Based on Hey, Arnold! characters created by Craig Bartlett. Author claims no copyright.
Phoebe Heyerdahl was always the smartest kid in school. Stellar SAT scores. Valedictorian at Lang Prep High School. She graduated from Harvard with degrees in Microbiology. PhD in neuroscience at Vanderbilt. Then a resident at Hillwood State University Medical Center.
Phoebe and her boyfriend since elementary school, Gerald Johanssen, had maintained a long distance relationship. Gerald was a basketball star in their youth and made it up to the NBA. She tried to find a medical gig in Pittsburgh so that she could be in the same city that he played his home games. But no such luck. HSU is in the same city they grew up in. The opportunity to be closer to her family was not a bad one. Plus there wasn't a no-trade clause in the contract Gerald was under in Pittsburgh, so they didn't want to settle down there.
Besides her parents the one person still in Hillwood that Phoebe stayed in touch with from her early days was her best friend, Helga G. Pataki. However, Helga had oddly not answered her texts or calls for a few weeks.
It was close to 6:00 PM on a spring evening. Phoebe sat at a microscope on a workbench. She wore a lab coat, blue latex gloves and her signature blue-rimmed glasses. Her black hair was pulled back in a short ponytail. Her phone buzzed. A text showed up that caught her by surprise. It was from another one of her Hillwood chums she just remembered had moved back there: Helga's on-again-off-again flame. The football head. Arnold Shortman.
ARNOLD (text) Phoebe? Hey its been a minute. You still working to cure Alzheimer's?
PHOEBE (text) Arnold! Yeah long time no see. I've been busy with all these cases and experiments and trips to see Gerald play. A few reagents and sequencing results at a time! I heard you were back in town. So you have a bldg. mgmt. gig? How is that going?
ARNOLD (text) Its going. Yeah busy too. It's surreal being back here. Good because not everyone can age like my grandma! Well could we talk later? I could use your help with something and we can check in.
PHOEBE (text) For a little while! BTW you haven't talked to Helga since you got back have you?
ARNOLD (text) Yeah actually I have. That's kinda what this is about.
Helga Geraldine Pataki went through some ups and downs with the only boy-turned-man she ever loved.
Arnold. The football-headed boy she fell head over heels for in preschool. The boy she bullied to mask her true feelings for. The boy she kept a shrine to in her closet throughout her girlhood.
Their romance was teased in the heat of the moment twice on crusades as preteens. Once in a battle to save their neighborhood and another on a class field trip to San Lorenzo that resulted in the rescue of Arnold's long lost parents. But it wasn't until they hit puberty that Helga let it all out that her feelings were no joke. They took a break when Helga got accepted to the magnet school, Lang Prep, but not Arnold as he went to South Hillwood High. But soon they both needed an escape from the high school atmosphere and sought out each other again.
They kept it going while both in college at HSU. But eventually they grew apart as Arnold left the country upon graduation for jobs teaching English in Spain and France.
Then Arnold came back. He inherited the boarding house he grew up in when his grandfather passed away. While shopping for a new phone he ran into Helga at Big Bob's, the flagship store of her father's electronics empire for which she was the manager. Then they caught up over ice cream a few days later at Clausen's parlor.
In their most recent encounter, nearly a week ago, Arnold spotted her on a jog through the neighborhood. Helga was ralphing in the dumpster outside her apartment. She waved him off when he asked if she was okay and then staggered back inside.
Helga paced around her apartment. She had a black eye. Her hands shook. She had been in a perplexed emotional state since the return of Arnold. She was also inebriated.
The shiner came from throwing a punch at what she later determined was a hallucination. As a result she bumped her head on the bathroom door. She thought she had seen Brainy, the wheezing, bespectacled fellow that had stalked her for much of her life.
Helga fell victim to alcohol. Just as her mother did. Miriam Pataki needed to take 12 steps to stop drinking what she called 'smoothies'.
In the kitchen she took a swig of rum. Then she teetered to the window to close the blinds. Before doing that she saw Arnold and Phoebe outside and got startled.
Arnold and Phoebe nodded at each other as they stood in front of Helga's door. Phoebe had been reminded of the time Helga was convinced she had contracted a phony disease called monkey nucleosis. But this was different. Nothing phony about alcohol abuse. Arnold rang the doorbell. No answer. Then he knocked.
Helga slowly opened the door. Her head was slightly tilted to the left side and her unkempt blonde hair swayed.
"Arnoldo! Pheebs! What are you two doing here?," Helga exclaimed.
"Hi Helga, we need to come in," said Arnold. He and Phoebe inched their way forward towards her.
"Ok ok, criminy," said Helga as she backed up a few steps, "is a zombie apocalypse coming or what?
Phoebe answered, "Maybe, you're looking kind of like a zombie."
"Then why come in-" Helga said before being interrupted by both of them marching in as she backed further away, to the kitchen counter near the door.
Arnold took the end table next to the door and put it in front of it as it shut. Then he locked the door. Phoebe picked up two parlor chairs that were knocked down by Helga in the living room and placed them side by side opposite the couch.
"Sit down," said Phoebe assertively as she took one of the chairs.
Helga regained her balance after sliding out of the way over to the kitchen counter. "Why?", she asked. "What's going on? You two just barge in here like it's nobody's business."
Arnold took the other chair and said, "Just sit down. On the couch. You need to talk with us."
"Ok, what?," Helga responded as she walked towards them, "What's such a big deal that you have to barge in here like this? She tiptoed a bit in her crazed state and fell on the coffee table. Arnold and Phoebe helped her up to the couch opposite them.
"Helg, you vomited in the dumpster when I saw you on a run," said Arnold. "What I smelled the other day wasn't from Clausen's. You reek of alcohol. Oh and you have a shiner."
"You haven't texted me for weeks and then Arnold told me about what was going on," said Phoebe. "We've been besties since preschool. Helga G. Pataki would never ghost me. But anyway, I know your mom drank. You should know how it can be hereditary."
"Speaking of, where are your parents? Or Olga?" Asked Arnold.
"Folks are on that Caribbean cruise they always go on this time of year. Olga is going through some drama with her divorce and taking care of my nephew," Helga answered, hearing them slightly clearer than a few minutes ago.
"That figures," said Arnold. "Things were never that easy between you and them. I know that much. They didn't notice me much more. So yeah I didn't blame you for always being more interested in hanging out with my family than yours when we dated. Maybe the booze is an escape from them for you."
Helga replied, "No, I mean, I told the school shrink about all of that in fourth grade. I just learned to live with it."
Arnold took a deep breath. "Well Helg," he said, "denial and keeping it a secret are textbook alcoholic moves. I know you have a history of keeping secrets, like how you were in love with me all through elementary school. But now your life is at stake."
"Calm down guys. Nothing to hide," said Helga.
Phoebe interjected, "You got into Lang. You went to college. You found the courage to tell Arnold how you really felt about him. I know you are capable of admitting you have a drinking problem. We're not going anywhere until you do."
"Well that's gonna be a while," said Helga as she stood up from the couch. Arnold and Phoebe got up as well to try and stop her from darting away. But then she slipped on a coffee table book that was on the floor and fell back to the couch.
As she fell images of her whole life flashed by in her stupor of a state. Arnold from the first time he noticed her on that rainy day going to preschool. The football heads she made out of watermelon and bubblegum in her closet. The times they kissed. Her and Phoebe laughing. Brainy getting punched by her. Olga playing piano while Big Bob and Miriam stand over in awe. Then the hallucination of Miriam held up one of her smoothies and told her daughter- "you can't hide!"
Helga blinked for a moment when lying back down. She looked away from Arnold and Phoebe, who had not left the chairs opposite her. Then she started to tear up.
"Its true! Its true! I'm an alcoholic! There, I said it!," said Helga while sobbing.
"Pheebs, I didn't want you to see me like this! You're long distance with Gerald, you have your neurology stuff, I don't wanna be a burden on you."
Tears continued as she turned to Arnold and touched his right hand. "And Arnold, my dear Arnold, you're right, Bob and Miriam gave me a job when I graduated college and rented this apartment out to me. But that's it. Scotch and Brandy gave me the emotional support they never did."
"Uh-huh," said Arnold.
Helga continued, "But so did you! That's why I kept that shrine to you in my closet all those years. And why I sold the Nancy Spumoni snow boots I got for Christmas to a detective so he could find Mr. Huynh's daughter for you."
"Wait, what?," said Arnold, a bit surprised.
She continued,
"And I posed as the French girl you saw on Valentine's Day. And this and that. And you know most of the rest. I never cared about expensive things even if I somehow got them from Bob and Miriam. All I wanted was you, and for you to be happy, even if it meant bullying to hide my emotions."
"So you're right, I'm too much of a secret keeper. When I confessed my love to you and we were together I thought it would solve everything. But I have failed you, and I am sorry."
Arnold, overwhelmed by her outpouring but with a straight face, said, "You haven't failed anyone."
"And you're not a burden on me," Phoebe added.
All three of them stood up.
"You need help. Ok?," said Arnold.
"We're gonna get you help," said Phoebe.
Helga, still in tears, nodded. Then she fell into Arnold's arms. Phoebe joined to make it a three way hug.