a dream.

It’s all been said before. She’s laying in bed, not sleeping, caught in a slit of pale moon. She’s waiting. She waits on her back. A clock ticks in the silence, measuring time for anyone who cares enough to know. She is excited, a stomach curled with anticipation. He should be here any minute. But it’s getting late.

And then, as it always does, the phone rings.

Not her cell phone thrown on the nightstand, the one with the embarrassing ring tone of her favorite 90’s dance song. She crosses cold floor with bare toes and answers the cordless phone on the wall.

It begins the way every conversation does, with a hello.

It ends the way nothing ever has before.

“Are you Pamela Halpert?”

It ends completely, with the world crashing down.

“Yes?” Since when could she feel her heart in her lungs, taking over the space to breathe?

It ends with a sinking to the floor and the phone left to beep out the dial tone. It wasn’t important enough to turn off or maybe she just forgot.

“There’s been an accident.”

And since when had the room started spinning? It was like being at the fair. They had gone to the fair together, rode yellow teacups and eaten giant elephant ears caked in sugar. She had been laughing then.

“Mrs. Halpert? We need you to come down to Park Hospital. Your husband has been taken there.”

All she can think of are those teacups, his messy hair and smile the only thing she could see against the blur of the world.

“Mrs. Halpert?”

And then she drops the phone. It takes 20 minutes, 1200 seconds, 800 breaths in the jagged dark of a blue car to reach the hospital.

Everything is white.

She is out of an elevator, walking on tiled floor. She realizes her shoes don’t match. That nothing is going to match without him.

And that’s when she starts to run, right past the reception, through double doors, running down sterile hallways that smell too clean and too quiet and are crowded with empty people. She is one of those people. Her shoe falls off.

And she has no idea how this happens because there must be thousands of people filling up this hospital but -

She finds him.

She stops and looks in a room, one with plated glass walls and doctors all around and there he is, in the middle, the eye of the storm and ohmygodthere’stoomuchblood.

She melts into a puddle on the floor, thinks of teacups, bites her cheeks so she won’t cry, and she wants to pray but she can’t remember any of the words.

dear god, there’s blood.

A nurse is walking out of the room, helps her stand.

“Sweetie? Are you his?” The nurse points to the glass room, to him, keeping her balanced.

She nods. Yes. I’m his.

i’m his.

They are walking now. “He is going to be just fine. There was a lot of glass. Windshield cracked all over him. Why don’t you go sit in the waiting room? I’ll come get you as soon as you can see him, okay?” The nurse is young, she can tell. She wants to tell her his name is Jim.

So her husband is made of glass. The world should know to be more careful – he’s breakable. She should have known.

~

Things are calmer now. She walks and sits and fills out scattered papers. Someone hands her a cup of coffee. The coffee tastes bitter. She lets it go tepid. She twists her wedding rings and tries to stop worrying but of course she can’t and -

“Mrs. Halpert?”

Finally. She stands immediately, following the nurse, who has squeaking shoes. She can’t walk fast enough.

And then.

Then –

Someone is crying as she flings herself next to his bed, gently kissing him. She’s afraid she will break him. His face is wet instantly. Whose tears?

He is shattered, in pieces, put back together with string and glue and cool fingers. But he’s alive. And she’s crying.

“ Hey, hey, I’m okay,” he whispers, comforting. “Pam, sweetie.”

And he is. He’s okay.

“Jim.” She chokes out his name, grasps his hands, and it hurts to smile but he does it anyway. For her.

“You’re okay,” she says it out loud, finally breathing, repeating the words over and over, and then she starts to laugh. “I was so worried I’d never see you again.”

She wants to open the sky and shove in a life’s worth of thank-you. She sees the tears mirrored in his eyes, the way he bites his lips and chuckles softly and brings a hand to cup her cheek, tracing a line down her nose.

“Pam.” There is everything in those three little letters; heartache and pride and wonder and joy and as much love as can be squeezed, pressed, molded into one small syllable.

Her chest aches with so much love for this perfect man. It hurts a little but he doesn’t care; he kisses her. The kiss lasts, breathing beauty into a small, dingy hospital room in the middle of the night.

His hand is cut up and bleeding but it’s there, it’s solid, it’s holding on, and he’ll never let go. His love is infused in his fingertips.

~

She wakes up. The phone rang hours ago. Her mouth tastes like glass.

The bedside is cold.