(I don't own the characters of Hey Arnold!)

She tried to cough, but her throat felt blocked. Her lungs felt empty. She went to lift her hand to try to remove the object gagging her, but her arms wouldn't move. Her eyes closed again.
When she opened them next, she still felt like gagging, and coughed again. This time though, there were two nurses. At least, she thought they were. One kept taking on the appearance of a meercat, the other a giraffe. They were talking over her, then talking to her, explaining that they were just going to wipe her down. They went back to chatting to each other. She tried to talk, but couldn't. Her lungs were feeling heavy, too.

Every now and then they would look down at her and talk. The meercat nurse then moisturised her body after they dried her off. Her eyes closed. When they opened again there was another nurse looking in at her, sitting in the doorway.

"Are you okay?" she asked. Helga shook her head then tried to reach for her mouth. "Oh, I know, honey, but I can't remove it just yet. We need to get your oxygen levels back up again and be sure your lungs will work on a c pap machine."

Helga looked at her arms. "Yes, the sedation is to keep you from pulling out the tube again," the nurse told her kindly. "Your husband has been coming to visit everyday, but you always seem to be asleep."

Helga moved her head and winced when she felt a pinch in her neck. But she had no more energy to try to reach up and find out the cause. So far, she worked out she was in a hospital. But she didn't know why. In fact, she didn't know anything much. She frowned. 'The drugs,' she told herself. She looked over to see two bags hanging, with tubes, one looking to be going to her neck, the other to her hand. She closed her eyes again.

. . .

Arnold walked into the house and looked around. This was the time he hated. Being alone. Being alone meant he had time to think, and thinking was the last thing he wanted to do.

"Arnold, are you okay?" a sweet sounding voice asked from the living room. He looked up to see her standing there. The fireplace was roaring, and she was wearing a thin negligee. She looked beautiful. He looked away, feeling ashamed of himself.

"She's pregnant," he finally admitted. He heard Lila take in a sharp breath.

"When did you-"

"Just before the nieghbor came to tell me she'd been hit and an ambulance had already been called," he told her. "That's why she had set up that elaborate meal. To tell me the news that she had passed the first trimester."

"And the baby is okay?" Lila asked. Arnold just nodded. Lila let out a breath she didn't even know she had been holding in.
"She's waking for longer periods too, but I always seem to just miss her," he said sadly. "I'm going to have a shower and go to bed."

. . .

She woke up, starving! And with a strange man standing next to her.

"Helga, your awake," he said, excitedly. He grabbed her hand and kissed the back of it. "I've been here everyday, hoping to catch you awake."

She frowned at him, then looked over to where a nurse was watching them.

"They checked on the baby," he told her. "They don't know how you did it, but it's still there, still alive. And growing. They're keeping a very close eye on it, but your 15 weeks along now."

Baby? There was a baby? She touched her stomach and looked at him. He nodded, smiling.

"Why didn't you tell me you had come off the contraceptive?" he asked softly. Then he shook his head. "Why am I asking you. You can't even talk."

"It's cruel," the nurse said. "We have the doctor coming up to see if we can take her off the ventilator. Her oxygen levels are rising, but we'd hate to take her off it, only to have to put it back in."

"What will happen next?" he asked.

"She will be put on a c-pap machine," the nurse explained. "Then, if it all goes well, we will eventually move her to just oxygen."

The nurse smiled at them, then left the room.

"Helga, I am so sorry," he told her, bending his head down to the bed. "I am so, so, sorry."

Helga did nothing.

She didn't know what he was sorry for.

Sheesh, she didn't know who he was.

She didn't even know who she was.

. . .

"I see no reason why she can't be taken off," the doctor said, smiling at the nurses. "Get a c-pap machine, and get it out."

A nurse left then came back with another machine. It was a weird looking machine, almost like a baggless vacumme cleaner with water in it, and a thick tube and prongs on the end. Arnold watched as the nurse hooked it up, tapped on the buttons, and the machine came to life. He watched as condensation appeared on the inside.

"You might want to hold her hand," she told him. The doctor left, and another nurse came in. Arnold grabbed her hand and looked at Helga. She looked worried. "No cough."

. . .

"Cough, cough," the nurse was commanding. Helga tried to cough as best she could when she felt what felt like a serated knife being pulled up the inside of her throat from her lungs. It was the most painful feeling she could ever remember having. Once it was out she continued coughing, and brought some fluid up. She happened to look up and saw a look of horror on the mans face. Then she was having prongs jabbed into her nose and felt warm damp air being blown up there.

The nurses cleared everything away extremely fast.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked, leaning in close. She nodded. "I finally had the carpet cleaned."

She listened impatiently as he told her about everything that had been done with his house. He must have seen it too, because he stopped.

"What's wrong?" he asked. She motioned writing. "Oh, okay, just a second."

She watched him look for a pen and piece of paper, then handed them to her, with a board to lean on.

Who are you? she wrote. Her throat hurt too much to talk. She showed him.

He looked with disbelief at her for a second.

"Arnold," he told her. "Your husband."

I don't remember, sorry, she wrote. She could feel her cheeks heat from embarrassment. Who forgot their husband? Then she felt annoyed.

"It's okay," he said. "They gave you a lot of drugs. You got hit by a car. But the baby is fine."

What baby?

He looked to the door, causing her to look that way, too. But no one was there.

"Helga, your fifteen weeks pregnant with our baby," he told her. "You know what? I'll be back in a second, I'm just going to go get a nurse."

A few minutes later a nurse walked in and checked the machines she was still hooked up to.

"Do you know where you are?" the nurse asked. Helga nodded and wrote hospital. "Okay, do you know your name?"

Again, she nodded and wrote Helga.

"Did you remember that name yourself, or because that's what we have been calling you?" she asked.

Helga felt her eyes sting, then wrote a word that wasn't what they wanted to hear, judging by the looks on their faces when she showed them what she wrote.

You.

. . .

"She doesn't even remember being pregnant!" Arnold yelled. "How does someone forget something like that!"

"Mr. Shortman, please, if you don't calm down, we will have you removed. This is an ICU ward. We can't have you upsetting other patients or distracting the nurses."

"I just . . . "

"I know, it is frightening and unsettling, but it may just be a side effect of the drugs that were used," the nurse said, trying to reassure him. He sat down. "We have the doctor coming back and we will assess whether she will need to see a neurologist or psychologist."

Arnold ran his hands through his hair.

. . .

"They think she has retrograde amnesia," Arnold told her.

"What does that mean?" Lila asked.

"She doesn't remember the events leading up to the accident, but she can remember everything afterwards," he explaiend to her.

"Oh, my, I didn't know there was a type of amnesia," she said.

"There's a few, it turns out," he said absently, looking at the ceiling. "But so far, she doesn't remember anything before the hospital."

Lila raised her brows, then looked down at her plate. "So, she doesn't remember being married, or . . . you know . . . us?"

Arnold shook his head. "No. No, she doesn't appear to remember that. Or even me, for that matter. I told her Phoebe had asked after her, and she just asked who."

They were quiet for a moment. The Lila spoke up.

"Maybe this is a sign," Lila told him. "This could be just what we need."

"She's pregnant, Lila, with my child," he snapped.

"We could make a case for having the child taken away from her," Lila said, starting to sound excited.

Arnold looked across at the woman, who only three weeks ago he was planning to leave his wife for. How could she be excited at the idea of taking, not only a woman's husband, but her child, too?

"No," he said. "I can't do that to her, not now."

"Arnold-"

"No!" he yelled, getting up and storming from the room, up the stairs, and slamming his bedroom door behind him. He looked at the neatly made bed. Helga had made it that morning, as she did every morning. He hadn't slept in it. He could smell her perfume in the air, her shampoo on the pillow . . . Lila had invited him to sleep with her, but he couldn't bring himself to. It was so easy before, but so hard now. He sat down and heard a knock on the door. Looking up he saw Lila look in on him.

"Arnold-"

"You need to be gone, Lila, before i bring her home," he told her.

"I'm-"

"Please, Lila, just . . . please," he pleaded. Lila walked further in, and knelt before him.

"Are you seriously going to give up your chance for happiness, for a woman who doesn't even remember you?" she asked.

"She's my wife," he chocked out. "Our vows-"

"Where was your concern for your marriage vows when you were fucking me?" she demanded viciously. "You weren't worried about vows, or Helga then, were you?"

"Just leave, Lila," he said. He didn't look up until he heard the door to his room slam. He felt bad. He got up and opened the door just as Lila walked out of the room she had been staying in, her suitcase behind her. Her face was stained with tears, her face blotchy. "I'm sorry."

She just shook her head.

"I feel sorry for Helga," she told him. "I hope she gets her memories back Arnold, so she realizes she deserves better than you."

She pushed past him, dragging her suitcase behind her. He listened to it thud, thud, thud down the stairs before finally the front door opened then slammed closed.

And he was alone.