Based on Hey Arnold! characters created by Craig Bartlett. Author claims no copyright.

It was a mild Spring day in Hillwood with a slight breeze. Arnold parked his red-colored car in the alley behind a townhouse. The house served as a sober living group home for women. Helga walked out of the front seat. Then she got her luggage out of the popped open trunk.

"I'm not going anywhere, okay?," said Arnold. Helga nodded. They kissed and held hands for a few seconds. Then Helga wheeled her luggage towards the front door as Arnold watched her go.

TEN YEARS LATER

Sunset Arms Boarding House. Central Hillwood, between the freeway and downtown. Long ago, when Phil and Gertie Shortman ran it, a regular cadre of residential tenants stormed the halls. Ernie the diminutive demolition truck driver. Oskar Kokoshka, the illiterate and degenerate Eastern European and his tortured wife Susie. Mr. Huynh, the Vietnamese immigrant and ex-country music star. It wasn't much of a boarding house anymore. When Phil and Gertie's grandson Arnold inherited it he converted it to a mixed-use property.

Helga G. Shortman had become the Sunset Arms building manager. When she was a kid she had jumped rope across the street in hopes of catching a glimpse of her future husband Arnold, who was living there. One time she even snuck into the premises to delete a lovesick voicemail she had left for Arnold. Little did she know that she had a future there.

Helga gave the standard AA introduction to a seated crowd. Then she reached in her pocket for a few of her sobriety chips she had accumulated and took out the most recent, bronze-colored one.

"These chips may not do anything for you at the poker table," said Helga, "and they won't taste very good, even with salsa. But they can help certify that you have beaten this disease."

As did many newcomers to the sober living house, Helga had a relapse early in her stay. She evaded the rules and snuck out to a liquor store. It took a little while to get her to cooperate and open up to the other women there, not unlike her time with her elementary school psychologist, Dr. Bliss.

"My mom was an alcoholic. Maybe its just hereditary. But I think there is more to it than that." What she eventually got out in group therapy sessions was a lot of the same thing she told Arnold and Phoebe when they had found her at rock bottom.

"Neither of my parents ever gave much of a crap about me. My dad could never remember how old I was or that my name is Helga, not Olga like my sister. My mom was too busy drowning her sorrows or trying to make up for them. All they did was throw money at me when I needed it and gave me a roof over my head. The affection I never got from them, I felt like I got from friends like Jim Beam and Jack Daniels."

The part of her 12-step program she took the most seriously was making amends. She started by apologizing to Arnold and Phoebe for not being honest about her relapse. Being a better person than she deemed her parents to be was something Helga had always wanted to do. But how to do that didn't seriously click with her prior to the emotional grunt work rehab put her through. Conquering what Miriam referred to as 'smoothies' she felt was only half the battle, and that if she really didn't want to be like Bob she had more amends to make.

Phoebe had always accepted the role of Helga's best friend. No matter how many times the role thrust her into indentured servitude. In her state of atonement Helga got the sense that Phoebe perhaps did not like being bossed around as much as she was. Apologies then ensued. Phoebe replied that whatever she had been roped into doing, she knew that the real Helga that was kind and virtuous was in there the whole time.

Olga got a text from her younger sister. Helga apologized for convincing her to take a student teaching gig far away in Alaska, and changing a grade on her report card from an A to a B plus out of jealousy. The Pataki sisters would become better friends later in life, but at that time Olga took what she read for what it was worth and said it was ok. Olga was then wrapped up in personal drama going through a divorce. Unlike Helga, who only ever had Arnold, Olga had several partners that turned to be bad news, from ex-fiance Doug, Che from the San Lorenzo trip to soon-to-be ex-husband Tony.

Arnold had already got the message that the abuse Helga put him through when they were kids disguised her romantic feelings for him. They had overcome that obstacle a while ago. But Helga still felt obligated to say sorry for the times she went overboard from name calling to spitballs.

It was Arnold who helped talk her into going to rehab, and he ended up helping her with what to do when she got out of it. There was no way she would go back to working at Big Bob's. Her dad was apathetic to lose her as an employee. Arnold needed someone to look after Sunset Arms while he was busy going back to school en route to getting his PsyD and becoming a marriage and family therapist. Helga fulfilled that role.

Hiring her was in part a good samaritan act. But Arnold also felt that he needed more familiarity in his adult life. He had returned to a Hillwood that he didn't recognize- without his grandpa, the boarders that had all retired and/or moved and many of his childhood friends. Helga had some obvious baggage, but he didn't have it all together either. He came to realize that they needed each other.

And so their relationship status gradually went from complicated to back together for good. Marriage and baby carriages by their late 20s. After taking maternity leaves for the arrivals of their son and daughter, Helga wanted to give back.

Volunteering for the food bank and homeless shelter were part of her rehab assignments. But it was Arnold that helped get her there in the first place. Arnold had been the white knight that had pulled her out of her worst situations, saw the best in her and shared his life with her the way she had always dreamed he would. She wanted to prove that she could accomplish something on her own, without his help. That was when she made use of vacant space in Sunset Arms to be her base of operations for AA meetings and sponsorship. She made sure her sponsees got with the 12-step program with the same grit she had often displayed in the school yard.

A decade after her check-in to sober living, she gave a talk about her sobriety chips at an AA meeting. "You need to take responsibility to earn these chips. But you also need help from other people. That could be me."