“I. AM. NOT. BROKEN. PAM,” Jim yelled from across the hotel room. 

“I didn’t say that you were! But-.”

“No. NO,” Jim said, and turned his back on her, using the window as an excuse to shut her out and shut her down. 

But she knew his playbook too well to allow him this kind of power play. 

“Jim, please,” she warned, reaching her hand to his shoulder and pulling him around to face her. Her lip trembled slightly, but her jaw was set. “Please don’t push me away.”

X THIRTY MINUTES EARLIER X

The Halperts needed a break from this whole nightmarish experience. 

Chemo, round two, had been even worse than round one, as the doctor’s warned them that it would be. So many restless nights, so many exhausting days, so many unspoken, terrifying questions passing between them, Pam and Jim needed a weekend to recoup...just the two of them. 

That’s why over breakfast one morning, Pam suggested, after much deliberation, that they take a weekend trip back to Niagara Falls. Jim agreed in a heartbeat. 

After all, he really needed this. 

On Friday morning, they had dropped Cece off at Grandma’s and spent two fantastic days together, laughing and dancing and enjoying each other in ways that they hadn’t been able to since the diagnosis. It was a different kind of much needed medicine, one they should’ve taken sooner. 

Everything was going so well that for a moment Pam almost forgot that an illness was even looming over them to begin with. 

Almost. 

Looking back, she supposed, at her own encouragement, Jim had just pushed himself a little too hard. He’d just completed week six of chemotherapy. He was weak. He was tired. He’d barely eaten anything that weekend. So many things could’ve contributed to what happened. Not that it wasn’t worth it, to stay up late playing cards with her husband or to relive the boat ride where they sealed their marriage, to visit the restaurants they’d loved or to walk trails, just talking, for hours, but maybe she’d been irresponsible. Even enjoyment wasn’t worth the expense of Jim’s health. 

It was on the very last day of their stay, as she and Jim strolled through a little park about a mile from their hotel, talking and laughing in the chilly morning air, that the exploits from their previous two days came calling to haunt them. 

It all happened so suddenly, as unusual things normally do. Jim seemed fine, almost normal, when he became spontaneously quiet, the kind that is all too often incorrectly diagnosed as deep thought. She pushed it off though, not wishing to ruin Jim’s morning with nagging questions about his health. He looked so happy, talking about the kinds of clouds and the breeze and the future. 

Then, just as the sun itself fell behind those clouds, casting the couple into shade, Pam, lost in conversation, realized that Jim was no longer by her side, but had stopped walking several feet behind her. She closed her eyes, dreading what she knew from the beginning of the trip might happen, and approached him with caution. 

“Hey,” she said finally, watching his expression closely for a hint of the degree of seriousness. 

He still had the remnant of a smile left in his eyes when she looked into them, but they appeared half empty now, like an hour glass quickly pouring sand. 

Her face fell. 

“Not again. Not here,” she thought. “Jim,” she said softly, bending to maintain eye contact. “Are you okay?” 

His frown confirmed what she already knew. 

“I don’t know,” he breathed, swaying slightly with the breeze. “I think I just need to sit for a second.”

“Okay,” she whispered, and put her arm around him. He’d gone very pale and she feared how quickly he’d traveled from fine to faint. She guided him discreetly to the first park bench she saw. He collapsed roughly onto it, placing his elbows on his knees, head in his hands. 

Feeling his discomfort, most likely from being aware of the people watching from around them, she sat down beside him, placing a hand on his back to let him know she was there. 

He looked shrunken, like a punished child in timeout. 

“What do I need to do,” she asked calmly after a moment. 

“Nothing. I’m okay,” he grunted, and she knew he desperately wanted to keep this as low key as possible. No need to make a scene. 

But just then, his whole body gave a sickening lurch and Pam grabbed his jacket to keep him from toppling over. Dreading the worst, she helped him push himself up and watched him stumble to a nearby tree where he doubled over and vomited into the grass. 

Pam followed him immediately, rubbing soft circles on his back as he struggled to pull himself together. His face wore a greenish tint, with a subtle mortification behind it that she only recognized because she knew him intimately. 

“Is he okay,” she heard from over her shoulder and Pam started, being so focused on her husband that everything else was simply background noise. 

She turned around and saw a young woman with what seemed to be her husband and two small children behind her. She looked genuinely concerned which Pam appreciated, but all the same, she felt herself instinctively move between the stranger and Jim, to shield him in this vulnerable moment from any onlookers. 

“Yeah, he’s okay,” Pam said hesitantly, but gratefully. Then more softly, “He just finished a round of chemo and...,” she glanced over her shoulder as Jim wretched again. “The side affects come and go.”

The lady offered her a sympathetic smile as if she could possibly understand what Pam was going through. Pam felt a burning resentment flash briefly in her gut. This wasn’t just some ruined trip to her and Jim...

“Are you staying close by” the woman asked. “We can take you somewhere so he doesn’t have to walk so far.”

Pam gave a sigh of relief mixed with a slight twinge of guilt for judging the woman prematurely. She offered her a tight lipped smile as compensation. 

“Thank you so much. That would help a lot,” she accepted gratefully. 

“Great,” the woman agreed, motioning to her husband to grab the car. “We’ll pull it up to the curb right here whenever he’s ready,” she said cheerfully. 

Pam was almost speechless at the kindness of the strangers and with the lifted pressure of how she would get Jim back to the hotel. They could avoid as many wandering eyes as possible this way. She turned to her husband who was bent over, hands on his knees, spitting into the dirt. 

“Jim,” she whispered once beside him. “That family is going to give us a ride back to the hotel so you don’t have to walk. They’re really nice.”

Jim stood up straight, but did not look at her. Something passed over his features that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Maybe it was the intensity of what had just taken place? He opened his mouth to say something but, still staring hard at the ground, leaned over again, placing his hands back on his knees, breathing deeply. 

Her heart hurt for him. 

“I don’t need any help,” he finally choked, spiting out bile as he did. 

“There’s no reason to be embarrassed. I told them you’ve been taking chemo,” she added, picking up on the newfound reddish tinge around his cheeks. 

He turned on her so unexpectedly and with such ferocity that her body started again with a forceful jerk. 

“You told them,” he accused her, finally looking at her for the first time in several long minutes. 

She diligently searched his features, thoroughly confused as to what brought on this turn of anger, but he offered her back only a cold stare. 

“I don’t want their pity,” he snapped at her. 

“It’s not pity,” she assured him. “They’re just-.”

“I don’t need their help and I don’t need yours. Okay,” he spat and turned away from her, leaving her alone, humiliated by the one she loved. 

XXX

Jim accepted the strangers’ help, making small talk with them on the way back to the hotel, all the while Pam remained quiet in the seat beside him. She thanked the couple when they dropped them off and after a casual wave goodbye, walked beside her husband in silence to the elevator and again to the room. 

When the the door closed behind her, she went immediately into the bathroom and locked herself inside. She blinked back stinging tears while staring at the pale ceiling. Was he aware that he had cut her deeply? She sighed, wiping a stray tear from her cheek. It was stupid to cry over something this trivial, but all the same her feelings were hurt. She had only been trying to help him. 

What did he expect her to do? 

It was several long minutes before she reappeared, pointedly avoiding Jim, and sitting across the room. 

“Hey,” she heard him say softly. 

She softly ignored him. 

“Pam,” he tried again. 

She turned on the TV, deciding not to make it easy on him. 

“Look, I’m sorry.”

She turned the volume up. He’d have to work a little harder than that. 

“You’re being ridiculous,” he yelled at her over the newscaster’s droning. 

She had awoken the beast in him. 

She switched the TV off and pushed herself up to face her husband. Fury flashed in her eyes as she abandoned the idea of “not pushing it too far.”

“I’M being ridiculous,” she hissed. “Me??”

“Yes,” Jim replied lamely, seeming a little less confident, but far too stubborn to back out now. “You. I just want to talk this out so I can help us get back to having fun.”

Pam almost laughed, a cold anger beginning to simmer in her core. 

“Oh so NOW you want my help,” she smiled fakely. “I thought you didn’t need anyone’s help.”

Jim closed his eyes and breathed deeply. She recognized the warning signs, the nearness of his breaking point. 

Let it come. 

“I thought you could do this all by yourself,” she yelled, trying to mask the hurt in her voice. “You don’t need me here to take care of you!”

That was the moment that Jim finally exploded in a shower of angry sparks, but instead of careless, slinging words, he looked humiliated and ashamed. 

“I. AM. NOT. BROKEN. PAM,” Jim yelled from across the hotel room. 

“I didn’t say that you were! But-.”

“No. NO,” Jim said, and turned his back on her, using the window as an excuse to shut her out and shut her down. 

But she knew his playbook too well to allow him this kind of power play. 

“Jim, please,” she warned, reaching her hand to his shoulder and pulling him around to face her. Her lip trembled slightly, but her jaw was set. “Please don’t push me away.”

They spent the next few moments in stoney silence, staring each other down in an emotional standoff. Pam honestly felt more worried than angry, and eventually she even felt her temper soften. The circumstances had been against Jim for months. He deserved better than for her to fight him too. 

Even so, she refused to stop staring into his eyes, dissecting his thoughts frantically in this brief moment that she had them. She and Jim played cards often, and Jim always, always had a tell in his eyes. The longer they were together, though, the more Pam realized that these subtle signals were not limited only to poker, so for now, she probed his mind for something hidden, for the real problem. Then, without looking away, she reached out for his clenched, jittery hands. 

She’d found what she was looking for. 

“Do you doubt that I love you,” she asked softly, as one would address a patient on his sickbed. 

Jim stared down at his feet, guilt etched into his every feature. No part of him looked bold enough to face her right now which Pam attributed to the fact that vulnerability had never really been his strong suit. 

He sighed, smiling slightly as he shook his head. He seemed at a lost for words, or voice, one of the two. 

But he knew she would not leave without an answer. 

“I doubt...that I am worth...,” he choked in a strangled voice, “This kind of love.”

He swallowed hard, breaking only slightly at the end, his watery eyes searching desperately around the room for anything to look at but her. 

At last, the tell had surfaced. 

Pam couldn’t respond. The thought that Jim could even feel unworthy of anything she could offer him spread like pinpricks across her arms. She felt the compulsive need to assure him, to comfort him, to throw herself on him and tell him it would all be okay. It would, after all, eventually be okay. Right?

“I’m okay,” he mumbled quickly, before she could even get the thought out of her own mouth. 

There it was, her answer. 

She could not bring herself to look away from her husband, to see his absolute cluelessness as to how she viewed him. Even when there were no jokes left, no funny one liners, just Jim, pure and unfiltered, he was so perfectly what she had always longed for. She could feel burning tears brimming at the surface of her eyelids, yet they were never allowed to spill over. 

“You. Are not. Okay,” she whispered finally through tight lips. “Stop telling me you’re okay.”

She grazed the palm of her hand gracefully over his still pale cheek, stopping only to lift his chin to meet hers. 

“Look at me,” she demanded gently, and he slowly looked her in the eyes for the first time since the park. Lined and exhausted, they looked no less like the ones she married last time they were in Niagara. “You have cancer, Jim...,” she broke to him, as if it were the first time all over again. “None of this is ‘okay’.”

Jim shook his head, maybe at her, maybe at his thoughts. He spoke again in a hoarse whisper. 

“I’m just so...embarrassed that I can’t even...I mean I’m just not able-.”

“I’m not embarrassed of you,” Pam interrupted. “Not in front of anyone.”

Jim took several deep breaths, and she joined him, at a loss for words to describe the chaos of things she was feeling in her veins. All this time she thought he was embarrassed of what had happened in the open, but he was actually ashamed that it happened in front of her? Jim Halpert is brave and intelligent and kind even in the midst of his own despair. He of all people had no reason to feel shame. 

She watched him open his mouth and close it again several times, waiting patiently for his next move, concerned that he still remained unconvinced of her unconditionality.  

“I just need some air,” he decided on finally, slipping through her grasp to walk out on the balcony. 

She watched him leave without a word. 

Once Jim was outside, she laid down for awhile, alone with herself. She turned on the news again, hardly interested in what celebrity was getting divorced now, but only to fill the silence in the background. She kept glancing over to the drawn curtains where she could almost make out Jim, leaning on the railing and staring out into the darkness. She worried about him silently, eventually losing all track of time. 

Then, once all was still, the television, her anxieties, the outside world, and she lay curled up on the bed alone, she heard the door open again.  

She did not feign sleep, but turned her head to watch him as he approached. She wanted to apologize, to shove everything aside in hopes of rescuing just one more good night, but what words could she possibly invent to make everything alright again? They had long passed alright. She settled for smiling smally at him. To her relief, he understood, and returned it, then reached out his strong hands, intertwining his icy fingers with her own. 

He pulled her close and wrapped his arm around her. She savored the warmth of his chest, the safety of his skin on hers. Then slowly, he reached up and pushed a strand of hair behind her ears, leaving behind one of his earbuds in its wake. 

They swayed together, in rhythm again to the melody between them. It sang softly:

     Why’d you up and run away?

     Why’d you up and run away from me, darling?

      Because you don’t have to, my serial doubter. 

     Because you don’t have to, my love. 

“I’m not okay. You’re not okay. And that’s okay,” Jim whispered into her kiss as they danced together in the dark, taking comfort while they still could, in each other’s presence, even in the doubt. 

Because for now, Jim was not yet broken.