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Author's Chapter Notes:
Jim and Pam and a wheelchair.

Pam wheeled Jim down to the cafeteria, where he found himself somewhat discombobulated by the variety of choices on offer. He had expected something like high school—something with limited options, perhaps a dour individual in a hairnet dishing out slops—not this dizzying array of almost-name-brand options. He was obscurely grateful that it was breakfast time, not lunch or dinner, because almost half of them were closed, so he had at least some guidance in what to choose. He hadn’t had regular food in…well, it felt like forever. Certainly before June 8, which he was rapidly realizing had become a red-letter day in his personal calendar. When Everything Changed, he said to himself in his internal announcer voice—and he must have said it out loud, because he heard Pam behind him (pushing the chair) giggle a little.

 

Pam was delighted that she got to wheel Jim down for breakfast. Larissa had skipped ahead to make sure they could get a table with good wheelchair access (though Pam secretly suspected that in a hospital like Geisinger, they would all have wheelchair access) so for the moment she got to pretend like she was the only one responsible for Jim. And she got to listen in on his inner monologue as he talked to himself, which, she reflected, he probably didn’t realize he was doing. “When everything changed,” huh? She wondered what day he was thinking of, or what event. Casino Night? The day they met? Yesterday, when she finally told him she loved him? She giggled nervously. She loved him. He was still here…and then it hit her. He was still here, yes, but for how long? She knew he had some sick leave stocked up—Jim had always been alarmingly, resolutely healthy, so he probably had the maximum 5 weeks you could roll over from year to year…and now that she reflected on it, it was probably less his resolute healthiness than a determined decision not to miss a single day with her that allowed him that flexibility. He never took “mental health days,” never skipped work on a flimsy excuse, even though he knew that doing so would send Dwight on a mad search to confirm or deny the legitimacy of the claimed exemption. And why did he refrain from making Dwight go nuts? To make sure he got to sit a few feet from her in all her obviousness. She resolved to make that up to him, however she could.

 

But regardless, she was pretty sure he had the full 5 weeks of sick leave saved up…and she thought his “trip to Australia” vacation was scheduled for another week. But after those six weeks, he was inevitably going to Stamford. He’d transferred, run away, because of her. A shock of annoyance ran through her again at him for doing that, for ghosting her without even giving her a chance to think. And then she thought about how it must have felt, coming in every day knowing that she was going to marry Roy. She’d felt a pale shadow of that feeling herself the past three weeks, coming to work each day looking at his desk and realizing he was…well, the best metaphor she could come up with was cheating on her with Stamford, but that wasn’t quite right. Realizing that there was something else in his life that she couldn’t touch, that was all his and not hers. And she’d been doing that to him from day one. Of course, not all of it was blameworthy—certainly, the time before they’d really become friends (OK, maybe they’d become friends the moment he’d first opened his mouth, but there had been at least some time, she was sure, before they became best friends, even if right now she couldn’t recall a moment of it) had been blameless, because she’d really and truly been with Roy, and not him in any sense—but a good portion of it, more than she really wanted even now to acknowledge, had been deliberate, even if subconscious, in that she’d used Jim to compensate for the emotional connection she’d not been getting from Roy. So maybe not from day one, but from, pick a number, say day one hundred, if not earlier, she had been using Jim, giving him just enough of herself during the day to keep herself sane and drive him mad while keeping that crucial part of herself apart from it all. Sure, moving to Stamford wasn’t the same as going home to Roy, but both represented a part of the other person’s life that was out of reach—and if she was going to compare the two, she was afraid to think which one was harsher.

 

So she couldn’t really be mad at Jim about that—not that she could be mad at Jim about anything, really, not now that they’d finally, finally ended up on the same page—but she could certainly be sad to think that in six weeks or less (she selfishly hoped it was all six weeks, even if that meant that Jim was healing less quickly than the absolute maximum and was completely out of sick leave for the rest of the year) he’d be leaving her. Not that she planned on breaking up with him—if worst came to worst they were three hours apart (and when did this become worst? She would have killed someone [probably Roy, to be honest] to have had a relationship with Jim, even long-distance, forty-eight hours ago)—but it would still suck.

 

“Hey.” Oh god, she’d gone silent for too long, and now he was staring up at her.

 

“Hi.”

 

“Penny for your thoughts?”

 

She giggled. He quirked an eyebrow up at her. “You know my sister’s name is Penny, right?”

 

“Yes?” He looked a little confused.

 

“Keep up, Halpert.” She smirked. “Her name is Penny. How often do you think we said ‘penny for your thoughts’ growing up? Half the time it was me pretending that she was offering to sell herself into slavery to know what I was thinking, the other half it was her saying she was paying me already by being there, and another half…”

 

He interrupted her with a laugh. “Think you’ve got too many halves there, Beesly.”

 

She stuck out her tongue. “Shut it, Halpert. There were two of us, so I get four halves. Anyway, another half was Mom getting in on the action by saying she already had a Penny so she didn’t need to give her thoughts, and the final half” she stared him down in case he decided to object again and he gave her a little smirk that somehow said without words that he thought it was really cute she cared what he thought “the final half was me saying I didn’t want any more Pennys, thank you very much.” She giggled again. “So, sorry, that phrase isn’t going to get what you want out of me.”

 

He sighed theatrically. “Fine. Please, Ms. Beesly, I beg of you, tell me that of which you think.”

 

She rolled her eyes at him. “Well, Mr. Halpert, I was just thinking how much I was going to miss you when you go to Stamford.”

 

He slumped (which was impressive in a wheelchair, she reflected). “Yeah. I’m going to miss you too.”

 

She tried to cheer him up, although her voice sounded a little hollow in her own ears. “It’ll be fine. Stamford’s only three hours away.”

 

He sounded surprisingly reassured by that little phrase. “Yeah.” It sounded like he was going to say something else, but at that moment Larissa scampered up and knelt in front of the chair. “C’mon, slowpokes, I’ve been holding this little four-top open for ten minutes against a tide of the elderly! I need you two to get your butts in gear before I lose it.” She looked up and gestured behind them. “Hey! That’s my purse!” She gave them an apologetic glance and started back across the room. “I was saving those seats!”

 

Pam glanced down at Jim, who was suddenly rolling in laughter. “Shall we pause that conversation and come back to it?”

 

“I think we shall,” he choked out through guffaws. “Roll me over to that burrito place, I think a breakfast burrito sounds good.”

 

As she pushed him towards the Mexican joint (called, for no reason Pam could quite decipher in the moment, “I Salsa Your Face”), he reached out and grabbed a mixed-berry yogurt from the impulse buys by the checkout.

 

“For you, my lady.” She could not keep the grin off her face.

Chapter End Notes:
Sorry for the somewhat abortive JAM conversation, but I promise they and I will come back to it. Thanks to all who have read and reviewed; I think June 13 is going to be a long day for these two.

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