Contains potential spoilers for Season 5, Episode 3. Read at your own risk.
RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED
It's okay if you thought you were over it
But it hits you all over again.
It's okay to fall apart even after you
Thought you had it under control
You are not weak. Healing is messy.
There is no timeline.
The counselor had introduced herself as someone who had worked a fair bit with people, "in your community". June's immediate impulse was to argue - what 'community' would that be?
There actually had been a Gilead survivor who had once specialized in the unique trauma which women carried from that place, especially now that they were in relative 'freedom'. That woman had written an influential paper detailing her clinical experience, delineating the differences between early arrivals to Little America from those who'd recently arrived after years of slavery.
That counselor? She disappeared. The word in Little America? She had become one of the founders of Mayday's itinerant-camps, haphazardly set-up, only to be soon moved to another obscure place along the border.
The woman June Osborne was now sitting with, her experience with refugees as well as trauma had been in Africa. She was one of the few taking on 'new clients', honestly it had been the intervention of the American Consulate in the city that June even got in - chiefly Mark Tuello with Rita Blue's help. Canada had had a generous refugee budget, but only rarely covered this sort of counsel. The Prime Minister had once been caught at a 'hot-mike' quipping, "if we start paying for therapy, Gilead will simply ship all their space-cases north."
Space cases? Meet June Osborne.
As June had monologued during the full 50 minutes of her first session, the point she preached to the counselor was that there was no healing, so why even try.
At her second session, June shared her conspiratorial thinking about the Consulate. June entertained the counselor about it, wavering between this being Mark Tuello's coercion to keep her from bolting back into Gilead, to once again counseling being useless because there were far far more important things to achieve than healing. At the end, June had lectured the counselor on the nature of evil, which had a name. Serena Joy.
Besides, June had said in scatter-gun manner, it was not as if she had ever once lived up to her reputation. A reputation that consisted of her tie to Nichole/Holly, combined with the positive-Canadian public reaction to Angel's Flight. Even the counselor had admitted, up front on the first day, that she had been a little cowed to be working with, 'June Osborne', as she put it, with a capital 'J' and capital 'O'.
At the end of the second session, as the 49th minute ticked into the 50th, the counselor stumbled upon the key to Osborne's therapy. A key even more fundamental than hatred for anything 'Waterford'. It was just the mention of Hannah, a name which had appeared on Osborne's intake sheet, but who June had not yet referred to.
It was simple enough. The woman had said, "Ok, next time, let's talk about family. Especially family left behind in Gilead." That was enough to provoke extreme anger in June, loud enough shouting that the counselor's assistant out in the waiting room knocked on the door and stuck her head in. The assistant was waved away, and the next person with an appointment had to wait an extra 1/2 hour, despite the counselor's reputation for finishing exactly on time.
June missed her scheduled third session all together. She got an e-mail reminder that the Canadian government was being billed for 'no-show' sessions, where there had not been 24 hour notice.
It couldn't be helped. June and Moira had returned for a visit to the Mayday camp at the border, where their sewing skills were put to good use. They had sewed two, fully functional suicide explosive-vests into a single winter-jacket, yes two of them. All the person at the other end had to do was clip the stitches from some of the jacket's seams, and the vests were ready to go.
The jacket's zipper would mask the otherwise limited metal they made bombs out of these days.
June wondered outloud to Moira, if Lillie Fuller had had one like that, shipped via this very route. There was no real way to know.
THE FREAK SHOW
Elizabeth's restored reputation at Ardua Hall allowed her some latitude. Founder Aunts were considered equals among the lesser Aunts, with perhaps Aunt Lydia being the first among them. As it was, lesser Aunts would never have intervened when Aunt Elizabeth was doing something.
So it was that when Aunt Elizabeth arrived at the infirmary pushing supplicant Janine in a wheelchair, none of the medical staff balked. No one even remotely tried to impede them. Every one of the staff simply assumed that Aunt Elizabeth must have permission to do this.
Elizabeth had wheeled Janine straight to the euphemistically named, 'Disciplinary Ward'. Doctors in Gilead, those who were left, had long since abandoned any notion of 'do no harm'. Indeed this had been the ward - now with better bells and whistles - to which Janine had been sent, at the beginning of her Handmaid-supplicant training.
This ward also occasionally handled the odd Commander. Or Wife.
Elizabeth said to Janine, sitting quietly in front of her, "What had you said, dear? 'Welcome to the friggin looney bin'? How's this for a looney bin?" Elizabeth then told Janine that if it had been up to her, Janine would never have been particicuted or sent to The Colonies for her stunt with Angela Putnam on that bridge. "There were plenty more options here on this ward." Elizabeth then mumbled something about Aunt Lydia going soft, but that fortunately people like herself and Helena had prevailed.
The 12 beds in the disciplinary ward were only half-filled. Amputations and mutilations were going out of style as Gilead itself sought more international recognition. Elizabeth saw that as weakness - if Gilead were to sit at the international table, it should be from a position of strength.
And strength for Elizabeth, it started here. Stopping at the foot of a bed where the occupant had just lost both hands, Elizabeth asked Janine to look, then said, "she won't be needing them for her duties, will she?"
Elizabeth then came around the wheelchair to see more of Janine's face. She said, "Look, honey. If you're going to be a supplicant, if Aunt Lydia is going to continue bringing freaks into our order, all this is what you'll need to learn. It's what Aunts do. Nothing will change that - after all, if that changes, then Gilead is lost anyway."
At that Elizabeth heard the ward's doors swing open. There she was, about 20 feet away. Aunt Lydia scowling with her arms crossed across her chest.
ACTS OF FAITH
It was always a terrifying act of faith to first open, then pass through that warehouse door. On the other side, had been a Mayday safe-place. At least it had been two days ago when the petite, young woman had left for Nashua, in the old New Hampshire.
For that trip north, the young woman had been dressed in Martha's garb, with papers to report to a rural Commander's household to the north of Nashua.
She didn't know why, and she knew enough not to ask, but at the safe-house in Nashua, she traded her Martha grays for a simple winter coat. She traded with another young woman, about the same size as she. As usual, they traded no words, much less chat or conversation - the young woman donned the coat, zipped it up, then left on foot to the centre of town, where an EconoWoman's bus was leaving back for Boston. Now as an Econowoman, the bus would take her back into the Boston laundry/industrial district, only a block from the safe-warehouse, the one she'd departed from.
Despite the butterflies, one didn't dare hesitate when opening the door. That alone could blow the whole thing open, you just had to face your fears and confidently keep going.
Inside, were two women waiting. It was the one with the glasses who the young woman thought she knew, or at least had seen. Once again, eschewing words, the three simply got to work.
She took off the winter jacket, the woman with glasses got out a small pocket knife and started clipping at the coat's stitches. Very quickly, one suicide-bomber's vest was birthed, and it was passed to the third woman, the one who'd been silently waiting. She put it on, familiarized herself with the switches and the thumb trigger, then pulled a martha's gray uniform over her, she grabbed a pack and quickly departed.
The original young woman, she located and donned the martha's robe which was still there from the previous day.
The woman with the glasses, she pulled a second suicide vest from the coat, pulled it around herself, secured it, located the hand-held-trigger, then pulled a martha's robe over herself.
Breaking protocol, the bespeckled woman asked the first, "are the schools for domestic arts in session? I've been told they aren't, I just need to check."
The first woman said, "how should I know? Don't they prepare you for this stuff?"
"I need to know. I need to keep collateral damage to a minimum."
"It's a fine time to ask, and I'm not really the one to run this past." The young woman looked determined, though, "you, you should do your duty. This is a fucked up place, all of us have done horrible things." It was at that point that she recognized the woman in the bomb-vest, she'd been the one who Gilead had vilified for kidnapping a Commander's daughter to Canada.
What was baby Nichole's kidnapper doing back in Gilead?
Taking off her glasses and cleaning them, Dr. Malek said, "Look, if this turns out bad, could you get a message to June Osborne. Could you tell her, 'I'm sorry'? She'll know who."
The woman in the bomb-vest left. The first woman waited a minute, then she too left.
COUNSELING PAID BY THE HOUR
The counselor brooked no interruptions to sessions, save for the obvious ones where her assistant thought safety was at risk.
This was not one of those times.
The counselor had just been expanding on June Osborne's break-through - Osborne had just been explaining a dream she'd had, one that had filled her with 'hope', that four letter word that was tragically elusive to Gilead survivors.
As the session was winding down, the counselor wanted to leave Osborne with something, to build on the insight.
"Look," she said to Osborne, "'hope' is neither 'wishing', nor is it a false sense of what can be. Hope, true hope, is three things - one, it is first and foremost a truthful statement of what is, with all its warts and evils. Two, it is a rejection of all those things you'd once put your hope in, but turned out to be empty."
Osborne said, "like the US government? Like friends who you thought had your back?"
The counselor answered, "that's up to you to answer. But three, hope is found in those people you truly admire, those people who actually DO understand the tragically accurate appraisal of what is, yet they still inspire YOU with the way they handle themselves through it all….."
At that point, the assistant rapped on the door, and without prompting stuck her head in. She said to the counselor, "the phone, it's for you."
PURPLE CLOTHES
The counselor's first instinct was to be furious for the interruption. Yet that was abated by the thought, 'surely my assistant wouldn't do this for no reason.'
So she made her excuses with June Osborne, went to the outer office closing the door behind her.
True to instinct, it was Mark Tuello on the line. He said, rapid fire…..
"Your person says Osborne is still there. Good. I want you to handle with her what I'm about to tell you. Give it five or ten minutes, because the Toronto Police Service is sending some uniforms there to help you out."
"There've been two explosions in New Gilead. One was at Rubies Premarital Preparatory, where June Osborne's kidnapped daughter is. She's 12. There's been casualties, but information, it's not easy to get." Tuello paused during the silence in the call so he added, "I'm sorry to put this on you. Bill us if you have to. But under no circumstances is she to leave your office without a police escort."
"Also, the following is not for discussion with her. But we think we know who the bomber is."
It's okay to fall apart even after you
Thought you had it under control
You are not weak. Healing is messy.
There is no timeline.