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i. David
Contrary to popular belief, Roy isn’t actually her first.
She’s sixteen, and has her first job at a summer camp as a counselor. She’s in charge of the arts and crafts, and it’s in a pavilion up by the lake. She spends her days knee deep in paints and dried macaroni and lanyard and she’s pretty sure it’s the best job she’s ever had.
His name is David, and he’s in charge of a cabin of boys between the ages of ten and twelve who spend most of the arts and crafts time throwing things at one another and getting glue over everything. David spends his time up by the supply room with Pam, flirting and ducking when paint pens are thrown near them.
They manage to both get the same nights off, and they wander around the grounds of the camp, floating in the canoes, sneaking back into the woods, and end up in the art supply room.
There is dirt under his fingernails, and he smells like bug spray and suntan lotion.
The next time his cabin comes up to the arts and crafts pavilion, David isn’t with them.
And she’s two weeks late.
She borrows another counselor’s car and drives to a twenty-four hour drug store on one of her rare nights off. She stands in front of the pregnancy tests biting her lip so she doesn’t start crying and wonders how this could have happened.
She picks one and uses her hard earned money to pay for it, and ignores the look that the cashier shoots at her. She keeps her head down and drives back to camp, finally allowing herself to cry.
She sits in a cramped bathroom stall alone and cries in relief when the negative sign appears.
ii. Roy
On their graduation night, they drive up to a lake to party at a friend’s cabin. Pam drinks too many Zimas and giggles every time Roy touches her.
In light of her first experience, Pam insisted that they go slow, and Roy was surprisingly agreeable. They’d only slept together a handful of times, but that night they found themselves locked up in a room together, the Zimas giving Pam confidence she normally didn’t feel.
She throws up four days in a row, and it’s Roy who suggests that she may be pregnant.
“I’ll marry you,” he offers, and she begins to cry.
“Let’s just see what happens,” she says, but she wraps her arms around him, and she’s grateful that he’s by her side when she buys her second pregnancy test. His parents are out, and Roy sits on his bed tossing a football in the air as she paces in the small bathroom.
“I was serious about marrying you,” he says again. “Whether or not you are pregnant.” But Pam is eighteen and her plans did not yet include a husband and a baby. She starts crying again, and Roy never knew what to do when she cried, so he awkwardly wraps his arms around her, and pats her a few times on the back.
“Thank you,” she manages to choke out, and when the timer goes off, she’s afraid to look.
“Blue means no? Right?” Roy asks, and she lets out a breath and her knees feel weak. And she’s not sure if he’s talking about the baby or the marriage proposal, or both.
“Blue means no,” she confirms, and she giggles a little and wraps her arms around herself and lets thoughts of cribs and nurseries and wedding rings get replaced by dorm rooms and art classes and college parties.
iii. Roy (again)
She blames it on the stress of calling off the wedding and Jim leaving, and it’s only as she’s arguing with the caterer over getting their money back does it occur to her.
“Oh God,” she breathes, pressing her hand to her mouth and telling the woman who she had spent the last hour fighting with that she will have to call her back.
She hurries to the drug store down the street and as she stands in front of the pregnancy tests she spots Toby shuffling down the next aisle, so she quickly walks over to the card section, hoping she can sneak out and to the other drug store a few blocks away before he spots her. The last thing she needs is Toby and his misguided attempts to try to reassure her that it’s going to be okay. Not now, when everything is so far from being okay.
She knows that the conversation with Roy if it’s positive is going to be hard, and she wonders if she’s strong enough not to go back to him. She wonders if she’s strong enough to do this on her own. She wishes Jim was there.
She thinks Toby does spot her as she hurries out the door, but she pretends that she doesn’t hear him.
She cries openly as she picks a test out and pays for it, and this time the looks that the cashier gives her are sympathetic. Her hands shake as she tries to put the car key in the starter, and she has to sit in the parking lot for a few minutes to calm herself down enough to drive home.
It strikes her as ironic that only months before she and Roy were talking about maybe starting a family, and that if it happened they were finally in a place where they would be happy about it.
But that was before Jim’s confession threw her world into a tailspin, and she’s far from happy about this.
She gets her period on the way home.
iv. Chris
He’s a camera man, and they’ve been flirting for a little while now. He’s the first to console her after she calls the wedding off, and he takes her dinner and lets her cry about Jim and Roy and how she’s not sure what she’s doing.
He doesn’t hide the fact that he’s attracted to her, and when Jim comes back with Karen in tow Pam marches up to Chris and asks him if he wants to go to dinner with her. She needs to know someone wants her, and he’s more than willing to oblige.
They get drunk after the Christmas party, he sneaks a couple of the bottles Michael bought and they go back to his place and she cries a little about Jim and Karen and he lets her. The booze goes straight to her head and the next thing she remembers is waking up next to him.
He’s nice about the whole thing, even when she lets him down gently and tells him it was a one time, drunken mistake. He’s been around long enough and seen enough to know that when she says that he’s not her type it’s only because he isn’t tall and lanky and his name isn’t Jim.
She’s late and she approaches him after one of her talking heads, and lets him know.
He’s great about the whole thing, and it makes her kind of sad. He drives her to the drug store after work, and when she pulls out her purse, he puts a hand on her arm.
“It’s the least I can do to pay for it,” he insists. It strikes her that in another time, one where she never met Jim, Chris might actually be kind of perfect for her, and it makes her feel a little better about the whole situation. She’s not in love with him, but she could think of worse candidates for a father.
They go back to her place and she sets the test on the edge of the sink and scrubs the shower as he sits awkwardly on the toilet waiting for the timer to go off.
“If…uh, if it is,” Chris starts. “I want you to know that I’ll definitely be there. To help, I mean. And my mom will be pretty psyched.” He gives her a lopsided grin that she shakily returns and there’s a small pang of disappointment when it turns out to be negative.
Chris puts in for a transfer the next week, and she can’t blame him, but she gives him a big hug on his last day and tells him that she wishes that she wasn’t such an idiot.
v. Jim
She’s been away all summer. Jim’s been driving up to see her almost every single weekend, and there’s a new, shiny ring on her finger which catches the sunlight and makes her smile.
Her first day back at Dunder Mifflin, Michael throws a welcome back party, and he holds her hostage in his office so that she can give him advice on Jan and the baby and she shoots looks to Jim out the window and mouths “help me.” He laughs and she shakes her head at the traitor and manages to finally escape after an hour or so.
They somehow are the last ones in the office, and Jim wraps his long arms around her and whispers into her hair how much he missed her and how nice it was to have her back. They lock the conference door and close the blinds and fulfill one of his all time top fantasies.
She thinks it’s the flu at first, and Jim has an adorable concerned look when she once again catapults from the bed to make it to the bathroom on time. He holds her hair back, and she’s been through it one too many times before and finally decides it’s time to take another test. She wonders how many pregnancy scares one person can have in their lifetime, and she decides not to tell Jim as she slips from their bed at two in the morning and down to the drugstore.
When she gets back, he’s up and worried.
“Where have you been?” He asks, his eyebrows sloped together as he gathers her into his arms. “I woke up and you were gone.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” Pam says and she holds up the bag in way of an explanation. Jim swallows hard and blinks rapidly as he shakes his head a little.
“You think you’re…?” All Pam can do is nod, and Jim nods then, and he gives her a small smile. “Beesly…” He pulls her into his arms and she rests her head on his chest and breathes in the scent of him. He smells like laundry detergent and Dove soap and Jim.
“I guess we should go…”she gestures to the bathroom without moving her head from his chest and her voice is muffled, but he nods and leads her back to the bathroom with his hand on the small of her back.
This time, as she waits, she sits on Jim’s lap and they both stare at the timer. His hand moves up and down her back and she glances at the ring on her finger.
“If it is…if we are…” Jim starts, breaking the silence. “I’m going to be happy, Pam. I just want you to know that. I know that this isn't how we planned, but since when do things work out like we plan?” And she pressed a kiss to his lips as the timer went off, and suddenly she hoped for the first time that she would see that little plus sign.
“I can’t look at it,” she whispered. He reached over and picked it up and a grin spread across his face.
It was positive.
Story Notes:
So, my friends and I were talking about pregnancy scares and somehow this came out. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I'd figure I'd post it before I chickened out. The title is by the band Kaisercartel. And I love it a whole lot.
bashert is the author of 37 other stories.
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