"IN HIS CARE"
 

Brooklyn, New York........Starsky's Mother's apartment.

I walked around my apartment one more time, trying to think if there was anything else I needed to do before I went downstairs to wait for the taxi cab that would take me to the airport for my flight to Los Angeles, California. I was finally going to be able to see my son. I had been so worried about him and the only thing that helped me to keep my sanity at all was the knowledge that no one else was better at taking care of my son then his partner, and I thought to myself that probably included me, his own mother after all these years.
I had a lot of time to think back on the last twenty years during my long flight to Los Angeles.
....................losing my husband Michael and ultimately sending my son
three thousand miles away.............

One of the hardest  things I had to ever do was send my oldest son to go live in California and that was now twenty years ago.
I had sent him out to Los Angeles to live with my sister Rosie and her husband Al. I just could not handle Davey after his father was killed, he was running wild, was starting to hang out with some dangerous people and I was afraid if he didn't get away from here and them I would have not only lost my husband but very possibly my son as well.
I sent him away to live with Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al because I loved him that much.

The night that I told him what I was going to do my Davey just sat there on his bed and buried  his face in my arms and cried.

My poor baby had just lost his Dad and now he was being sent three thousand miles away by his own Mother. I couldn't expect a sixteen year old to understand. He didn't. And I am not sure I really understood but I knew I had to do it.

I will never forget the look of hurt in his eyes and the tears rolling down his face after I told him.

..........................
..........................

Now here I am twenty years later still living in the same apartment that Davey had spent his first sixteen years. Davey had had a really rough time adjusting to life in Los Angeles, he just didn't seem to fit in with the beach boy life style so prevalent those ays. He was just a skinny Jewish kid from Brooklyn, New York with this funny accent.

Thank the Lord for Ken.

The best thing that could have happened to my son was meeting up with Ken Hutchinson at the Police Academy because from that first day these two have been inseparable.

I met "Hutch" as Davey called him for the first time when he came home with Davey to spend the Thanksgiving holidays with me .They had just graduated from the Police Academy and were telling me about their plans to be "Partners" as soon as their mandatory probation period was over. They wanted to be detectives and work together. And as soon as I saw them together I knew that my son had found a friend for life in Ken Hutchinson.

Ken simply loved my son for what Davey was, didn't try to change him to fit in with a California lifestyle. One of my fears for my son was that with such a giving heart he would get taken advantage of but with Ken on the scene Davey had found his friend for life. The one person who would be there through thick and thin. I knew then theat he would always be loved and cared for. I prayed fervently that fate would be kind to them both.

...................
.....................

Thank God for Ken, this year had been so bad for my baby. I could take some solace in the fact that I knew he had a friend that would love and care for him.

I will never forget the phone call Ken had to make to me the day that Davey got shot. He fell apart on the phone.

"Rachel", he said in a shaky voice, "I don't know how to tell you this."
"Starsk........David is in the hospital, he's been shot."

"Oh God, Rachel, I am so sorry...........I.......Oh God."

I interupted him and said. "Ken, slow down, please take it easy, talk to me."

I had to take a deep breath and sit down, I felt like I was going to pass out. I couldn't fall apart now but I had been a cop's wife..........a cop's widow now,  and for the briefest moment I was transported back twenty years, kneeling down beside my husband Michael in the street in front of our place watching his  life slip away. We never  had a chance to say goodbye.

And now My Davey....................Oh, Please no, not again, this just can't be true.! This just can't be happening again. My mind was having trouble accepting it.

................
................

"Ken, Honey just take it easy and tell me what happened."
He couldn't talk, and I could tell he was hanging on to his sanity by the thinest of threads.

My son's partner was crying into the phone. I gave him a minute or so to try to compose himself. Finally in a voice barely above a whisper............

"We were in the Police Garage, Starsk.............David was unlocking the car door when I saw the police cruiser and I saw the guns."
"They just started shooting."
"They were on his side of the car." He didn't have a chance, there was no where for him to go."

"By the time I saw them and yelled for him to get down it was too late, they shot him down right there in front of me."

"Oh God, if I had only seen them sooner."

"I'm so sorry Rachel, so sorry."

He began to cry again.

I said, "Ken honey, don't do that to yourself, I know that you did everything that you could have possibly done to keep this from happening."

"Can you tell me how he is?"

"Please Ken, how bad is it?"

"I have to know."

"It's bad Rachel, really bad, he's in a coma, he made it through the surgery but......there is so much damage, damage to his lung,
and massive damage to his chest and stomach."

"The Doctors just don't think he can......................................."

He could not go on, could not say the words.

"Ken listen to me, don't you dare give up on Davey, he needs you to believe in him now more than ever."

"Ken?"

I'm not every giving up on him Rachel, I am just so scared for him, he means so much to me, I love him so much." "It's just not
fair!"

Suddenly I had a twinge of pain in my leg and I looked down at the hip high cast that I had on. I had broken the leg in several places barely two weeks ago and was house-bound. There would be no way that I could fly out to California right now.

"Oh Ken.", "I can't walk right now, I can't travel."

He must have realized the anguish I was in.

"Rachel", he said, David is not gonna be alone, I will promise you that, I will be here with him............and I will not give up........
not let him give up either."
"Rachel, I see his Doctor heading into ICU, and I need to talk to him, need to be with Starsk."
But he did manage to ask me if I had anyone to stay with me and if I would be all right?"

"I have to be honey." "I'll handle it, I have to."
"But please Ken, call me as soon as you know anything, anything at all, I have to know." (Please Dear Lord just don't let him die)

.....................
.....................

That had been the worst week of my life wondering every minute of every day if my son would survive.......if the next phone call I got was the one that every parent dreaded.

And as Ken had promised me that fateful day he called me at least once a day sometimes more to tell me how Davey was doing.

He called me the day he arrested James Gunther.

But today's phone call was the answer to my prayers.

"Rachel", he said, David woke up a  few minutes ago and he recognized me, even managed to squeeze my hand a little while I was holding his." "They have a tracial tube down his throat so he can't talk yet but he knew me, Starsk.........I mean David knew me, he knew me." "His Doctor tells me  that there is still a long ways to go but he is doing better and waking up from the coma is a very good sign." "They tell me he isn't out of the woods yet and they won't give me any guarantees but his Doctor, Dr. Kellerman is cautiously optimistic."

"I wanted to let you know as soon as I could."

My prayers had been answered. I was wiping the tears from my eyes and trying to talk on the phone to my son's partner at the
same time. "Thank you so much Ken."

"Tell Davey his Mom loves him and I'll be there as soon as I can travel."  "Ken he is still my baby."

"Wait Rachel", Ken said. "He is going to be hospitalized for quite a while yet."

"And I promise as soon as he is strong enough to talk to you on the phone I'll call you and let you talk to him."

"But please wait to come out here." "For now trust me to watch over him."

"He wouldn't want you to worry so much about him and it really would be better if you would come out here after he gets out of the hospital and I bring him home."
"I could use some help then, and your leg will probably be out of the cast by then and you can travel."

"You know I'll be here for him." "He won't be alone, I promise you that."

"I know how you must feel but let him heal up a little first."

.................
.................

In my heart I knew that Ken was right, so I agreed.

"Ok, Ken but I still feel like I should be there, I'm his Mother."   And  when he got shot all I could think of was how I had lost my husband Michael. It was terrifyingly similar.

I would wait but it would be very hard to do.

"And Ken I want to talk to him as soon as I can."

"I promise you Rachel the minute he is able to talk I'll let you talk to him."

"Please remember I won't let him be alone, I'll be here for him."

"I love you Ken", I said, "and tell Davey I love him, his Mom loves him."

"I'll tell him."

"Rachel I will call you tomorrow about the same time."

"Ok, honey", I said. "And thank you for being there for him and loving him the way you do."
"Goodnight Ken, and I love you too." I hung up the phone and cried, suddenly I was transported back in time twenty
years and I was with my Michael as his life slipped away. At least my son was alive, and as long as there is life there will always be hope, I closed my eyes and prayed to God for my son's life.

I would sleep tonight for the first time since David had been shot and I hoped Ken would too.

......................
......................

It was now over two months since my son had been shot down in the police garage, some very long and agonizing months waiting by the phone for the calls from California that were my only link to my son, I still couldn't think of anything else.

I didn't get to talk to Davey much while he was still in the hospital because they had him pumped full of morphine for his pain and he could barely put a whole sentence together. I did most of the talking with him falling asleep in the midst of our conversations.  Ken would take the phone from Davey's ear and he and I would talk for a while. "Rachel he's asleep." "And at
least when he sleeps he isn't in any pain." I could almost feel the anguish in my son's partner's voice.

I wasn't even sure if Davey would remember our conversations when he woke up but he would always manage to tell me,
"Mama, I love you."

....................
....................

A few more weeks had passed and Ken called me to tell me that Davey was going to be able to go home. And that was only on the condition that he have someone there with him, a live-in nurse if he didn't have any immediate family to take care of him.
I might be in New York three thousand miles away but he certainly had family right there. He had Ken.
Ken had been with him everyday since he had been shot. If he wasn't family then no one was.

They let my son go home.  I knew he would have the best care imaginable and what Ken lacked in professional knowledge he more than made up for in his deep and abiding love for my son. He would be surrounded by love and that's what my baby needed a lot of these days.

I was delighted to finally get the phone call I had been waiting for now for so long. Davey had just called me and asked me to come out to visit him and stay with him for a while.

"Maw, it's me."

"Oh, baby", I said to him. "It is so good to hear your voice, how are you feeling?"

"Maw I am gonna be ok, I wish you wouldn't worry so much." "I can't do much of anything and it looks like thats the way it is going to be for a while, and yes it still hurts awful but I got these little blue pills for when it gets really bad."

"And I got Hutch, he's taking care of me real good, he's taking care of everything." "He won't let me worry about anything."
"Everyone should be as blessed as I feel right now having a friend like him."
"Maw I honestly don't believe I would have made it out of the hospital if it weren't for him."
"Everytime I woke up he was right there, sometimes I would be in so much pain I didn't think I could take it a minute more but he would be there rubbing my shoulders, letting my fingers dig into his arm out of desperation trying to get away from the pain that kept crashing down on me."
" He'd talk to me endlessly, telling me all the things we were gonna do when I got better, run his hands back and forth through my hair, and it still amazes me how something that simple sometimes did more for me then all those drugs they were constantly pumping me full of. "A lifetime of 'thank yous' would never be enough."

.....................
.....................

Davey was quiet for a minute probably lost in his thoughts of those pain filled days.

I said, "Davey, are you ok?"

"Yea, Maw, I was just thinking about everything thats happened."

"But I didn't call you to talk about me, Hutch and me were wondering if you'd like to come out to LA for that visit now.?"
"I'd really like to see ya."

I could hear the trembling in his voice.

"Maw I almost died." "I know I can't do much at all if you do come out here but................"

"He couldn't finish the sentence.

"I know baby, I know and I want to see you too."

He was beginning to slur his words and I knew he was probably minutes away from falling asleep.

"Then it's settled and Maw I am going to pay for the ticket, you hear me?"

"But Davey?"

"No Maw, let me do this for you, God only knows there is so little I can do for you with us three thousand miles apart."

I told my son, "ok."

"Maw I would like to talk to you some more but the pain pill I just took is kicking in and I can hardly keep my eyes open, I'm
going to let you talk to Hutch about when you can come out here and all that kind of stuff."
"I'm really getting a little fuzzy around the edges."

In the background I heard Ken tell my son, "You've always been a little 'fuzzy' around the edges."

"Hey" my son said, 'Is that anyway to treat a convalescent?"

It was good to hear the easy banter between these two again,

"Hi Rachel", "It's Ken."

"Your son is a little fuzzy around the edges all right, I think it's naptime."

...............
...............

Ken and I made the arrangements for my flight to LA. In one week I would be in LA.

My flight to LA had arrived on time and Ken had met me at the airport. I think we were pretty close to home when he pulled the car over into a CalFoods Grocery parking lot.

He turned around in his seat so we were facing each other. "Rachel, I wanted to talk to you alone for a few minutes before you see David."  "You haven't seen him in more than four years when we went back east to visit you and I  just don't want you to be shocked when you see him right now."
"The shooting took a lot out of him, he's lost almost twenty five pounds, he is very pale and still weak as a puppy."
"I don't want you to worry anymore than you already are about him, he'd see it in your face."

"I've been with him everyday since 'it' happened so I can see the little signs of improvement, but, well I guess I just thought you should know." "I just want you to trust me on this." "What you need to remember is that he is getting better and he will be OK but it's gonna take some time."

I appreciated my son's partner being so candid with me, I had figured Davey would look pretty bad and Ken was trying to prepare me for that. I would cling to the promise that Davey would be all right in time. I would have a smile on my face when I saw my son, I just hoped my Mother's emotions would not betray me.

"Ken can we go now?" "I can't wait to see Davey."

"Sure", he said, "I don't like to leave him alone for long anyway."

"I would never forgive myself if something happened to him and I wasn't there." Suddenly I had an overwhelming need to see my son.

.................
.................

Ken opened the door to the house and called out to Davey. "Hey I got this pretty lady with me who can't wait to see you."

He then excused himself and headed out the door and back outside to get my luggage from the car. He was giving me these first few moments to be alone with my son.

I walked into the  living room to find my son lying on the couch propped up with pillows and covered up by a colorful afghan. My heart nearly broke when I looked at him. He was so thin, there were dark circles under his eyes and new lines on his face that hadn't been there before, the after effects of too much pain.

He smiled up at me but even through that smile I could tell he was going through hell. A mother knows when her child is hurting and with one look I knew that mine was.I sat down on the edge of the couch as close to him as I could. We reached for each others hands and held on. I didn't dare hug him, I knew his chest and stomach were all stitched up. I didn't ever want to let go of him but I did. Took my hand and ran it through his beautiful curls, touched his face, his cheek, his neck then gently placed a kiss on his forehead. I put my face closer to his so he could kiss me back.

I hadn't seen him in over four years and I couldn't think of a thing to say but "Oh, Davey."

"Maw", he said to me, "I'm all right, gonna be ok, the worst is over with."  "I am really gonna be ok."

But My Sweet Lord he looked so frail, so ill that I thought my heart would burst.

No wonder Ken had tried to prepare me, he knew my seeing Davey like this would shock me.

Davey broke into my thoughts........

"Maw, I got something for you." "Go look on the kitchen table."
"I got up from the couch and walked into the kitchen to find the most beautiful vase of yellow roses surrounded by baby's breath that I had ever seen. I pulled out the card attached to the flowers.

It read, 'For My Beautiful Mother, your son David'

"Oh baby, these are just beautiful."

He said, "Maw turn the card over."

I did, and on the back it read, 'P.S. "Your Other Son Loves You Too, Ken."

That about did it, the tears I was so carefully holding back were threatening to make an appearance. Davey saw my face.
"Hey, Maw, please don't cry, I'm alive, you're here and Hutch is here."
"Please don't cry." "Everything is gonna be ok."

I wiped at my eyes.(Yes, and thank goodness for Ken).

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ken bring in my luggage and take it into his bedroom. I followed him. "Ken I don't want to take your room."

"Rachel", he said, "it's not a problem at all, I have a cot set up in Starsk's room anyway."

He lowered his voice so Davey could not hear him. "I need to stick close to him at night." "Sometimes he has nightmares about
the shooting or he gets sick from the medicine he has to take." "This way I can be right there when he needs me." "And sometimes he is in so much pain it won't let him sleep."
"So if I'm already here I can rub his back and chest or his stomach for him and relieve some of those aches and pains."
"Sometimes all it takes is for me to lay down next to him and quietly talk to him about anything and everything, whatever comes to my mind, whatever I think will distract him."  "Then he usually gets relaxed enough to fall asleep."
"Rachel, I care about him so much."  There was a catch in his voice and he turned away from me for a minute so I
couldn't see his face. I thought to myself. Not only is Davey suffering from all this but you are too, right along with him.

..................
..................

My thoughts were interruped by my son's voice from the other room.

"Hey Hutch, you said we could eat as soon as Maw got here."

I saw Ken smile at the sound of his partner's voice and walked back out into the living room, I was close behind him.

"I'm coming Gordo, be patient, I haven't let you starve yet, have I?" Ken walked by the couch and reached down to run his hand through my son's wild curls.

...................
...................

What a delightful surprise to find out Ken is really a very good cook. We had a tossed salad for starters and then spaghetti with meatballs and bread sticks for dinner. There was cut up fresh fruit topped with whipped cream for dessert.

I could not help but notice that Davey ate everything on his plate but when  Ken put the plate in from of Davey there wasn't really that much food on it, it looked like about half of what my son would normally have eaten. The devastating effects of his shooting were painfully evident. But when Ken brought out the dessert plate for Davey I noticed that I could barely see the fruit peeking out from under the huge mountain of whipped cream that topped it. Davey had no trouble at all making that concoction disappear.

..................
...................

I stayed in LA for three weeks and tried to help out Ken as much as I possibly could. I tried to give him a break once in a while from the constant care that my son still needed. And Ken never wavered in the gentleness with which he cared for my son.

He didn't like to let Davey out of his sight for long, and I believe he felt that as long as he was right there with him, no further harm would come to him.

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..................

One day after Davey went to bed Ken and I sat down and talked about my son's future as a police officer. Ken said that he and Davey had been talking about it some already. And even  after all that had happened Ken knew that Davey still wanted to be a cop like his father. I asked Ken point blank how he felt about that. He thought about it for a few minutes, got up and walked around the living room then settled back down on the couch with me. "Rachel, I don't know, I just don't know." "Starsk's doctor had made it perfectly clear that even when his body heals from the shooting, if anything like this happened again the trauma would be just too much."
"That scares the hell out of me."
"There's one part of me that wants to pack it in for good, turn our shields in once and for all and call it a day."
"Find something else to do, just Me and Thee." "I wish I could take him someplace safe, away from all that ugliness, but what it really comes down to is one thing."
"The other part of me knows how much being a cop means to Starsk." "I don't know if he would ever really be happy doing anything else." "We'll just have to wait and see how we both feel about everything when he's a lot better."

"Our Captain has already said that he figured Starsk would want to come back to active duty and he's looking into some other options for us, but only as a team, maybe not being out in the streets as much."
"I don't know what else to tell you, but all I can think about now is getting him well again."

"Rachel, I will always love your son and we may have to change our ways of doing our job but whatever we decide we will go down that road together."

"It'll still be, like always, just 'Me and Thee'."

I reached over and hugged my son's partner and best friend.

My heart was at peace because I knew that my son would

always be in the arms of "His Angel"...................................

The End
 

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