Eleven. She didn’t feel eleven. Cecelia didn’t really know what eleven was supposed to feel like. Fifth grade had been a blur, she missed about a month of school recovering from her injuries, visiting her father, and then finally had been brought to Helene’s. Her grandmother had moved to town not long after her family had moved to Texas. She didn’t really remember Scranton, at least, not the way her parents described it, but she knew she was born in Pennsylvania, and she’d heard rumors about the big secret of her parents' wedding. She was their secret, and something they’d fondly reminded her of. She flipped through the music on her phone, the sound turned up as loud as possible in her air pods, Billie Eilish blasting through the tiny speakers in her ears, so loud she didn’t hear her mother open the door and move to the bed.
“Happy Birthday, baby,” Pam reached her hand out to touch her leg, rubbing her thumb against the fleece material of her pajama bottoms. They were covered with unicorns and kittens, a fad she’d long grown out of. Cece didn’t move, she reached out, and pulled out an earbud,
“Hey!” Cece turned over angrily, and moved to grab it back from her mother. Pam slipped it into her pocket, ignoring her daughter's anger.
“What are you listening to?” She asked carefully, not daring to look at the screen and breach her privacy. When had her daughter turned into a teenager?
“Ocean Eyes,” she mumbled, and turned over to face her mother.
“Dad’s favorite,” Pam murmured, glancing down.
“What are we doing today?” Cece asked, breaking the tension. She had become very good at staring contests since the accident, and Pam felt her eyes burning through her.
“Um,” she started, “No school,” she started. Cecelia wasn’t phased,
“What do you want to do?” She eventually asked with a sigh. She hadn’t planned this day well, she’d relied heavily on her mother to bake a cake, she’d let Cece pick a restaurant, and Philip would haphazardly make his sister something the night before. Jim did birthdays. She had joked he’d already thrown the worst birthday possible for their old friend Kelly, so it couldn’t possibly get any worse.
The thing is? They were perfect. Jim had a knack for that...perfection. He was by far not a perfect man, he had his flaws. He rolled around too much in the bed, he was a procrastinator when it came to his job, he’d sometimes watch sports center so long he’d forget about giving the kids a bath and she’d come home late night from a painting class to wash them up quickly before bedtime. He wasn’t perfect. But, almost.
Last year, their daughter had turned ten. And somehow, Jim had managed right before the pandemic had completely overtaken their lives, to sweep his daughter away to Disneyland for a day, just the two of them. She’d been begging to go to the West Coast. He’d woken her up early in the morning, had a bag packed, and told them they were going on a secret mission. Six hours later they were riding the Matterhorn and eating churros. Pam had so many photos of that trip, she’d never looked happier. She adorned a princess outfit, her hair pulled into a perfect bun, complete with pixie dust, and rode “every single ride,!” she’d told her mother when they returned home a few days later. She smelled of salt air, the beach, and a sweet faint reminder of all things confectionary.
“I want to go to the hospital,” she stared at her mother. Pam’s face fell, she knew why. She believed her presence would be enough, that it would make Jim awake from his slumber. Like Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White, and the other princesses her daughters had seen last year, she believed he’d awake.
“Honey,” she started, “Don’t you want to-”
“No,” she said firmly. “I want to go see Dad,” he’d gone from Daddy to Dad so quickly. He went from a person she knew, she trusted to always be there, and to take care of her, and as quickly as she felt that from her father's embrace, it was gone.
“Okay,” she knew better than to argue with her, Pam wouldn’t win this fight. Cecelia had been in the ICU with her father a total of three times over the last six months. Each time, she’d worried Cece would break, that she wouldn’t be able to look at Jim in that condition, but she hadn’t. Her eyes were brim with tears, but she’d sit there, a chair pulled close to his bedside, and rest her cheek on his arm. She constantly was talking to him, so quietly Pam had no idea what she said to him, but she would put her earbuds in his ears and play music for him. She’d read books from school aloud to him, and after six hours or so, Pam would pry her from her chair and take her home, red eyed and they’d sit silently. She’d grown so accustomed to silence this year. She longed for noise. She’d tried to get Philip a drum set, just for any noise in the house, but he’d refused to touch it.
The television was off, Pam noticed when she first walked in. Something was amiss, his television was never off. She’d insisted it, insisted he needed to hear every bad commercial, and every game that had come and gone. She noticed a group of doctors standing, blocking her view of Jim, a nurse in the door.
“What’s going on?” She moved Cecelia behind her, out of view.
“Oh, Pam, you scared me,” It was Nadia, the nurse she’d known best, who’d seen Pam at her lowest, and always been by her side, more often when she wasn’t even working. She sidestepped to let Pam in the doorway,
“They’re extubating him,”
“What?” Pam’s voice rose, concern filled her voice, and tears, her eyes.
“No, no,” Nadia grabbed her, “He’s breathing over the tube, they’ve been weaning him all morning, it’s okay,” she stared Pam in the eyes, her own filling with tears. She’d known everything about this man, that Pam was willing to share. Nadia knew that Jim’s full name was James Duncan Halpert. She knew he was born on October 1, 1978, and that he had a complete aversion to mushrooms. Nadia knew that he ate, slept, and breathed basketball, and that there were only three things in life that mattered the most to him. His wife, and his children, and on a bad day, sometimes a strong cup of coffee. He knelt whenever he spoke to children, he cared so deeply for every animal he’d grown up with, and he cried at the end of Marley and Me, every time. Nadia knew he laughed so hard when he’d watch late night television, and that he secretly loved watching The Devil Wears Prada when he thought Pam wasn’t looking.
But there were things about Jim Halpert that Nadia knew that Pam didn’t. Pam didn’t know that at night, they had to up his Versed because he’d begun to stir and bang relentlessly on the side of his rails with his knuckles; so hard, he’d bruised his torso. Pam didn’t know that when he began to breathe on his own he began to fight the tube, and became agitated. She didn’t know how much brain activity there was inside Pam’s husband’s mind. She knew he would wake up a different man. Nadia just wasn’t sure how different, and she wasn’t about to tell Pam any of this.
“Pam, sweetie, why don’t you just wait out in the waiting room, with your daughter, until they’ve extubated him, and you can come back-”
Pam moved Nadia aside, and moved into the room, Nadia, holding Cecelia back as Pam moved cautiously to the bed.
“James Duncan, you are such a baby,” she playfully nudged his knee as he sat on the emergency room table.
“I am not!” he protested with a laugh. “This really hurts!” he held up his hand, stung multiple times, leaving his hand the size of a football.
She just shook her head at him, and smiled, “What’re you going to do when our kids get hurt?” She smiled.
“Kids, huh?” The idea of not just one, but multiple children with him excited and terrified him.
“Yep, they’re going to need shots you know,” Pam laughed.
“I’ll be fine,” he closed his eyes smugly. She knew he wouldn’t.
“Mhmmm,” she joked, slapping his knee.
“I’ll just look away like this,” he whipped his head to the side, bonking her in the side of head, and they both burst out laughing.
“Pam, I’m so sorry,” he grabbed her face as she chuckled,
“I’m fine,” she gasped with laughter.
“Maybe just don’t do that with our kids,” Pam giggled, rubbing the side of her head.
Jim winced as the doctor bandaged his hand and injected some medicine into the site, “You’ll be just fine in a few days,” He said, and stepped out of the room, leaving Jim with a prescription for antibiotics.
“A big baby,” she’d muttered, patting his bottom as they’d walked out the double doors.
“He’s bucking,” she heard someone shout, not understanding what was happening, she saw Jim’s body moving forward as though wanting to vomit, a doctor by his side, assuring him he was fine, and they were trying to move his breathing tube but he needed to let them suction it first. She watched his brows furrow, and his body furiously push itself forward. He looked out of control, like a caged animal, and she quickly moved to his bedside.
“Jim,” she shouted, over the sound of so many machines beeping erratically.
“Jim!” she exclaimed again, and he stopped. His body stopped convulsing and she had thought she had his attention. That’s when she saw it, her daughter, wide eyed, standing near the bed, out of sight from his doctor, she’d grabbed his finger. Just his pointer finger, and held tight,
“Daddy,” she whispered with intense emotion.
“It’s only going to hurt for a minute, just like shots, it’s only going to hurt for just a minute,” there were tears streaming down her face, begging her father to listen to her. Pam stepped away from the bed, and moved to Jim’s feet, She watched as her daughter stroked Jim’s arm, up and down, and he laid there, without movement, his eyes closed, and let the doctors finish what they were doing. His eyebrows furrowed, and he gagged, and when he would, Cece would rest her chin against his hand. The doctors were finally able to extubate him successfully, and move him to a face mask for oxygen.
“Is he?” Pam started, the doctors stopped her, and pulled her into the hallway.
“We don’t know, Mrs. Halpert. We have to wait, we have to wait for him to wake up fully, and we’ll see where we stand. Right now, your husband is breathing. Go, be with him.:” He walked away to the nurses station and began charting.
The room cleared, and it was just the three, well, four of them. Cece hadn’t moved, she was on her knees, pressing into the hard linoleum, and Pam went to her, pulling a chair up behind her daughter, gently putting a hand on her back.
“Baby,” Pam tried to get her attention, she didn’t stir, “Honey, I’m sorry you had to see that,” Cece turned around and looked Pam directly in the eyes.
“He needed me, Mom. He needed me to be here before they could do that to him. It hurt too much, he needed my hand,” she looked back to Jim, his chest rising and falling in the most natural way she’d seen in weeks.
They sat there, and for the first time in months, Cecelia spoke to her mother. Not just any words. Words that were meaningful. Within hours, Pam watched her eleven year old daughter become a little girl again. She began to notice every freckle around her face, and how when she cried, she’d look away from Pam, not wanting her to see her tears, like Jim. She was brave. She was fierce. She was everything, their first born,
Cece had beaten Pam at Skip-Bo at least four times before they heard it. It was low, raspy, and didn’t sound like words.
Pam jumped up, and moved toward the bed, Jim was stirring, his eyes fluttering open and closed. Every muscle in her body had tensed, terrified of who this person would be upon waking up.
Cece had moved to the bed to join her mother at her side, and when his eyes finally were able to stay open and focus, he caught his daughters eyes, brimming with tears, noticing a deep scar on her forehead.
“My girls,” he whispered, and Pam choked. She screamed, tears streaming down her face, and began to yell for Nadia. He had no idea how many of his girls were actually in the room.
Cecelia grabbed his hand into hers and moved her fingers into the sign for I love you, in ASL.
“It’s okay Daddy, talking hurts, it’s just like my tonsils, I know.” she muttered, holding her fingers against his palm, and she sobbed as she felt him squeeze back.
