TW: relationship violence/physical assault

"James! Jimbo! Jimmothy!"

Jim looked up from the article he was reading on his computer to see Michael sitting on the edge of his desk, leaning over to look at his computer screen. Jim smoothly switched tabs over to his email and pretended to be engrossed in reading a message from a client.

"What's happening out here?" Michael asked, picking up a trinket off of Jim's desk and toying with it.

"Just waiting for you to sign those expense reports," Jim said calmly, not looking up from his computer. Michael groaned.

"I don't wanna! Expense reports are boring. Maybe instead we should have a party to celebrate me mopping the floor with Dwight at the dojo today."

"Maybe we should," Jim replied disinterestedly. He waited for Michael to get up and go bother someone else before switching tabs back to the article he was reading. He glanced over to the reception desk warily, even though he knew Pam could not see his screen.

"Signs of domestic abuse," he read aloud very quietly to himself. His stomach lurched as he scrolled down to see gruesome descriptions of the different types of domestic violence, illustrated with pictures of bruises and gashes. He scrolled to the end of the article to the section entitled "What to do if someone you know is being abused." The bottom of the page contained a number of helplines and resources for survivors. It said to call the police if you believe someone is in immediate danger. He had dug his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open before he stopped to weigh his options.

What would calling the domestic violence hotline accomplish? Did he even have anything to report? Assuming he had seen what he thought he had seen back at the dojo, he still had no way to be sure of what had really happened to Pam.

The sound of the office door opening pulled Jim out of his thoughts. Roy strolled into the room and approached the reception desk, looking perfectly pleasant and normal. Jim tried to reconcile the person standing in front of him with what he had come to suspect about Roy and found that he could not do it.

"Hey. Are you ready to go to lunch?" Roy asked Pam. He took her jacket off the hook and held it out to her.

Pam did not look up from her computer screen as she answered. "Oh, I kind of took my lunch break already, sorry. Michael made us all go watch him fight Dwight."

Roy let out a confused chuckle. Jim watched as Roy's hand landed softly on Pam's shoulder. He saw his grip tighten ever so slightly, saw the muscles in Roy's jaw tense, saw the smile leave his eyes. Pam raised her head, breaking her determined stare at her monitor. She bit her lip, and Jim thought he saw a flicker of apprehension in her eyes. Jim felt his insides twist uncomfortably.

"I'm sure Michael won't care if you take a short break to eat with your fiance," Roy said in a low voice.

"It's fine," Pam said quickly, grabbing her jacket from Roy and slipping it on. Jim watched her with rapt attention, but she still would not look at him. "Where do you want to go?"

"Doesn't matter." Roy placed a hand at the small of Pam's back and subtly steered her out of the office, leaving Jim to sit dumbfounded at his desk and replay the exchange he had just witnessed over and over in his mind's eye. He looked around at his coworkers, but none of the people in sight of the reception desk had noticed anything. Dwight was concentrated on neatly arranging the bobbleheads on his desk. Phyllis was leaned back in her chair behind him, crocheting a scarf. Stanley, who never noticed anything that went on in the office, was consumed by his work.

"I'll be right back," Jim muttered to Dwight. He stood up and crossed the office, entered the break room, and closed the door.

Jim could easily brush off what he had seen that day. Maybe he was just reading too much into the exchange between Pam and Roy, into Pam's bruises, into her shifty responses to his questions. But something about this day was not sitting right with him. He could not shake the unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach telling him something was very, very wrong.

Before he could give himself time to rethink his decision, he dialed those three fateful numbers on his cell and held it to his ear, waiting with bated breath for someone to pick up.

"Hello? Hi, my name is Jim Halpert. I think a friend of mine is in an abusive relationship."

Pam and Roy arrived at their apartment at around half past five. The days were getting shorter as autumn wore on, and the sun was already setting, casting the place in a dreary evening light. They tossed their belongings down on the couch as they walked in and Pam retreated to the kitchen, where she started rifling through the fridge for ingredients for dinner. The shelves were depressingly bare. She would have to go to the store soon, as Roy could not be counted on to recognize when it was time to go shopping. He would live off of just box mix pancakes if she let him. Pam doubted whether he knew where to find anything at the grocery store anyhow.

Finally, she settled on a simple dinner of pasta and frozen vegetables. She had just put the water on the stove to boil and was opening a box of uncooked noodles when there was a knock at the door.

"I'll get it!" she shouted halfheartedly, although she knew Roy was not listening. She could hear a football game on the TV in the adjacent room. She dropped the box of pasta and hurried to open the door.

Before her stood a pair of burly policemen, both resting their hands on their holsters and surveying the apartment over Pam's head. "Good evening ma'am," said one of the officers. "We got a domestic violence call to this location a few hours ago. We need to do a search of your residence and ask you and your partner a few questions."

It took Pam a moment to find her voice and kick her brain back into gear. Her heart had forgotten to beat for a few moments, and she released a breath she hadn't known she was holding as she said in a rush: "There's no problem here. You need to leave." She cursed the tremble in her voice. It made her much less convincing.

"Pammy?" Roy called from the living room, as if on cue. "Who's there? Tell 'em we don't buy girl scout cookies." He chuckled gruffly at his own wit.

Pam turned back to the police officers, who looked poised to force their way into the apartment. "Ma'am," the taller of the two began, "If you are in immediate danger, we can discreetly remove you from the residence. Do you have anyone we can call?"

"Nope, no danger here," Pam said, her voice reaching a higher pitch this time. She tried her best to speak through her overwhelming nerves. Her heart was hammering so hard she thought her ribs might shatter. "I don't know who called you, but they've got it wrong." She had slowly started closing the door while she talked and now attempted to shut it completely. One of the officers placed a hand on the wood and held it open. Unfortunately for Pam, Roy chose that moment to appear in the entryway. He stepped slightly in front of her, acting as a buffer between Pam and the officers. His brow furrowed and his jaw set. Pam could see the calculations happening behind his eyes.

"Can we help you, officers?" Roy asked with feigned politeness. It was phrased as a question, but it did not sound like one.

"Good evening sir. We're acting on information reported to our office earlier today from a confidential source. We'd like to ask you some questions."

The police officers had been at their apartment for what felt like hours, grilling them separately about their relationship and searching every nook and cranny of the place for weapons or any sign violence had occurred. They apologized profusely for any inconvenience as they left with both of their statements denying the information from this mysterious confidential source. Roy gave them an understanding smile as he waved them out the door. He could be really charming when he wanted to be.

Roy shut the door and slowly and deliberately turned the deadbolt and slid the chain into place. Pam stood stock still behind him in the kitchen. The room was dead silent except for the soft sound of the pot of water bubbling on the stove that Pam had neglected to remove from the burner. Roy stood staring at the locked door for a moment that felt like an eternity before he turned around. The charming smile had melted from his face. Pam felt her blood turn suddenly cold at the hardened look in his eyes. She had learned to sense the storm building inside him before it broke over, as was always inevitable.

"You called the police on me."

He did not sound angry. On the contrary, he sounded quite calm. Pam wished he would shout at her. This feigned politeness was much worse than fury.

"No," she answered quickly, "I didn't. I don't know who called them, but—"

"Or maybe," Roy continued quietly, as though he had not heard Pam's meak protests, "One of those idiots you work with called. Maybe you've been telling stories about me." He took a couple of gradual steps closer to her. Pam backed away as imperceptibly as possible.

"I haven't said anything…"

"Don't lie to me," Roy hissed, taking several more steps toward her so that she was backed against the wall. Pam's heart was jumping into her throat. She tried not to let a tremble into her words as she spoke. "Roy, I'm sorry, I swear I haven't been talking about you."

Roy reached a hand out towards Pam, and she felt all her muscles tense. He placed the hand on her shoulder and leaned in far too close. "Do you want me to leave you?"

Pam's voice was barely above a whisper. Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. "No." She couldn't look Roy in the eye as she answered. It was like staring into the sun: overwhelming, all-consuming.

"Then you're going to quit telling lies about me," he murmured into the inches of space between them. "You're going to quit being so goddamn sensitive." The volume of his voice rose without warning. His shout mingled with Pam's surprised cry as he pushed her into the nearby table. She failed to maintain her balance and smacked her head against the tabletop as she fell to the ground.

"No—please—" she bleated, the tears that had been threatening to spill over finally dripping down her cheeks as she tried to sit up, "I haven't told anyone anything, Roy, I swear—please—I love you—"

"Don't lie to me!" Roy howled, placing a kick to her side that caused her to yelp like a wounded animal. Blinding pain radiated from the spot where his boot had met her ribs. She cowered as he repeated the action, hitting her back and then her shoulder.

Pam was vaguely aware of Roy shoving a chair out of the way, of the loud crash it made as it hit the floor, of his hulking figure hitting the ground next to her. She could only make out bits and pieces of the string of threats and obscenities now issuing from him. Time had slowed down as she lay shaking on the floor. Everything around her was moving in slow motion. Sound reached her as though she were under water. Her own rattling breathing was magnified, the sound reverberating inside her aching head.

Pam felt the next few blows mildly, as though she was experiencing the whole scene from the other end of a long tunnel. God, her head hurt. She could focus on little else. The sound of Roy's voice, her own breath, the sound of cracking bone and her own involuntary cries; all blended together in a dissonant roar of white noise. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, the only place she could consistently escape to, the place where she stored everything good and pure that Roy could not touch, a few garbled notes plunked out. She found herself thinking about the song Jim had played her a few weeks ago. The confused, distorted music overtook her as the apartment blurred into a swirl of muddled color. Faintly, in her mind's eye, she could almost see Jim's outline, his lopsided smile as he handed her one of his headphones over the top of the reception desk.

When Pam felt a brief lull of peace, when her body was enveloped with cold, she turned her head, barely aware of the pain that shot down her neck and shoulders as she did so. Roy stood over her, looking larger than life, but with eyes that gave away the emotions that had found their way through the haze of anger that had overtaken him. Pam was used to the flicker of guilt that briefly crossed his face, the flash of fear and regret that followed, to finally melt away and leave Roy's usual stoic expression in their wake. She predicted his next line: "I'm going out. I'll be back soon." His voice was gruff and devoid of feeling. Pam could only imagine the mental gymnastics he always went through in these moments before he invariably walked away from the damage he had done.

She heard him stomp away, heard the apartment door swing shut. She attempted again to sit up. It always fell to her to fix the mess he had made. It was an unspoken rule between them that she must put everything neatly back in its place, so that when he returned, they could pretend nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

A wave of nausea and blinding pain washed over her as she clawed herself into a sitting position using a nearby chair for leverage. She bent her head down, feeling the world lurch around her, and watched the blood she had not realized was pouring from her nose drip onto her skirt, shockingly red against the beige fabric. Suddenly, instinct overcame her and she was forced to twist around and vomit onto the floor. She remained in that position for several long moments, shaking violently and attempting to steady her swimming vision. Something was seriously wrong with her head. She knew if she tried to stand she would end up back on the ground.

Pam started to cross the floor in a bizarre sort of army crawl, using various pieces of furniture to pull herself forward. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Absolutely everything hurt. She took several steadying breaths in order to calm herself. It had never been this bad before.

Finally Pam was able to reach up to the counter and clumsily grab her cell, which she had left next to the stove. Searing pain shot down her arm as she stretched to get it. She wondered absently whether her shoulder was dislocated. Shakily, she managed to dial a familiar number with her left hand as she cradled her injured right arm close to her body.

She gasped in pain as she forced herself to sit up against the fridge, waiting for the phone to stop ringing. A faint click alerted her that someone had picked up.

"Hey," she said, her voice scratchy and raw. "I wasn't sure who else to call."