Pam finds a flicker of hope in the bottom of her tea. As she gulps down the last of it, her phone chimes with a message from Jim. He wishes her good morning and grumbles about his inability to return to work for the day. Apparently, his mother has suggested that another day of bedrest will do him the world of good. Pam doesn’t want to go the day without seeing him, but is inclined to believe that perhaps his mother does know best.

She promises to stop by after work to check in on him and the tone of his messages brightens significantly. She settles into a happiness that brushes the uneasiness back under the carpet.

It’s a strange day at the office. Michael hangs back from her all day, withering under her gaze and steadfastly refusing to visit reception. She overhears him making plans with Dwight to organise a fun run to raise money for pelvis injuries, the silent American killer – she quickly puts a stop to it, reassuring Michael that Jim is fine and will be back tomorrow. Dwight interjects to tell them that he’s watched the security tape and Michael can’t call pelvis injuries the silent killer because there was a distinct thud when Michael’s car collided with Jim’s pelvis.

When Pam’s reassurances that Jim is fine don’t work, she convinces Michael that a fun run would be highly insensitive given that Jim can’t walk unaided at the moment, much less run. That seems to work, as his face falls and he turns on Dwight, insisting that Dwight’s fun run idea is terrible.

She learns that Michael had faced a difficult day in the office after receiving a less than impressed reception to running over a co-worker. Oscar fills her in over lunch about the conference room meeting where Michael accused them of being cursed and tried to discuss everyone’s religious beliefs.

Oscar spends the entire retelling shaking his head as he relives his disbelief as Pam attempts to stifle her laugher, because of course that would be Michael’s response. She’s not even the smallest part surprised to learn of his antics.

She uses the time that Michael doesn’t approach her desk – which she learns frees up a lot of her day – to fill Jim in. She sends him messages throughout the day. At one point, he calls, and she simply leaves the phone on her desk and allows him to catch the comings and goings of the office.

This call abruptly ends as she looks up from the important game of FreeCell she is playing as she murmurs to Jim every now and then and finds Karen at her desk. Karen grabs a jellybean, even though Pam knows she doesn’t really eat them. “How is he?”

“Same as yesterday,” she replies. Karen nods and turns away. Pam catches an emotion she can’t quite name, which is quickly shuttered away as she leaves. She thinks maybe there’s a hint of relief, like Karen is glad to hear the memories haven’t returned because she’s expecting something to change when they do?

She thinks Karen may actually really be in like with Jim, or at least the version of Jim she has so carefully cultivated. There’s a part of Pam that can empathise, because she’s been really in love with Jim for months, maybe longer, and it’s hard when he’s clearly into someone else. As Michael would say, how the turntables…

Pam waits half an hour before she calls Jim back. She doesn’t relay the conversation with Karen – if you could call it that – and he doesn’t ask. They’re giggling their way through the afternoon when she hears another voice enter Jim’s call. His mother has returned from running errands to check in on him.

Betsy Halpert sounds so very motherly that Pam can’t help but grin. Pam can’t quite make out her words, but it appears she’s fluffing Jim’s pillows and generally cooing over him. She muffles a chuckle. The phone beeps a couple of times and she thinks that maybe Jim is trying to hang up on her and missing the button. He must hit the speaker key as all of a sudden she can hear things a lot more clearly. She shifts the receiver away from her mouth and attempts to silence her breathing as much as possible.

She expects some more gentle mothering that she can tease him mercilessly about later on, but instead she hears Betsy sigh and perch herself on the end of Jim’s bed with what she can only picture to be a deeply serious expression.

“Sweetheart,” she starts, and Pam closes her eyes to images of a shaggy haired Jim at twelve as his mom soothes him following his first rejection at the middle school dance. “You know you’re my boy.”

“Mom,” he sighs.

“I’m serious. Pete and Tom are your father all over, but you, you’re me.”

“And Larissa’s a mystery.”

“Well, yes. A little,” they both chuckle with shared understanding that makes Pam feel somewhat intrusive listening in – not enough to prompt her to hang up the phone. Betsy sobers. “You haven’t been yourself this year, son.” The bed shuffles and Pam thinks maybe Jim is hanging his head and steadily avoiding his mother’s gaze.

“You know, the first I learnt Karen’s name was last night when you asked me to fill in some blanks. You told us you were dating someone, but you were,” she sighs, “prickly at best about it. Guarded,” she adds. “And when we asked you about work, and your friends…”

“Pam,” he whispers, saying what his mother isn’t.

“Yes. She went from being the regular feature in all your stories to not a mention.” It stings when his mother puts it that way.

“I love her,” he croaks.

“Oh sweetheart, we know.”

“Larissa,” they both utter.

“You and your sister had a big night on the town before you moved to Stamford. She filled me in on a few of the blanks. Every time I’ve tried to talk to you about it all, you haven’t been very receptive,” there is a wince to her voice and Pam hears Jim groan.

“Sorry, mom,” he mutters.

“I think you’re ready to hear it now. Larissa tells me that girl called off her wedding for you and you’ve been pointedly ignoring it. You’ve been so damn unhappy this year. It’s time you talk to her about it.”

Jim chuckles. “Who do you think drove me home from the hospital, mom?”

“That Karen girl you barely speak about,” his mother sighs – again. Pam chokes back a snigger in her attempt to remain silent.

He waits a beat for the penny to drop. “Oh. Pam. That’s why you’re in such a good mood today.”

“Moooom.”

“I tell you what Jim, it might do you a world of good not to have those memories from the past few months return at all.”

“I’m starting to think the same thing.”

Pam echoes his wish with a silent one of her own. Jim can live without those memories. She wants to keep hers though. She wouldn’t be in this moment without the hard and the hurt and the horrible. She likes this moment, where Jim tells his mom that he loves her and kisses her with an enthusiasm that makes her knees weak.

She feels a little weird about being a voyeur in this whole personal conversation. Jim’s mom is chatting brightly about a cup of tea and she thinks she hears his door creak. She waits another five careful, quiet seconds before she hisses, “Jim,” and hears him fumble with the phone.

“Pam,” he squeaks, “you’re still there.”

“I, uh, like your mom,” she smiles into the phone.

“Yeah, I… me too.”

* * * 

Jim flits between embarrassed and embarrassed for the next forty-five minutes. After pondering every word of the conversation for far too long, it passes. It doesn’t seem to have diminished his standing in Pam’s eyes, the remainder of their conversation maintaining the same general tone of barely veiled flirting as it had all day.

He had been kind of touched to hear Michael’s terrible fun run plan in his honour. At the same time, he understood that Michael’s motivations were more about clearing his conscience than apologising to Jim. Still, it was a sweet gesture of sorts nonetheless. He was a little apprehensive to discover which version of Michael would greet him upon his return to the office the following day. He was sure it would be peak Michael, only he wasn’t quite certain what that could entail.

Thinking of someone being their peak selves brings him back to his mother, who is fine form. She has decided that since he is essentially bed-ridden, she will use the opportunity to spring clean his apartment – her words, which essentially entails going through everything he owns and generally being nosey – his words.

She finds his old quilt stuffed into the back of a cupboard and nudges him onto the sofa as she changes his sheets. He rolls his eyes a little, but thanks her, because it’s definitely an improvement and he feels a bit more like himself once again.

Betsy must really go through his entire apartment, because she finds a beat up old shoebox that Jim recognises immediately and snatches from her a little too hastily, arousing all her suspicions. She plonks herself back on the foot of his bed and waits for him to elaborate. “Mooom,” he whines. “It’s private.”

“I’m your mother,” she shrugs as if that justifies her knowing every waking detail of his life. He opens the shoebox gingerly and thanks his past self, who apparently was the world’s biggest arse, for at the very least not throwing this away.

He pulls item after item from the box as his mother watches with a bemused expression at the junk that he has apparently been reverently hoarding. There’s another little golf pencil, the pair to the one he slipped into the Christmas teapot last year. There are doodles on a myriad of coloured post-it notes and slips of paper. It’s not until he pulls out the polaroid in the bottom of the box that it clicks and his mother releases a slow whoosh of air.

“It’s your Pam box,” she states simply.

He nods. “I’m glad I didn’t throw it out,” he murmurs, propping up the photo on his bedside table. It’s an old shot of himself and Pam that Michael had taken a couple of years earlier. He’s filling a door frame and Pam stands opposite him, arms wrapped around herself as she smiles softly at him. Neither of them face the camera. He’s in middle of telling her about the first time he ever put Dwight’s stapler in jello, with a smirk painting his face and a smug joy radiating from him.

His mother doesn’t comment further, but he notices the way her eyes linger on the image for a few moments, before returning to him.

Betsy finishes her spring cleaning of sorts and Jim begins to recognise the house around him. There are a few more treasures of sorts tucked into the back of cupboards that make their way into the décor. It’s nice to know that all these pieces of himself remain, and haven’t been completely discarded. It helps to feel like he’s been faking it, not that he actually has changed as much as everything in this slightly off-kilter life he’s woken to has indicated.

By the time five o’clock rolls around, he’s been hinting at his mother to leave his house and return to her own. He’s thanked her vigorously for helping him out all day. Betsy has other plans, and has steadily been dragging out her departure. At 5.15pm, the sound of a car pulling into the drive has Jim glaring at his mother, who for her part, is doing a fantastic job of playing innocent. She’s bumbling around his kitchen, attempting to appear busy.

He’s managed to hustle her as far as the door, when a knock resounds and he rolls his eyes very dramatically at her. She pats his cheek with a longsuffering smirk and whips the door open before he has a chance to process the move.

Pam schools her surprise quickly before reaching out a steady hand. “Hi Mrs Halpert.”

“Hi Pam,” his mother beams, brushing her hand away as she clasps her in a momentary hug instead.

“Oh,” Pam squeaks, there’s no masking the surprise this time. She blushes slightly at being accosted by Betsy who is bubbling with excitement that she’s managed to finally meet the Pam.

Jim curses that he’s ever told his sister anything, because this Pam knowledge his mother holds has all been filtered through Larissa.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Pam adds politely.

“My mother was just leaving,” Jim adds less politely.

He finds himself on the receiving end of another affectionate cheek pat for that.   

“I ordered pizza. It should be here soon. I think there will be enough for everyone,” Pam shrugs off her coat and tugs the door closed behind her. Jim tries a little too late to stick his crutch in the way of the closing door and push his mother through it. Instead, she returns to sit at his kitchen bench.

“Perfect,” Betsy trills.

“Perfect,” Jim groans.

Pam mimics his mothers cheek pat and grins at him.

Truth be told, there’s a part of him that's excited to for his mother and Pam to meet. But, the far more selfish and clearly more dominant part of him in this moment, just wants Pam to himself. He still can’t believe she’s here, with him and they’re starting something.

All he feels is joy, with deep contentedness seeping around the edges. He would be happy to live in these moments forever.