Chapter Three
You’re safe and your partner won’t leave your side. How typical is that? You’ve proven it time and time again. When one of you is in danger or hurt, the other doesn’t sleep, won’t—or is it can’t—give up. You live and breathe the one who is missing. Willing the life from your body to flow into theirs.
I’ve never said this to either of you before, but there are some days it’s terrible being your captain. It’s terrible having to deal with the pain and uncertainty I watch you go through. This was just another incident to add to the long list. Hutchinson, you disappear for days. Kidnapped, beaten, left for dead, while your partner searches and slowly dies on the inside. Certain he will find you—scared to death he won’t.
You two certainly don’t make my life easy. Being a police captain is difficult enough, but feeling like I’m your father is near impossible. I worry about you like I do Rosie and Cal. You are like sons to me. I know I haven’t told you, but I hope in some small ways I’ve demonstrated it.
Now, I watch you through the glass window of your hospital room, and I say a prayer of thanks. Thanks, that you will bounce back, Hutchinson. Thanks, that once again you were able to find him, Starsky. Huggy somehow managed to come through at the last minute, didn’t he? He finally tapped enough people and pulled in enough favors that something eventually turned.
When Starsky got the word you might be held at an abandoned farm forty miles out of town, there was no controlling him. But, then, he was hell bent on finding you—the only one who has an ounce of control over him. I tried to beat him there because I didn’t know what condition you were in, and I guess I was afraid of what he—I—would find. But I didn’t make it. I arrived in time to see the paramedics wheel you out. You looked dead, Hutchinson. And your partner looked like he’d seen a ghost.
Five days you were missing. And, I have to admit, for five days I feared you were dead. But Starsky didn’t. His inner faith was strong, even if there were some cracks showing on the outside. He believed. With all his heart, he believed. And you are here….
Hutch, I don’t know what kept you alive. Hope, I guess. A hope that Starsky would once again be there in time. The doc said if you’d been there another twenty-four hours, they wouldn’t have been able to save you. The dehydration, the internal bleeding, the fever would have been too much for your body to survive. But somewhere in there, you kept a spark of hope. And that spark never went out.
Faith and hope got the two of you through this latest crisis. But you know, from a father’s perspective, I have to believe it was more than that. Faith and hope aren’t always enough. You two share far more than that. You share a soul—a soul that binds you in love. A love that carries each of you through the pain that life continually throws at you. A love that allows one to always be there for the other—whatever the need, whatever the loss. A love that forces both of you to go on living—despite the risks—even when the physical pain and the heartache would be too deep for most to bear.
So, for another night, another day, you are there for each other, and I thank God for that. You are both survivors. And I am proud to be able to call you both “son,” even if I don’t say it. Oh, the world knows I’m not physically your father, but my heart doesn’t know that boundary. So I stand here, looking in, not wanting to intrude. But, know that I am here and that I care. Starsky, your father died when you were much too young. Hutchinson, your father hasn’t learned to appreciate the son God so graciously gave him.
Maybe one day I will tell you of the pride I feel. A father’s pride.
A father’s love.