Intent on finding exactly which day she had confirmed the caterer, Pam pulled out her day planner and flipped through the previous months. She found the date in March and jotted it down on a scrap of paper when her eyes caught a series of dots on the page.

            Her heart began to thud in her chest. That wasn’t right. She flipped to April and checked those dots, then turned to May. There were no dots there, and her heart beat more rapidly. Oh God. She should have gotten her period two weeks ago, and for someone whose cycle had always run like clockwork, this was bad.

Why had she not noticed before? She knew she had been busy with wedding stuff, and then….all that business with Jim had thrown her into wedding plans even more. Now he was gone and she was here and she had to get out of there right now.

            Pam stood up and grabbed her coat off the rack. Michael was nowhere to be seen, and thankfully, Dwight was missing too. Oscar stood at the copy machine. He started toward her desk when she shuffled the stack of binders and planners into her arms. “Are you all right?” he asked. “No, I don’t feel well; I’m leaving right now,” she said shakily, “Can you let Michael know I’ll work though lunch tomorrow?

She walked out before Oscar could reply. She wouldn’t wait for the elevator; instead, she took the stairs. She opened the door to the warehouse and made directly for Roy. “Hey,” he said, and she didn’t even wait for him to finish before saying, “I need the keys, can you get a ride home from Lonny or Darryl?”

Roy looked confused; he handed her the keys automatically and asked, “Are you all right?”

            She knew she couldn’t say anything or else she’d burst into tears, so she nodded. “I’ll see you at home?” Roy asked gently. She nodded again and turned to leave.

She held it together in the car, willing herself to think about something else. She listened to lame radio news segments and tried to think about stupid celebrities. She stopped at the first drugstore she saw, and when she entered, she cursed herself for choosing this particular Rite-Aid. Was her subconscious trying to do her in?

            She found the right pregnancy test, even bought the name brand just in case. She wouldn’t look the cashier in the eye, sure that he was looking at her pityingly. She took her change and her test and left, climbing back into the truck and driving home numbly.

As soon as she got into the front door, the tears began to fall and she broke down.

She could not be pregnant. She just couldn’t. In the bathroom, she blurrily read the directions and peed on the stick. She cursed herself for quitting the pill last year because it made her hormones go crazy. She had tried several different kinds, why wouldn’t any work for her? She and Roy had been so careful, using condoms, and she knew none of them had broken. So why this?

Back in her bedroom, she sat on the bed. The niggling thought in her brain was pushing forward. Was she upset because she might be pregnant, or was she upset that she might be pregnant with Roy’s child? The tears fell again. A baby was such a momentous thing, and in her heart of hearts, she knew she wasn’t ready for one. A baby would link her and Roy for the rest of their lives. She pictured raising it in this little house; Roy would be a great dad, and she’d be the mom. It was a pretty little picture, so why didn’t it feel right?

            Her brain plowed forward and shrieked the thoughts that had been nagging at her for the past few weeks (or even months). It didn’t feel right because she wasn’t sure that Roy was the one she wanted to spend her life with. At this guilty thought, she cried harder. Roy was a good man, a loving man, but she had outgrown him. He belonged to her past, he was a part of her adolescence, part of her life, but she needed something else.

With this thought, her mind jumped to someone else, and she sobbed. She might have lost him forever. For all he knew, she was getting married in six days. God, even if she couldn’t have him, she had to do something. She felt trapped, like everything was spinning out of control. A glance at the clock told her that it was time to check the test.

She felt nauseous. Part of her was afraid to look, but the other part, the stronger part, had to look right now, or she’d explode.

            It was negative.

            A shock of relief coursed through her entire being, and this scared her a bit. This forceful relief told her what she had to do. It wouldn’t be easy, but she had to do it. She would have to break a heart, but she’d be saving hers.

By the time Roy came home an hour later, she was composed on the couch. She was nervous but unyielding in her mindset.

“We have to talk,” she said as he walked in.

She knew that someday this wouldn’t hurt so much; someday she’d welcome a baby into a world where he or she was very much wanted, and she knew that in the meantime, she’d be okay.