Dave Starsky was a happy man. Since he’d quit Bay City and come back east his life had just gotten better and better; Sure he missed Hutch and sometimes he even missed the heat but he would never have had what he had now if he’d stayed.
Gunther’s bullets made him see the light. He was pushing forty and with all the best will in the world he wasn’t quite as fast as he used to be. Maybe a couple of years earlier he’d have managed to get off a couple of well-aimed shots and duck down behind the car before the four bullets ripped through his body and nearly put the lights out forever. And Hutch? Hutch did his White Knight routine and indulged in his usual mental self-flagellation yammering on and on about how he should have seen it coming and how he should have stopped them and how…. In the end Starsky told him to get out of his room and not come back until he’d gotten over the guilt trip. He came back with a midnight feast and they ended up giggling so much that Dave nearly ruptured one if his internal wounds.

When Starsky was injured in Nam he’d managed to keep it from his mom; he didn’t let her know he was in Hawaii until he was at least able to stand up on his own. She thought he had been there a month, maybe six weeks while his broken leg healed. It wasn’t until she saw him limping and leaning on a stick barely able to get up the stairs on his own that Lily understood. He let her bawl him out about not telling her he’d nearly died and nearly lost his leg and eye. Then she went home and he finished his healing.

This time he couldn’t keep it from her. First off it made the national news; second even if it hadn’t Hutch would have called her if Rosa didn’t. When Starsky finally managed to keep his eyes open for more than fifteen seconds there she was doing her yiddisher momma schtick at full speed. And boy was he glad to see her.
This time she didn’t bawl him out; but she wept when she spoke of her fears of losing her eldest son in the same way that she had lost her beloved husband. This time she stayed. She and Hutch nursed him and encouraged him and wiped his tears (and worse) and coaxed him and nagged him until the day he was able to go before the Medical Board and come home with his gun and badge.

All that was over twenty years ago. Fear finally drove him ‘home’. The fear that the next time he really wouldn’t be quick enough and that he and Hutch would end up side by side six feet under.
Hutch was all for quitting anyway. He had his own demons to fight and booze and stake-outs don’t mix. Finally Starsky made his decision and Hutch watched him as he disappeared into the airport, his kitbag over his shoulder making his limp seem even more evident than ever.
Starsky found a job with a security company – ‘advising’. Then computers got to be the size of a TV and not fill a room and he learned how to use them and abuse them. He learned how to program them and how to take them apart and rebuild them to do what he wanted them to do. He learned about the new electronic surveillance devices and his quick mind soon earned him a reputation as a ruthless and efficient tracker down of fraudsters and insider traders. Soon he could call his own tune. He went independent, keeping his confidentiality so tight that some people never really knew who they had hired. He worked for government agencies and against them. He charged high fees and he gave value for money.
To Lily Starsky’s delight her beloved Davey met and married a ‘nice girl’ and they presented her with a grandson (named Michael for his late grandfather).

Then Lily found the lump.

The biopsy showed that it was an advanced cancer. Dave took his mother to the hospital for her chemotherapy and then took her to the best wig-maker in New York.
But it was too late. The cancer was already invading Lily’s frail body and she was soon too weak to live alone.
When Lily announced that she was not going for the next round of therapy he understood that his mother no longer wanted to fight.
Starsky brought her home to the house he had built overlooking a lake upstate; he installed her in her own room and brought in all the medical equipment she would need. “I’ll always be here momma.”
He learned how to deal with the drains and tubes and the pain relief. When she no longer had the strength to operate the morphine pump he learned how to control the doses and how to inject the precious pain relief when needed.
He sat and watched her as she faded.
The doctor had answered her screaming pleas to be allowed “to go to Mike” by explaining what he could and could not do. “The law will not allow me to help her openly but I can give her morphine. She’s weak; each dose will weaken her and she will have less resistance to the pain. So she’ll need more morphine until….It may take a few days, it may take weeks. If she wants to eat that’s fine, if she can. You know in a hospital if a patient says ‘no intervention’ that’s what happens. Nothing – not even water and who can tell how much they suffer when thirst becomes dehydration…that’s the ‘moral’ solution; and it stinks. At least a patient who chooses to die at home with dignity can be assured that there won’t be unnecessary suffering.”

Starsky gave her morphine and tiny amounts of scrambled egg or chicken soup.

When Lily died Dave broke with one tradition…as the rabbi slashed his lapel he hesitated when he saw the pink ribbon.

Two months later Carrie was pregnant again; as soon as they knew it was going to be a girl they knew what her name would be.