The day after Roy attacks Jim, the office is fraught with a tension that can’t be shaken. Pam suffers through the day in silence, willing the minutes to tick by; she has already had to suffer through Mrs. Anderson’s tearful accusative phone call in the morning, and if any of her coworkers glance at her again—with pity, disgust, anything in between—she will scream.  

Karen treats her with a frosty facsimile of normality, but Jim will not look at her. After the disastrous apology in the break room, Pam knows there is little chance that he will ever be friends with her again, let alone anything more. She keeps her head down and does her work, trying to blend into the furniture as the rest of the office trickles out after work hours are over.

5:30 p.m., and even the cameramen have filed out for the day. Pam takes what feels like the first real breath since she forced herself to come in to work this morning. The deserted desks are infinitely preferable to the gossiping coworkers that inhabit them, and Pam turns to make her final faxes before she heads out for the night.

The door slams open. Pam looks up quickly—had Michael forgotten something?—but starts when she sees Roy’s lumbering form filling the doorway, red-faced and panting.

Roy shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have been allowed in the premises at all. He’d been deemed a security risk, his last paycheck mailed to the apartment they’d once shared. Pam frowns when she smells the stench of beer staining his breath.

He’s drunk. Pam has seen Roy in worse states, but right now he’s in the dangerous in-between zone between uninhibited and unconscious. She swallows and slips out of the reception desk to meet him; the last thing she wants is to be cornered in that nook without an escape route.

“Roy… How did you get in?”

“None of your business,” Roy growls. “I told you we gotta talk. You cheated on me and got me fired.”

She steps back toward the cluster of desks, trying to keep distance between them. Roy stalks closer. “We don’t have anything to talk about. You attacked Jim.”

“Jackass deserved it. Pammy, how could you do this to me?”

“Don’t call me Pammy. And I didn’t cheat on you.” The alcohol fumes are overpowering now.

“Yeah? You’re a liar. How many times did you fuck him?”

He’s far too close. Pam glances nervously around the empty office. Roy had grabbed her by the arm a few times, but he’d never physically hurt her before. Before yesterday, the thought that he might actually hit her wouldn’t even have occurred to her.

“Roy, you need to calm down. You’re not supposed to be here.”

“How. Many. Times.”

“I didn’t! You know I’ve never… not with anyone else. You need to get out.”

“You’re a worthless slut,” Roy snarls. “You ruined my life.” Pam cries out as he suddenly backhands her. It sends her crashing onto the desk—Jim’s desk—and his things go clattering on the floor. She scrambles up, trying desperately to stop from shaking.

“I lost my job because you went and cheated on me with Halpert!” He pushes her back on the desk and pummels her, and Pam can’t speak through the white-hot pain blooming across her chest. She gasps in agony as he punches her again, grabbing at her thin blouse to keep her pinned.

“Stop!” Pam chokes out, trying to push him away. He yanks at her harder as she flails, and suddenly there’s a sharp ripping sound as her blouse is rent in two. “No, Roy, don’t do this.”

“Shut up! You can’t tell me what to do.” Roy tosses the fragment of her blouse aside. Panic threatens to drown her whole. He’s too big, too strong. She needs to get away.

Her knee miraculously makes contact, and he bowls over clutching his groin. She doesn’t know how fast he’ll recover, so she scrabbles to her feet and stumbles toward the exit. If he catches her…

She’s almost made it when his meaty fingers grab her upper arm and jerks her around. Pam lets out a choked sob, screwing her eyes shut.  Roy wouldn’t… he wouldn’t. She braces herself for another blow.

“What the fuck?”

Roy freezes, and Pam takes the chance to shake him off and curl into herself. Breathing hard, she looks up.

It’s Mick, one of the ever-present cameramen for the documentary. Roy lets out a low groan, then suddenly pushes past both of them to barrel out of the office.

“What the fuck?” Mick repeats, and Pam’s legs give out on her. She sinks to the floor, trying to keep her blouse together. Someone’s sobbing quietly, and it takes her a moment to realize it’s her.

The cameraman edges closer—he’s not allowed to interfere in anything that goes on in the office, Pam knows—and carefully does not look at her. “You okay?”

Pam doesn’t know the answer to that question either. She swallows a sob and makes an unintelligible noise.

“I, uh, I left my camera here. I’m going to go get it now. Okay?”

Pam makes another sound, but can’t squeeze any words out. He seems to take it as assent and walks around her to Stanley’s desk. Oh no. No. She hadn’t even noticed the camera there. Mick swears again, confirming her worst fear.

“Damn it, Eli, it’s still on.”

Pam can feel the blood draining from her cheeks. He’d caught the whole thing on tape. Her voice finally comes to her.

“Mick…” Pam rasps. “Please, please don’t… I’m begging you—” She’s stumbling over her clunky words and she can’t seem to stop trembling. She can feel her breaths coming shorter and shorter. “I can’t. Don’t have that… not in the… Please… Not in the documentary…”

The cameraman sighs, and she’s on her knees now in desperation. “Please, I’ll die if they show…”

“No, no, look. We’re not going to show it in the documentary. We’re PBS for fuck’s sake. Calm down already.”

Pam sinks back down on the floor, trying to catch her breath. It’s strangely getting harder and harder to breathe despite his words.

“Look, Pam, it’s not gonna be on air. But you get that I have to show it to the higher-ups, yeah? Mandatory reporting. Out of my hands.”

“But…” Pam feels lightheaded. Sitting on the floor, she leans up against a desk.

“I can walk you out if you’re heading home,” Mick offers uncertainly.

She swallows. “No. He knows where I live.” She has no choice. “I’m going to call the police now.”

The rest of the night is a haze for Pam. Mick gives a statement and leaves at some point, but she can’t really tell when he does. The police officers insist on taking her to the hospital while Roy is arrested somewhere near Poor Richard’s, and sometime after that she’d been escorted back to her apartment. It’s only when she is standing in her living room that the enormity of the day hits her.

Her fingers have already pressed Jim’s number into the phone and called before she realizes what she’s done. Pam knows he’s angry at her, that she has no right at all to bother him this late, but she needs him too much to hang up.

She reaches his voicemail three times. Pam folds her phone shut, then drags herself into the bedroom to curl up under the covers. The bruises make it hard for her to breathe, and sleep does not come easily.

Years later, when Pam looks back, she knows this was the moment that she gave up on Jim Halpert.