Ripples
A fanfiction by CrimsonSorrow
Disclaimer: We do not own Hey Arnold! We are simply borrowing the characters. ^^
~~~chapter four.............open your eyes~~~
"Say, when they're in love,
does everyone get this lonely?
Say, do they embrace the pain
that's even deeper than the darkness?
I call out to you now with my tears.
I don't need promises or such things,
because of the precious
strength that you've given me." --Maaya Sakamoto, Yakusoku wa Iranai (No Need to Promise)
The strangely alien smell of disinfectant made Helga's eyes water. She furiously rubbed at them, trying to keep a straight face and stop crying. The note that Gerald had left on the kitchen table was clutched tightly in her fist. She had just notified him, pretending to be a nurse. After all, no one but Arnold knew she was alive. And Arnold was currently... incapable of divulging that information.
Gerald had responded that he couldn't be there until the morning, because he had... other matters. She had almost laughed at that, but the full burden of the situation kept her mouth shut. A female voice in the background had told her everything.
He's not going to die, is he?
Doctors and nurses rushed back and forth, though their frantic need to save a life wasn't as sharply-edged as it had been before. The mad rush over a dying young man had calmed a bit, and she hoped this was a good sign. A hospital wasn't her favorite place. It never had been.
Suddenly, a white styrofoam cup was shoved into her downcast gaze. Helga felt mildly surprised, then looked up into a young woman's smiling face.
"You look like you could use a cup of coffee," she commented, rather briskly, but dropped into the nubbed chair beside Helga.
The woman's brown hair was streaked with bright gold, and fell to her thin waist. She wore a ribbed sweater that clung to her form, and her smile showed brilliant white teeth. Her skin was pale and ivory colored, and this living doll that now sat beside her seemed to be made of porcelain.
Helga self-consciously brushed her mussed blonde hair from her face, her hand half-hidden in one of Arnold's large plaid over shirts. Her fingers trembled as she did so, and with a carefully concealed glance, she noticed that it had been five hours since she had arrived. It was 1:00 in the morning, and she could feel sleep tugging at her eyelids.
"How long have you been waiting here?" came the flutey voice of the doll.
"Five hours," Helga replied, her tone soft. The terror of watching Arnold get shot was still burning her already frazzled nerves, and the memory played itself over and over and over in her mind, so vividly that she expected every time to be real. She expected to hear his cry of astonishment and intense agony, then his faint voice muttering that he was tired... so very tired...
"-alright?"
"Pardon?" Helga mumbled, as she was jolted back to reality by the doll's concerned question.
"I said, are you alright?" the doll asked, a hint of suspicion lurking in that perfectly innocent voice.
"I'm fine. I'm just tired," she heard herself say in a genuinely sleepy response.
This woman was beginning to drive her mad. Helga gazed at the contents of her cup, which had grown steadily cooler over the time that she had used to reflect the incident. Without thinking, she raised the cup to her lips and tilted it back, letting the warm contents slide down her throat and slip pleasantly into her stomach.
She nearly coughed at the bitter taste, but ignored it. Her flawless face, however, told a different story.
"It's espresso," the doll added, almost as a very delayed afterthought. "By the way, my name is Lilly. Pleased to meet you," she said, offering Helga her beautifully proportioned hand.
Helga eyed it for a brief moment, then shook it gently, her long, slender and pale fingers easily winning over Lilly's. Her unpainted fingernails seemed to stand out in a subtle way that contrasted greatly with the doll's bright red polish. "I'm Helga."
"Is something wrong?" Lilly questioned after a tense moment of silence, trying to meet Helga's line of vision. Helga refused to look at her, for she knew what type of reaction the perfect woman would have. At the sight of her irises, Lilly would get up, shout, scream, do whatever the average person would.
Helga didn't want that. Being in the spotlessly clean, white hospital that seemed to shine so brightly her eyes were squinted was already too much for her to bear. She could feel her body itching subconsciously, and her mind was puzzled as to why it was in a painfully luminescent and ridiculously cold world.
I was in there for so long... so long...
She drank more of the coffee, but it seemed to be having a negative effect on her body. Her conscience felt detached, and she was already caught in the clutches of slumber. Lilly seemed to be anxious to know why Helga's eyes were closing slowly.
Helga couldn't make out a word of it, and she succumbed to the blackness of a wonderful unconsciousness...
A beautiful array of red... black feathers...
A finger was prodding her arm, and a different voice was echoing in her ears.
"Excuse me, miss? Excuse me..."
Helga opened her eyes, instincively throwing up an arm against the insistent poking, but suddenly remembered that she was in a hospital.
"Are you awake?" the same voice asked, almost passively.
"I am now," she moaned, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder. She stretched, hearing bones crack. Helga thought she could almost hear them sigh in relief, after spending a few hours in an uncomfortable position.
A man was standing in front of her. He was of Asian descent, with hair like a raven's feathers and naturally pale skin that could rival even Lilly's. His hair was disheveled and his shoulders hunched, and on his face was an expression that no one would ever like to see in a life or death situation. The circles under his brown eyes suggested to her that the night had been spent agonizing over something that she was sure she didn't want to hear. A clock on the wall in back of him told Helga that it was 3:00 am.
"You came in with the man who was shot last night?" His accent confused her at first, but she slowly came to realize what he had said and nodded silently.
"He lost a lot of blood," the doctor continued, and Helga sighed, feeling her chest tighten uncomfortably. "He is in a coma for the time being." The man looked at her sadly for a moment, then looked nervously at his clipboard. "We're not sure if he's going to wake up."
No, she thought, her sadness and anger boiling together in an emotional outbreak that would overflow it's respective dams if she didn't control it.
"Can I see him?" she asked, her voice flat and toneless. She concentrated all of her remaining strength on suppressing her tears and despair... if it was true, then the depression would follow her for the rest of her life...
The doctor gestured down the hallway, and began to walk away, asking her with his body language to follow him. The halls were bustling with nurses and doctors who had just arrived at work, and those who had worked the demoralizing graveyard shift. All around her was the smell that she had grown to hate, the smell that had plagued her from when they had first gotten their greedy, clammy hands on her...
"He's in here, miss. I will be back to check in about..." he paused and glanced at his wristwatch, "thirty minutes."
Helga nodded to show some sign that she had heard him, then grasped the doorhandle with a trembling hand. The large gold numbers glared at everyone who passed from a plaque that was carefully nailed into the wood. The metal was cold against her dry palm.
With every ounce of emotional strength she could muster, she turned the handle down, hearing it click open, and the door swung ajar. She closed her eyes just enough to see when she slipped through the crack between the door and the doorjamb.
Helga realized stupidly that her eyes were shut tightly, but she stilled her quickly beating heart and slowed her rhythmic breathing just enough for her to hear if anything was abnormal...
The quiet whirring of the intensive care unit that kept Arnold alive filled the room, making a desired silence sound almost beckoning.
"Open your eyes," she said, berating herself out loud. She exhaled and her eyelids slid open, revealing all that the room had to offer.
In the middle of the room was a bed, where an unrecognizable person lay, not moving. An IV pouch hung on a pole near the bed, and Helga followed the long tube with her unblinking gaze until it stopped, ending in a pointed needle that was inserted under the person's skin. His eyes were closed, and an oxygen mask was over his nose and mouth. The blankets were drawn up to the man's abdomen, and his long, sleeved arms lay on top, holding the blanket that was tucked around his waist. His chest visibly rose and fell with every breath, but it sounded strained and unnatural. White gauze and medical tape created a patch on his side, and all around the blank square was a gruesome black and blue bruise. His palms were open and facing towards the ceiling.
Helga pressed the back of her head against the door, wishing away her tears, even if it wasn't possible. She felt one roll down her cheek, followed by another and another, until, before she realized it, she was crying. Stealthily she crossed the room, leaving the door's offer to escape to the outside world, where she could pretend all was fine and dandy.
She stood at the side of the bed, her heart breaking as she kept her stare on his already lifeless body.
Is he braindead?
That man she had seen the night before, the one who had taken on Arnold's appearance had promised that he would live.
But how was she supposed to know that he would only be living with the support of machines?
Lightly, she placed her smaller hand in his open palm.
"God, how I love you," she whispered to him, painfully hoping that he might hear, "but why did I convince that guy to let you live if you were going to be reduced to nothing?"
His hand was cold. Cold and dead.
The longer she let her eyes linger, the more she cried. Her left hand unintentionally reached up and caressed his forehead, pushing back the blond forelocks that lay limp against his skin.
"I love you so much," she confessed again, knowing that this was most likely her only chance to tell him. Even if he couldn't listen. Her fingers lightly traced the lines of his callused palm.
"I'm so sorry that I did this to you."
Out of nowhere, the words to a song that had long diminished in her overactive mind made themselves known.
Even the melody that had escaped her somehow now floated back lazily, as if it had merely been biding it's time.
"Angel of the Lord, fall to sleep in the cradle of his arms, listen to my voice..." her voice trailed off pitifully, but she wanted to give it another try. It gave her a tiny glimmer of hope that he might pull through, even if it was small and immeasurable to the blistering sadness that she felt.
As she half-sang, half-muttered, every melody came back to her, one by one. Every note returned, making her happy and more depressed as she uttered every verse.
The song finally faded out of her mind and spirit, and she felt strangely drained. The memory combined with the current trauma was too much for her body and mind to handle, she summarized listlessly.
Helga dropped her gaze to rest on Arnold's hand, which still felt cold and dead. But then something happened that she didn't expect. At first, she registered it as a conclusive symptom of exhaustion, but when she tried to shake it away, it was still there.
His slender fingers had closed around hers in a gesture of acknowledgement.
Dr. Hatori Kawasagi stood outside room number 201, pondering what to say to the young lady he had led into the room less than an hour ago.
The man she had arrived with was submerged in a deep coma, the kind of coma where you're not even sure if the person is still functioning anymore. Hatori was contemplating what to say to the girl, who had looked stricken with grief when he had informed her of the young man's condition.
It was entirely possible for them to just pull the plug and let the man off into his eternal afterlife. He wasn't completely sure about what the girl would say; whether she would agree or not was to be decided.
However, Hatori was in for quite a shocking experience when he opened the door to announce his promised arrival. The woman was sitting beside the bed, smiling through her waterfalls of tears.
Hatori wasn't of what she was grinning about, but when he walked closer to try and talk to her about letting the man go, his eyes widened considerably.
The young man had his hand wrapped around the woman's, in an unmistakable sign of life, healing, and affection.
"Hello," she said to him, smiling. He returned it, still undoubtedly amazed at what had come to pass in the short time he had been absent. Hatori quickly departed the room after checking several status reports. All of the man's vital signs seemed to be rising...
Helga didn't know how long she sat there, simply crying and grinning stupidly at anyone who entered the room, doing a routine checkup. Arnold's grip on her hand was light and weak, but something had been born at the very moment he had held onto her.
She remembered light emanating from low in the horizon, casting eerie and beautiful shadows on the walls. And she remembered the dark in all of it's nightly splendor, and she remembered his grip getting slightly stronger, but she couldn't recall nodding off into la-la land...
She woke when she felt something gently brushing her hair and scalp. The sun was still a good hour away from rising, but there was enough light in the room to distinguish what was suddenly there.
Helga tried in vain to open her eyes as she lifted her head a little, sleepily enjoying the soft caress that stroked her forehead and slowly drifted to the back of her head, where it ebbed away and gave her delightful shivers that she hadn't felt in years.
She was so tired...
Almost begrudgingly, she opened her eyes, not wanting to glimpse the sickly face of the man whose bed she had used as a pillow while spending yet another night on a chair.
What she saw almost made Helga pinch herself.
Arnold was sitting up, his oxygen mask discarded to the left of him, smiling rather discreetly as he brushed her hair with his fingers.
Author's Notes: Erin: Interesting chapter huh? This came about one night when my muse kicked my arse into gear and made me write. ^_^ I hope you liked, and please don't flame. I'm posting again without my other half, but I needed to get this one up before people hurt me... .;;;
PS: The song sang by Helga is kinda written by me... so, yeah... @_@;;; Not anything special, really. I know this chapter was like ultra-cheesiness... -.-;;; I was bored! So review! I will beg! o_O;;
...CrimsonSorrow...
A fanfiction by CrimsonSorrow
Disclaimer: We do not own Hey Arnold! We are simply borrowing the characters. ^^
~~~chapter four.............open your eyes~~~
"Say, when they're in love,
does everyone get this lonely?
Say, do they embrace the pain
that's even deeper than the darkness?
I call out to you now with my tears.
I don't need promises or such things,
because of the precious
strength that you've given me." --Maaya Sakamoto, Yakusoku wa Iranai (No Need to Promise)
The strangely alien smell of disinfectant made Helga's eyes water. She furiously rubbed at them, trying to keep a straight face and stop crying. The note that Gerald had left on the kitchen table was clutched tightly in her fist. She had just notified him, pretending to be a nurse. After all, no one but Arnold knew she was alive. And Arnold was currently... incapable of divulging that information.
Gerald had responded that he couldn't be there until the morning, because he had... other matters. She had almost laughed at that, but the full burden of the situation kept her mouth shut. A female voice in the background had told her everything.
He's not going to die, is he?
Doctors and nurses rushed back and forth, though their frantic need to save a life wasn't as sharply-edged as it had been before. The mad rush over a dying young man had calmed a bit, and she hoped this was a good sign. A hospital wasn't her favorite place. It never had been.
Suddenly, a white styrofoam cup was shoved into her downcast gaze. Helga felt mildly surprised, then looked up into a young woman's smiling face.
"You look like you could use a cup of coffee," she commented, rather briskly, but dropped into the nubbed chair beside Helga.
The woman's brown hair was streaked with bright gold, and fell to her thin waist. She wore a ribbed sweater that clung to her form, and her smile showed brilliant white teeth. Her skin was pale and ivory colored, and this living doll that now sat beside her seemed to be made of porcelain.
Helga self-consciously brushed her mussed blonde hair from her face, her hand half-hidden in one of Arnold's large plaid over shirts. Her fingers trembled as she did so, and with a carefully concealed glance, she noticed that it had been five hours since she had arrived. It was 1:00 in the morning, and she could feel sleep tugging at her eyelids.
"How long have you been waiting here?" came the flutey voice of the doll.
"Five hours," Helga replied, her tone soft. The terror of watching Arnold get shot was still burning her already frazzled nerves, and the memory played itself over and over and over in her mind, so vividly that she expected every time to be real. She expected to hear his cry of astonishment and intense agony, then his faint voice muttering that he was tired... so very tired...
"-alright?"
"Pardon?" Helga mumbled, as she was jolted back to reality by the doll's concerned question.
"I said, are you alright?" the doll asked, a hint of suspicion lurking in that perfectly innocent voice.
"I'm fine. I'm just tired," she heard herself say in a genuinely sleepy response.
This woman was beginning to drive her mad. Helga gazed at the contents of her cup, which had grown steadily cooler over the time that she had used to reflect the incident. Without thinking, she raised the cup to her lips and tilted it back, letting the warm contents slide down her throat and slip pleasantly into her stomach.
She nearly coughed at the bitter taste, but ignored it. Her flawless face, however, told a different story.
"It's espresso," the doll added, almost as a very delayed afterthought. "By the way, my name is Lilly. Pleased to meet you," she said, offering Helga her beautifully proportioned hand.
Helga eyed it for a brief moment, then shook it gently, her long, slender and pale fingers easily winning over Lilly's. Her unpainted fingernails seemed to stand out in a subtle way that contrasted greatly with the doll's bright red polish. "I'm Helga."
"Is something wrong?" Lilly questioned after a tense moment of silence, trying to meet Helga's line of vision. Helga refused to look at her, for she knew what type of reaction the perfect woman would have. At the sight of her irises, Lilly would get up, shout, scream, do whatever the average person would.
Helga didn't want that. Being in the spotlessly clean, white hospital that seemed to shine so brightly her eyes were squinted was already too much for her to bear. She could feel her body itching subconsciously, and her mind was puzzled as to why it was in a painfully luminescent and ridiculously cold world.
I was in there for so long... so long...
She drank more of the coffee, but it seemed to be having a negative effect on her body. Her conscience felt detached, and she was already caught in the clutches of slumber. Lilly seemed to be anxious to know why Helga's eyes were closing slowly.
Helga couldn't make out a word of it, and she succumbed to the blackness of a wonderful unconsciousness...
A beautiful array of red... black feathers...
A finger was prodding her arm, and a different voice was echoing in her ears.
"Excuse me, miss? Excuse me..."
Helga opened her eyes, instincively throwing up an arm against the insistent poking, but suddenly remembered that she was in a hospital.
"Are you awake?" the same voice asked, almost passively.
"I am now," she moaned, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder. She stretched, hearing bones crack. Helga thought she could almost hear them sigh in relief, after spending a few hours in an uncomfortable position.
A man was standing in front of her. He was of Asian descent, with hair like a raven's feathers and naturally pale skin that could rival even Lilly's. His hair was disheveled and his shoulders hunched, and on his face was an expression that no one would ever like to see in a life or death situation. The circles under his brown eyes suggested to her that the night had been spent agonizing over something that she was sure she didn't want to hear. A clock on the wall in back of him told Helga that it was 3:00 am.
"You came in with the man who was shot last night?" His accent confused her at first, but she slowly came to realize what he had said and nodded silently.
"He lost a lot of blood," the doctor continued, and Helga sighed, feeling her chest tighten uncomfortably. "He is in a coma for the time being." The man looked at her sadly for a moment, then looked nervously at his clipboard. "We're not sure if he's going to wake up."
No, she thought, her sadness and anger boiling together in an emotional outbreak that would overflow it's respective dams if she didn't control it.
"Can I see him?" she asked, her voice flat and toneless. She concentrated all of her remaining strength on suppressing her tears and despair... if it was true, then the depression would follow her for the rest of her life...
The doctor gestured down the hallway, and began to walk away, asking her with his body language to follow him. The halls were bustling with nurses and doctors who had just arrived at work, and those who had worked the demoralizing graveyard shift. All around her was the smell that she had grown to hate, the smell that had plagued her from when they had first gotten their greedy, clammy hands on her...
"He's in here, miss. I will be back to check in about..." he paused and glanced at his wristwatch, "thirty minutes."
Helga nodded to show some sign that she had heard him, then grasped the doorhandle with a trembling hand. The large gold numbers glared at everyone who passed from a plaque that was carefully nailed into the wood. The metal was cold against her dry palm.
With every ounce of emotional strength she could muster, she turned the handle down, hearing it click open, and the door swung ajar. She closed her eyes just enough to see when she slipped through the crack between the door and the doorjamb.
Helga realized stupidly that her eyes were shut tightly, but she stilled her quickly beating heart and slowed her rhythmic breathing just enough for her to hear if anything was abnormal...
The quiet whirring of the intensive care unit that kept Arnold alive filled the room, making a desired silence sound almost beckoning.
"Open your eyes," she said, berating herself out loud. She exhaled and her eyelids slid open, revealing all that the room had to offer.
In the middle of the room was a bed, where an unrecognizable person lay, not moving. An IV pouch hung on a pole near the bed, and Helga followed the long tube with her unblinking gaze until it stopped, ending in a pointed needle that was inserted under the person's skin. His eyes were closed, and an oxygen mask was over his nose and mouth. The blankets were drawn up to the man's abdomen, and his long, sleeved arms lay on top, holding the blanket that was tucked around his waist. His chest visibly rose and fell with every breath, but it sounded strained and unnatural. White gauze and medical tape created a patch on his side, and all around the blank square was a gruesome black and blue bruise. His palms were open and facing towards the ceiling.
Helga pressed the back of her head against the door, wishing away her tears, even if it wasn't possible. She felt one roll down her cheek, followed by another and another, until, before she realized it, she was crying. Stealthily she crossed the room, leaving the door's offer to escape to the outside world, where she could pretend all was fine and dandy.
She stood at the side of the bed, her heart breaking as she kept her stare on his already lifeless body.
Is he braindead?
That man she had seen the night before, the one who had taken on Arnold's appearance had promised that he would live.
But how was she supposed to know that he would only be living with the support of machines?
Lightly, she placed her smaller hand in his open palm.
"God, how I love you," she whispered to him, painfully hoping that he might hear, "but why did I convince that guy to let you live if you were going to be reduced to nothing?"
His hand was cold. Cold and dead.
The longer she let her eyes linger, the more she cried. Her left hand unintentionally reached up and caressed his forehead, pushing back the blond forelocks that lay limp against his skin.
"I love you so much," she confessed again, knowing that this was most likely her only chance to tell him. Even if he couldn't listen. Her fingers lightly traced the lines of his callused palm.
"I'm so sorry that I did this to you."
Out of nowhere, the words to a song that had long diminished in her overactive mind made themselves known.
Even the melody that had escaped her somehow now floated back lazily, as if it had merely been biding it's time.
"Angel of the Lord, fall to sleep in the cradle of his arms, listen to my voice..." her voice trailed off pitifully, but she wanted to give it another try. It gave her a tiny glimmer of hope that he might pull through, even if it was small and immeasurable to the blistering sadness that she felt.
As she half-sang, half-muttered, every melody came back to her, one by one. Every note returned, making her happy and more depressed as she uttered every verse.
The song finally faded out of her mind and spirit, and she felt strangely drained. The memory combined with the current trauma was too much for her body and mind to handle, she summarized listlessly.
Helga dropped her gaze to rest on Arnold's hand, which still felt cold and dead. But then something happened that she didn't expect. At first, she registered it as a conclusive symptom of exhaustion, but when she tried to shake it away, it was still there.
His slender fingers had closed around hers in a gesture of acknowledgement.
Dr. Hatori Kawasagi stood outside room number 201, pondering what to say to the young lady he had led into the room less than an hour ago.
The man she had arrived with was submerged in a deep coma, the kind of coma where you're not even sure if the person is still functioning anymore. Hatori was contemplating what to say to the girl, who had looked stricken with grief when he had informed her of the young man's condition.
It was entirely possible for them to just pull the plug and let the man off into his eternal afterlife. He wasn't completely sure about what the girl would say; whether she would agree or not was to be decided.
However, Hatori was in for quite a shocking experience when he opened the door to announce his promised arrival. The woman was sitting beside the bed, smiling through her waterfalls of tears.
Hatori wasn't of what she was grinning about, but when he walked closer to try and talk to her about letting the man go, his eyes widened considerably.
The young man had his hand wrapped around the woman's, in an unmistakable sign of life, healing, and affection.
"Hello," she said to him, smiling. He returned it, still undoubtedly amazed at what had come to pass in the short time he had been absent. Hatori quickly departed the room after checking several status reports. All of the man's vital signs seemed to be rising...
Helga didn't know how long she sat there, simply crying and grinning stupidly at anyone who entered the room, doing a routine checkup. Arnold's grip on her hand was light and weak, but something had been born at the very moment he had held onto her.
She remembered light emanating from low in the horizon, casting eerie and beautiful shadows on the walls. And she remembered the dark in all of it's nightly splendor, and she remembered his grip getting slightly stronger, but she couldn't recall nodding off into la-la land...
She woke when she felt something gently brushing her hair and scalp. The sun was still a good hour away from rising, but there was enough light in the room to distinguish what was suddenly there.
Helga tried in vain to open her eyes as she lifted her head a little, sleepily enjoying the soft caress that stroked her forehead and slowly drifted to the back of her head, where it ebbed away and gave her delightful shivers that she hadn't felt in years.
She was so tired...
Almost begrudgingly, she opened her eyes, not wanting to glimpse the sickly face of the man whose bed she had used as a pillow while spending yet another night on a chair.
What she saw almost made Helga pinch herself.
Arnold was sitting up, his oxygen mask discarded to the left of him, smiling rather discreetly as he brushed her hair with his fingers.
Author's Notes: Erin: Interesting chapter huh? This came about one night when my muse kicked my arse into gear and made me write. ^_^ I hope you liked, and please don't flame. I'm posting again without my other half, but I needed to get this one up before people hurt me... .;;;
PS: The song sang by Helga is kinda written by me... so, yeah... @_@;;; Not anything special, really. I know this chapter was like ultra-cheesiness... -.-;;; I was bored! So review! I will beg! o_O;;
...CrimsonSorrow...