a few hours and though he tried to overlook the fact, he really didn't want to talk his wife again until the next day.

Unfortunately, Hutch was still awake when Megan came back home. He heard the woman unlocking the front door and her steps getting closer through the corridor.

"Oh, shit!...Please Kenneth, could you quit acting like a slob?" She said in way of greeting while looking at Hutch´s clothes spreaded on the floor, not caring if he was asleep or awake.

"Know something? Maybe you don't have noticed it yet, but clothes have better places to be than left all over the floor." She chided grumpily.

"Sorry Meg, I'm too tired how to care about where I´d left them, I guess." Hutch apologized as he got out of bed and picked his t-shirt and jeans up. He was feeling too drained to start a new argument with his wife.

"Had you a good time in your parents´?" The blond one asked, more out of routine than any care at all about the answer. Soon though, he realized that it had been a wrong question.

"Are you trying to make me believe that you care about anything related with my family Ken? ´Cause if that's the matter let me say you that my father was pretty disgruntled with the fact that you left your seven-months pregnant wife to drive to the party on her own." She pouted, wanting to make him feel guilty.

"Come on, Meg, stop that. You could have called for a cab, couldn´t you? Besides, you drive to the hospital every day" Hutch pointed out patiently. "Listen dear, I´m very sorry, I told you that already. I forgot about that dinner. I really had a rough day at work and…"

"Don't tell me about hard days at work!" The angry woman cut off, going back into her best belligerent mode "Do you know by chance what a dreadful day I had today at the hospital? No, of course you don't know! So I'll tell you! It was pretty early in the morning when a new patient was rushed in the ER. The poor devil was dirty and thin as a stray dog. He was covered in bruises and he suffered a dreadful injury to his leg. It has become gangrenous, and I don't think we´ll be able to save it, actually. Besides that he's anaemic and dehydrated. Aside from all his physical problems, the fact is that most likely he must be totally out of his mind. We had a lot of work to do just trying to stabilize him enough to take him into surgery. I think it's possible that he won't make it through the night and I really don't have any idea on what happened to him to end how he did. But, know something? I don't actually care. I don't think that it's any of my business."

Yeah, honey, I already know you pretty well. Hutch thought bitterly. You do your impeccable work; get your pay check and to the hell with whatever ordeal that poor guy went through before turning into a human waste…

"My job is to try to save his life and that's just what I did." Megan continued "But I'm not willing to take my work's worries home with me. And you should do the same, Ken. For our marriage's sake."

Those words and Megan's fuming look were a pretty clear warning. Their relationship was going downhill fast. But Hutch didn't care. Maybe he never did. The only thing Hutch was able to think on, was how badly he missed Starsky. He missed his friend's playfulness, his kindness and his innate joy. And especially, Hutch felt guilty thinking that he had, somehow let Starsky down by getting on with his own life…

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The night in the ICU wasn´t much calmer than the day had been in the ER for most of the nurses and doctors that had their hands full working on John Doe.

Hours after going through surgery, the man's condition wasn't getting any better. Instead, he seemed to grow sicker as the night went by. The antibiotic therapy wasn´t working as well as his doctors had expected and his fever climbed up to its current peak of 105. In those long hours, the man threw up a couple of times the nonexistent contents of his stomach. Now the dry heaves painfully racked his whole body. He also had once went into seizures and in the little periods in which he drifted off into drug- induced sleep, he kept mumbling unintelligible words as he tossed and turned in his bed. This kept up until dawn, when finally his exhausted body gave up and he fell in an unsettled stupor while his fever lowered just a little.

Early in the morning, Doctor Megan Hutchinson started her shift by going to the ICU area to fill the chief doctor on some details regarding the medical report of the unknown new patient. Odd as it seemed to the woman, upon seeing him shaved and with his hair cut and clean for first time, she felt the odd sensation that she had seen him somewhere before. His pale, thin face, now strained by lines of pain and suffering, looked vaguely familiar to her. But, as hard as she tried, Megan was unable to catch the elusive memory…

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That morning, Detective Marcia Merrick stormed in the ninth precinct squadroom as if all the demons in hell were chasing her. She bumped into Minnie in her hurry, which made the woman lose her grip on the pile of folders she was carrying; Merrick just mumbled an apology without looking back.

"Whoa! Watch your step Merrick! Where's the fire?" the female officer asked as she bent to pick up the manila folders that were scattered all around the floor with Hutch´s help. But the only answer she got was the young woman darting into Dobey´s office and she did so without knocking on the door.

"Oh man" Minnie said rolling her eyes "Now I´m sure, that girl has gone nuts… Dobey is going to bite her head off for going into his office like that." She mocked.

"DETECTIVE MERRICK! WHAT THE HELL MEANS ALL THIS FUSS?" Came Dobey's barking voice from inside his office. This made all the officers in the squad room snap their heads up before Dobey´s door slammed shut again and no more could be heard.

"I'm very sorry Captain Dobey." She said flustering in front of the imposing presence of the huge man "But what I have to tell you is really important, sir."

"Damn! Merrick, is it so important that you have to storm into my office like a hit squad?" Dobey chided, half-annoyed and half-amused by the sudden interruption into his office by the young female detective.

"Yeah Captain, it sure is."

"Okay, spill it. I don't have all day. And this had better be good."

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At that same moment, at the hospital, Megan was in her office, checking on some patient's reports as she drank a cup of coffee, when all of sudden a memory played in her head and the face of John Doe slid to a definite place into her mind. She knew who he was.

The woman remembered the pictures that her husband had shown her a few months ago, right after their wedding. That image of him and his dark-haired partner standing on the roof of that red car, arms over each other's shoulders. Or that another picture, the one of Ken picking playfully his friend up in his arms, both of them smiling cheerily at the camera…

"Oh my… John Doe is Ken's partner!" Megan muttered, setting her coffee mug on the desk, already reaching for the phone….

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In Dobey's office, as she talked to the captain, detective Merrick was trying to get a hold of her emotions. Dobey was giving her his full attention, though actually doubting that whatever she had to said would be worth the big deal that she was making of it.

"It's that John Doe that was taken to BC General Medical Center yesterday, sir." She explained hastily "It's him, Captain Dobey. I mean, the missing cop, Sir…Captain, he´s…HE'S ONE OF OUR OWN!"

"WHAT?" Dobey barked getting to his feet

"Yeah sir, he's your missing detective…"

As Merrick quickly filled Dobey on who the man was, the captain's eyes grew wide open in surprise and his forehead began to shine under a layer of perspiration.

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Meanwhile, out in the squad room, Hutch went back to his reports while thinking fondly on how much he and most of his fellow officers liked young Detective Merrick. He couldn't help but wish that the valiant girl could get a partner of her choice as soon as possible. Just then, and if she got as lucky as he had been with Starsky, she'd be able to enjoy the blessing that working beside the right person was.

Moreover, she'd be able to finally leave Harris behind. The old detective was an embittered man, too insensitive and tough after years of seeing the ugliest face of the world. He was too bitter now to actually tell the difference between the ways he´d deal with street punks and with innocent witnesses or crime victims. No doubt, the rough detective couldn´t be a good partner for the type of kind police officer that the girl was.

Then the phone rang, startling Hutch.

"Hutchinson" He answered absentmindedly.

"Ken, it´s Meg" Hutch´s wife said calmly. "Listen, can you come to the hospital? Right now? It´s very important."

"Are you okay, Meg? It´s the baby?"

"Oh, no. It´s not the baby. I´m fine, but I need you to come over here, okay? It´s really important, Ken. Hurry"

"Okay Meg, give me fifteen minutes." Hutch hung the phone, already getting to his feet but unable to figure out why his wife wanted him to go to the hospital in such a hurry.

He was on his way out of the squad room when Dobey's loud voice made him stop.

"HUTCH!" The captain hollered, popping his head out his office door.

"Yeah cap?"

"Hutch, son, in my office, please." Dobey added in much gentler tone.

´Geez! First Merrick rushing into Dobey's office like a herd of buffalos, then Megan playing mysterious and now the cap yelling at me…what the heck is going on with everybody today? Hutch thought, shaking his head while striding back towards his captain's office.

"Cap´n?…Hi Merrick," he greeted the woman. "Excuse me sir, mind getting straight to what the matter is? I´m in a hurry. I just got a phone call from Megan. She needs me to go to the hospital right now, said that it´s something very important."

Then Hutch noticed that the pair of faces were staring at him with such an odd expression on them that he couldn't make out the meaning of it. Marcia Merrick was smiling tearfully and Dobey eyes were also suspiciously shinny as the man mopped his forehead with his handkerchief with one hand and loosened his tie with his other hand.

He jumped to a conclusion "Uh-uh. No Cap´n. No way, I'm not going to partner up with Merrick or anyone else for that matter. It's out of the question." Hutch stated, failing to guess the real cause of Dobey´s call. "No offense, Merrick, I´m very sorry that you have to stick with that jerk of Harris but-"

"SHUT UP HUTCHINSON!" Dobey commanded; then lowering his voice, almost quivering he said "It's Starsky, son…Starsky´s alive. He´s at BC General Medical Center. In the intensive care unit"

Hutch didn't wait to hear more, he was already up and running. He couldn't stay there and wait to hear any more. Not at that moment. Starsky was alive. He finally knew where his friend was and any other questions could wait.

He heard Dobey's voice calling out for him, but he ran out of the squadroom, hurrying down the stairs, two at time, until reaching the parking lot and rushing to his car. He drove with lights and siren, at mad speed towards the hospital. All the while his heart seemed about to jump out of his chest.

Chapter 3

Once at the hospital, he didn't wait for the elevator, Hutch ran the stairs to the eighth floor where the intensive care unit was. He did it in record time. Gasping for air, the detective trotted along the corridor, almost running into a nurse that he hadn´t seen before.

"Starsky? David Starsky…What room?" Hutch asked in demanding tone, leaving any trace of politeness far behind.

"Excuse me, sir. That's the ICU area. Only the patient's closest relatives are allowed in there," The nurse informed him with cold professionalism. "Are you-"

"I´m his partner!" Hutch snapped showing his badge to the nurse and giving her such a look that made it clear enough that he wasn´t in the mood to let anybody to mess around with him at that moment.

"Okay…room 125. At the end of this corridor…however, this is highly irregular-" The nurse kept saying to nobody. Hutch was already running through the corridor to room 125.

When he finally got to Starsky's room, what he saw there threatened to crumble his sanity. His once healthy-looking friend was now a ghostly and pale form lying in a hospital bed. Hutch noticed, under the dim light of the headboard lamp that Starsky looked more like a corpse than a living man.

The only things that showed that he was alive were the electrodes sticking to his chest, the IV entering the crook of his arm and the oxygen mask placed over his mouth and nose. Running his eyes along his friend's whole form, Hutch saw a bandage wrapped around Starsky's abdomen and another one, a much thicker one around his left leg. It was also in traction. What frightened Hutch the most though, was how bruised and swollen Starsky's toes looked.

"Starsk…Can you hear me buddy? Hutch asked softly, reaching out a hand to cradle the cheek of his friend. He feared that a touch any rougher than that could hurt Starsky.

"Can you open your eyes for me, Starsky? Please, partner? I missed you so badly," Hutch begged as unwanted tears tarnished his sight. Then, Starsky's lids fluttered open, if only a sliver and he took off the oxygen mask from his face

"Hu-Hutch?…"Starsky whispered, dragging weakly his hand over the covers, looking for Hutch´s hand

"Yeah buddy. Right here." The blond one softly wrapped Starsky's hand in his, as he tried to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat.

"I thought…thought that I'd never see ya again." Starsky managed to say as one tear escaped from the corner of his eye, sliding down his face

"I´m sorry Starsky. I´m so sorry… I tried; only God knows how hard I tried to find you. I kept looking for you for months, until there wasn´t any clue or any suspect left" Hutch said, his words sounding just like a very poor apology to his own ears.

"T-tired…I´m s-so tired..." Starsky mumbled in slurred voice.

"I know, partner. Don´t speak. Just sleep. I´ll be there." The blond detective was still shocked by how sick and fragile Starsky looked.

Whoever did this must be out there somewhere... And I'm going to find him… then whoever that scum is, he will pay for it. I swear he will Hutch thought darkly as a wave of revenge wishes washed over him and he had to fight that overwhelming feeling back.

He was a police officer, not an avenger, the blond one reminded himself. Besides, there in front of him was the most important person in his life. The one he thought he had lost forever, only to find that despite all the evidences against it, Starsky was alive. So from then on, Hutch determined that he had to save all his strength, all his time and patience to reach one only goal, to help his best friend to get his life and health back.

"D-Diana?...Where's Diana?" Starsky asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Huh?" Hutch asked, unable for a moment, to catch what Starsky was saying.

"Diana Ha-Harmon… she had me..."

"What?...What are you saying Starsk?" Hutch cut off "Are you telling me that Diana Harmon had kept you prisoner all this time?" He asked at a complete loss. "But how, Starsky? How she could get you?"

A weak smile curled up a corner of Starsky´s lips for a moment, before fading again.

"She didn't grab me…no, she didn't…a couple of guys did it. Then they took me to her place..." The weakened man said before his eyes closed again.

Hutch´s heart sank as the meaning of Starsky´s words dawned on him. Feeling his temples pounding, the blond detective had to look for a seat, not being too confident in his legs strength to keep him upright.

Diana Harmon? Was that miserable nutcase the responsible for so much pain and horror? She was the person responsible for whatever agony Starsky had to go through? Hutch wondered stunned. But…How? How could it be possible? Shit! She fooled me! She fooled everyone...

And that was the plain truth. In the first days after Starsky had gone missing, once the department had checked fruitlessly through dozens of suspects and already running out of clues to keep up the search for his friend, the blond detective would go to talk to Diana. She had been discharged out of the mental hospital just a couple months earlier and Hutch had to admit that she seemed to be wholly back in her right mind. In fact she seemed very sorry for what she had done to him. She had also seemed sorry about Starsky's disappearance as well. However, just to be sure, Hutch had talked to her psychiatrist, boss and fellow co-workers at the company where she had gotten a job after she was discharged from the mental hospital. He had talked to her landlady, Mrs. Rockford too. According the opinions of all of them, Diana was nothing less than a nice woman who was doing her best to recover. She seemed to be a totally harmless person, along with being polite and intelligent…

"I d-don´t wanna die a-alone Hutch…I don´t wanna…" Starsky´s words took Hutch abruptly out of his thoughts, sending shrives up his spine. Starsky, as brave as he was, had been always scared of dying alone. Hutch had known this since the earliest days of their partnership.

"You aren´t going to die partner, everything's going to be okay now. You´ll get better in no time, besides, you won't be alone any more. Now I'm with you and nothing will make me to leave you again, Starsky." Hutch said as he carefully replaced the oxygen mask on his friend's face. Starsky began to doze off again.

Inhaling a deep breath, the blond one stared for a moment at his sleeping friend. Feeling he was being watched, he raised his eyes and saw Captain Dobey on the other side of the large glass window. He stood there, staring thoughtfully at his two best detectives, together again, despite all the odds against it.

"Our old grumpy cap is here to see you Starsk. Excuse me a sec, will ya? Be right back" Hutch said to an unaware Starsky before exiting the ICU room. He slowly stepped out the room. His steps were tired; his shoulders slumped, like if all the horrors of the last months rested on them.

"He looks so sick Cap… so badly sick" Hutch said to Dobey in a defeated tone of voice.

"Hutch, son, take a seat." The older man approached his detective leading him to sit down in a near plastic chair. The blond man didn´t said anything; he just docilely let his captain lead him to a chair.

"Diana, Cap…Diana Harmon did this to Starsky. With the help of a couple of guys. He told me so." Hutch said in hoarse voice, fighting back his wish of tearing the waiting room apart. "I´m gonna kill them Cap´n. I´ll kill Diana and whoever helped her to get Starsky!...To the hell with my badge! To the hell with anything that-"

"No need for that, Hutch. Diana's already dead." Dobey cut in with a soothing voice as he sat in the chair next to Hutch´s.

"What?"

"She died in a car wreck about a week ago, son. No one but God can judge her soul now."

"DAMN HER FUCKING SOUL!..." Hutch yelled, rising from his chair and fiercely smashing his fist against the wall, as an old couple of visitors turned their heads to look at him.

"Ken! What are you doing?" asked Megan, who at that moment had exited the elevator and hurried towards him.

"Meg… Starsky's alive," Hutch said in faltering voice, unaware of the pain in his hand.

"I know, Ken. I already know who the patient is." She said in her usual unruffled tone. "That's why I asked you to come here. I thought that you should know. Now, come with me, okay? Right now you are feeling a little upset and that's a pretty normal reaction given the circumstances. But you must get your head together, Ken. Besides, maybe you have broken your hand. You have to get it checked." Megan talked to her husband in the same patronizing tone in what she would talk to a scared kid, or even worse, to an insane patient. She grabbed him by his elbow as she guided him to a near by examination room.

"To the hell with my hand!" Hutch snapped under his breath, pulling sharply away from her hand.

"Ken! What?" She asked in puzzlement.

"You thought I should know it?" Hutch asked back, looking at Megan as if he was seeing her for the first time. "A pretty normal reaction for you would be to feel just a little upset? FUCK MEG! YOU DON´T GET ANYTHING OF THIS! YOU NEVER DID!" The blond detective shouted out, startling both his wife and Dobey, who discreetly headed to the coffee machine, giving the couple some privacy to sort things out on their own.

"That patient, as you so professionally call him, has a name!" Hutch hissed to his wife, in low, cold tone. "His name's Starsky. David Starsky. And I´d want you never to forget it ´cause David Starsky is my best friend. And let's not forget the fact that he has been my partner for a whole lot of years! And let me tell you; he is the most caring, kind and warm-hearted man that anybody could possibly find in this whole rotten world! I have been in mourning for him for the last two years. Then it turns out that he´s alive and that he has been through, who knows what kind of hell, while I and the whole police department, ALL OF US GAVE UP ON HIM!" Hutch hollered, not caring in the least about the looks that people on the ICU floor were giving him.

"How do you think I can feel right now, uh? I´ll tell you. I don't feel 'a little upset' as you so mildly put it…I FEEL LIKE SHIT, MEGAN, AND AT THIS MOMENT, THE LEAST I COULD HOPE FOR, IS A LITTLE WIFELY SENSITIVITY AND UNDERSTANDING!"

"Ken, please. Would please put a stop to your shouting? This is a hospital," She scolded, but she did so without losing her composure. "If you don't want to get your hand treated, that's okay, do it your way. You're a grown man, I guess. But I´m not about to let anybody to make any fuss in here, much less shout at me like a madman. Got it?" Her beautiful eyes shone with a mixture of anger and severity.

"Meg…Megan, sorry…" Hutch said, already regretting his outburst. "I didn´t want to yell at you, but…"

"No Ken. You've already made your point clear. I don't understand what you're feeling and you'd prefer to be married to a woman who would be able to do so, right? Well, maybe I´m not that kind of woman." A few uncomfortable seconds of silence hung between them until Megan spoke again. "Okay Ken. Now, if you don't mind, I must get back to my work. I have responsibilities in this hospital, just in case you have forgotten that. You just remember; Mr. Starsky is a patient in the ICU area and there are pretty strict rules regarding visiting hours here. Don't try to break them, okay? The rules are for the patient's sake, not yours."

Megan spun on her heels as Hutch stood there, looking dejectedly at her as she left. He was feeling too emotionally drained to make any attempt to mend something that sadly, seemed to be beyond mending. Probably it had been that way since the very first day in which their marriage had begun.

xxxxxxxxxx

Hutch was still there, staring off into space when Dobey returned. The captain held out a Styrofoam cup of coffee for him, which Hutch accepted with a nod of thanks.

For several seconds both men just sipped their coffees in silence until Dobey asked with paternal concern.

"Wanna talk about Hutchinson?"

"Huh?" Hutch asked, coming back to the here and now.

"Megan and you. Are you two having troubles, son?"

"Well… Let me put it this way… I should care about our marriage, I guess. But I don't care, cap. As sad as it may sound, I don't care at all." The blond got to his feet and tossed the empty Styrofoam cup in the near wastebasket. It was time to change the subject; his marital woes were not public discussion.

"Now, I´m going back to sit with Starsk, Captain. By the way, did you talk to any doctors while I was with him?" Hutch asked before heading back to his friend's room.

"Yes Hutch, I´ve talked to your wife. She told me that the doctor in charge of Starsky is Doctor Morrison. He will come over here in a while to fill us on his condition"

"Okay. I´ll be with Starsk."

"Hutch, son." Dobey said uneasily "The visiting hours…"

"Oh yeah, the visiting hours…know something, cap?" Hutch asked softly, all his sorrow and pent-up anger forming a tight knot in his heart. "To the hell with that crap. From now on and until Starsky improves enough to go back home, I'm not planning on leaving him, and that's all about it. So everybody here can just get used to it"

xxxxxxxxxx

About five minutes after Hutch went in to sit with Starsky Doctor Morrison entered the room and asked Hutch to go with him to his office, so he could fill him in on the patient's condition.

The doctor turned out to be a warm and sensitive man, who was in his late forties. He willingly answered all of Hutch´s questions and addressed his doubts. He made it clear that that Starsky's physical condition; his extreme weakness and overall poor condition were of primary concern for the medical staff. Starsky's mental state was still unknown, but it was a major concern as well

Doctor Morrison led Hutch to his office "Listen detective Hutchinson," He said once Hutch had sat down in a padded leather chair "What we got here is a patient who's suffering a mild stage of gangrene infection, due to the untended compound fracture in his leg. We are doing as much as possible to treat it and we're giving him massive doses of antibiotics. However, if that doesn't work, we won't have any choice but to amputate his leg at just above the knee in order to prevent the gangrene from spreading any further in his system. That could be fatal. His leg is, no doubt, our main concern, but Detective Starsky also suffers from considerable dehydration and anemia, those does nothing but depress his immune system. Because of all of those complications, his body doesn't have the strength to properly fight off the infection."

The doctor continued, "Of course we are already taking care of those problems, but at this point, our prognosis is guarded and we aren't too optimistic about the outcome. Tomorrow, we'll repeat the surgical operation that we did yesterday to remove more dead tissue from his leg. This procedure is what you may know as 'surgical debridement'. Depending on the result of this second operation, we'll be able to decide what to do next" The doctor paused a few seconds, waiting for any question that Hutch might possibly want to ask.

"Is he in pain doctor?" The blond one asked fearfully.

"Well, perhaps just a little, but since usually gangrenous injuries are extremely painful, he´s being treated with fairly high doses of analgesics to ease that pain as much as possible."

"Yeah… I understand" Hutch sighed tiredly.

"There's another issue that we'll have to deal with" Morrison continued, "I'm talking about the patient's emotional condition. That matter is less urgent right now, but is no less serious. We can´t estimate yet how much damage the kidnapping and forced imprisonment has done to his mind. Being held against oneself volition is always a traumatic experience, but in this case it is particularly so, given that we are talking about a very long period of captivity here. According to the condition that Detective Starsky was in when he was brought to this hospital; both the physical and psychological abuse that was done to him are clear enough. When the time is right and as soon as he is able to cooperate with us, we'll run some tests on him. Then our psychiatric team will find out the extent of his trauma and they'll start the proper therapy for him. But, as I told you, at present we are just focused on treating the gangrene and saving his leg, if possible."

All the information that Doctor Morrison had just provided Hutch with sank slowly into the detective's mind and overwhelmed him, Starsky condition was critical. He could lose his leg, or worse, he could die. Hutch already guessed that the doctors were certain that Starsky's mind didn't have much of a chance of being undamaged after two years of captivity.

After having heard the doctor words and despite his joy of having Starsky back, the blond detective couldn´t help himself, he was terrified. There was still so much that could go wrong in the upcoming days, that it scared the hell out of him.

What helped Hutch the most, in the middle of all his concerns, was the sympathy that Doctor Morrison showed towards Starsky´s feelings and needs. Somehow, the doctor clearly understood how helpful it would be for his patient's recovery to have his best friend close to him. It was a blessing for both of them to have Hutch near as much as he wanted, after what he might have suffered through at the hands of his mentally unbalanced kidnapper. So that the visiting hours wouldn't be a problem for Hutch, Doctor Morrison signed down a special authorization that allowed him to stay with Starsky as much as he wanted, regardless of what the standard ICU rules said.

Pleased with that and knowing that the only thing he could do for Starsky at that point was to be with him, Hutch went back into his partner´s room. He was adamant about not leaving him. He would stay there as long as Starsky would be in the hospital. TBC