The Healing Begins
April 25, 0951
Arnold's eyes fluttered open slowly. The sun was up and he was laying on the couch. He had a pillow under his head and a blanket over him. He felt… okay. Not great, but he didn't feel panicked or anxious. For the first time in almost a week, he felt like he had actually slept. He looked around the room. Where's Helga? he wondered.
As if on cue, he heard the door to the apartment shut. He got off the couch and made his way to the kitchen. He rounded the corner and saw Helga putting something in the fridge. She was listening to something on her headphones and humming along, swaying slightly in time to the music. He noticed she was still wearing the same clothes from the night before. She turned around and found him leaning against the door jam. She had a cruller held between her teeth and a plastic bag in her good hand. She extended her arm and held the bag in his direction. "Bweakfass?" she mumbled around the pastry.
Arnold laughed. "That sounds good to me." He took the bag from her and she reached up to remove the cruller from her mouth, taking a bite as she did so. She pulled out her phone and stopped her music. "You know, with all the junk you eat, I'm amazed you can keep your girlish figure."
Helga shrugged. "I guess I got some good genes from Miriam. My metabolism definitely didn't come from Bob. Just the eyebrow."
Arnold opened the bag and pulled out several bagels. "Preference?" he asked.
"Whatever. I got things I would eat, so pick whatever you want."
Arnold sliced two bagels in half and put them in the toaster.
"What were you listening to?"
"The Brothers Bright. Weird Country stuff. I'm sure you're not into it."
Arnold gave her a hurt look. "And why would you say that? You don't know my musical tastes. It might be right in my wheelhouse."
Helga laughed as she took another bite of her cruller. "You're definitely a Disney musical kind of guy. I imagine you singing 'Let it Go' as you skip down the road."
"Skip?"
Helga shrugged and sat down heavily on the high stool at the island in his kitchen. "Maybe I'm wrong. More into Tangled?" She smirked at him.
"I actually like jazz, for your information."
"Ah, that makes sense. You're an old soul, you like old music."
"An old soul, huh?" He smiled as he took the cream cheese package out of the bag and opened it.
"Something like that." She finished her cruller. "I bet you like big band too, huh?"
"Well it is jazz." The toaster popped, and Arnold removed them. He started to put cream cheese on one of the bagels. "I appreciate the breakfast, but you really didn't have to do this."
"Yes, I did. I told you last night, I'm not going anywhere." She shifted uncomfortably, as if she had said something wrong. "You know, until you want me to."
"I don't want you to go. I just don't want you to feel obligated to stay." He placed a bagel on a plate and handed it to her. "You've already done a lot for me. Gerald is the only other person that would have come over in the middle of the night."
Helga picked up the bagel and took a bite. "You called me. I came. That's what a partner does. You came for me when I needed you most. I wouldn't be sitting here if you hadn't."
Arnold looked down, and for a moment she thought she had made a huge mistake bringing up the incident. "You were right, you know. I'm too idealistic. I need to accept that I can't save everyone."
"Maybe, but you need to accept it for the right reason."
He looked back at her. "Meaning?"
She wiped some cream cheese off her finger on the side of the plate. "You just need to understand that people make their own decisions. It's not your fault you had to shoot that guy. But you don't want to lose that idealism, Arnold." She looked him in the eye. "Everyone in that department needs someone like you around to keep them honest. To keep them from descending into cynicism, the 'us versus them' mentality that comes from drowning in the world's bullshit."
He sighed. "I hardly think anyone else there cares what I think. I'm sure they all see me as sappy and naïve like you do."
"Your idealism is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness. It's what motivates you, what keeps you on the straight and narrow. It's also why the horror and the grind of the job hits you harder than a cynical bitch like me."
"I don't think you're really that cynical."
She shrugged. "A realist is always skating the edge of, and usually dipping into, cynicism. You might need me to keep your feet on the ground, but I need you to keep me from falling into the darkness."
Arnold gave her a serious look. "Helga, you don't need me to tell you right from wrong. I've seen you risk your life for strangers and coworkers. You go further than I would sometimes, but your moral compass works just fine."
"Even if mine does, not everyone's is calibrated. Sometimes the only thing that keeps the next guy from straining probable cause or making it up entirely is knowing that someone else isn't going to stand for it. They may see you as a narc, but if it keeps them honest it doesn't matter. It's easy to be like me in this job, Arnold, and just settle into the numbers game of how many tickets and arrests you can rack up. You won't make any enemies in the department being like that. It's hard to be like you, to look at the human cost of our action or inaction, and whether or not making an arrest today is morally right as opposed to legally permissible."
"How do you deal with it? Putting up with the misery and the pain every day for years?" He finally started eating his bagel himself.
Helga looked as though she was about to say something that was going to physically hurt her. "Um, you remember that pink book in my apartment?"
Arnold sucked some cream cheese off of his thumb. "How can I forget? I thought you were going to murder me and hide me in a freezer for it."
"That's better than you deserved. It's my poetry book. I write poetry. It helps me get everything out. I used to hold it in, but I just couldn't do it after a while." Helga looked down at the mostly eaten bagel in her hand. "I have a reputation to protect, though. So, no one can know about that book."
"Helga, I'm pretty sure no one at the office cares if you write poetry. You still make them all look like chumps. But I'm not going to tell anyone, don't worry."
She popped the last bite into her mouth. "I know you won't. I trust you. But that doesn't come easy for me, bucko, so don't abuse it."
Arnold finished his own bagel and leaned against the counter. "How's the arm feel?"
"Hurts. A lot. But a little pain never stopped me from anything. Doing something with my hair is gonna be a pain in the ass though."
"I'm sure we could find that little girl that gave you the pig tails," Arnold said with a wink. "If there's anything you need while you're recovering that I can help with, you know you just need to ask." He sighed. "I think it's gonna be a long road for both of us."
She held out her fist for a bump. "Partners."
Arnold returned it with a grin. "Partners."
A/N: I've forgone the editing and I'm just posting now. If you find any issues please point them out.
Tista: You definitely don't get hit with the psychological implications in the moment. It's always after that self-reflection that you start to doubt what you did. Arnold is more prone to that than most. Helga, for her part, fully accepts that she might have to kill someone in the line of duty and very nearly did in this case. She can sleep soundly at night because she's totally fine with killing someone before they kill her.
Lilalex: Glad you enjoyed it. Hopefully work wasn't too bad.
Nettie: I imagine Helga can be extremely caring when she wants to be, even if she would probably doubt she could do it. When she pushes the self-doubt aside and runs on instinct, I think this is how she'd be.
Timewarp: I think he would want to, but at the same time they're not dating and I'm sure almost losing her in this manner made him even more confused about how he feels about her. Arnold isn't the best when it comes to sorting out his feelings.
Ajay: I'll be honest, this chapter originally had less of his thought process when I wrote it. But your review and several others mentioned how much you wanted to see what he was thinking during the incident so I made a few slight additions to flesh that out.
Nep2uune: Every department will place an officer on "paid administrative leave" after a shooting incident. Our policy is that we are on leave for four weeks. For the purposes of the story, Arnold will be out for two. This allows the officer to come down from the emotional roller coaster of the incident, seek help if needed, and for the police investigation to be completed. The investigation is typically handled by an outside agency unless the agency that was involved in the shooting is large (like NYPD or some other large metro department). I'm honestly not sure who would pay for doctor visits. I know my department provides up to three visits to a mental health professional outside of our health insurance, then health insurance can provide for more. However, in a case like this, it might possibly be provided for under workers compensation.
Guest: Honestly, there isn't much that talks about the after effects of a major incident, especially one that may involve taking a life. The director of my academy was an incident counselor for police officers, so he talked about it on his own a few times, but it's not in the state required curriculum. It also isn't something we address at in-service training. Cops generally don't like to talk about the things that bother them and they bottle it up. That's one of the reasons cops suck at marriage and why the suicide rate is much higher than the general population. If you're referring more directly to tactics one should use in a gunfight, believe it or not we really don't cover too much and we definitely don't practice anything beyond actually firing our weapons. Use of cover, the difference between cover and concealment, and the terminal effects of different types of bullets on the human body are barely touched upon, if covered at all. For example, cars are concealment, not cover. Even a handgun round will penetrate both sides of a car unless they strike a steel support. The only parts of the car that you can depend on to stop a bullet are the engine and the wheels. They don't teach at that the academy.
Guest 2: I'm sure Arnold feels a little bad about bothering Helga with things, but Helga doesn't mind. She'll have a chapter in Part II of the story in which she elaborates on how she handled this incident emotionally.