IT'S A SMALL WORLD

Dr. Yates had practised medicine far too long to fall for a fish tale. Technically he was not supposed to be treating handmaids, especially not for suspicious scalpel cuts to their hand. Yates's anxiety was if he needed to report this or not. It was obvious to him that the Wife of Gilead, Mrs. Waterford, and the handmaid Ofjoseph had been swinging blades at each other. The Eyes would want to know about that! His brief stint in an inner city emergency ward, pre-revolution, taught him a lot - about knife fights and about police.

All Dr. Yates ever wanted to do was practice medicine. As he had told dissenting colleagues, 'a cold is still a cold in Gilead. The 'flu is still the 'flu in Gilead, as it was in the old Boston.' He didn't think about it much, how the moral clarity of Gilead had tweaked the Hippocratic Oath's interpretation of a doctor's responsibilities.

It was as he had explained to the handmaid as he stitched her hand…. his patient was not Ofmatthew, lying in a coma. It was the unborn child within her. That kind of clarity he could work with.

He'd heard the kind of defiance that Ofjoseph heaped upon him before. Where? It was familiar! She'd said, "Why stitch me up if you're just going to report me?" that had been the moral nuance she'd presented him with.

"It's the Hippocratic oath, honey," he replied as he was suturing. "Do no harm."

"Bullshit," Ofjoseph barked, thinking that if this was to be her last day, she'd make it good. She told him that her mother was a doctor, that she'd treated pregnant women, and for her mom the mother was always first.

Dr. Yates just offered a passive nod. He went into counseling mode, a rarety for him these days. Remembering his beside manner, and wanting to signal that he was not totally without feeling, he asked, "your mom, did she get out?"

Her, "no, she didn't," was accompanied by a wince at one of the sutures being put in.

The doctor said, "you must have loved her very much." In the world of Gilead, Yates rarely got an opportunity to practise Rogerian, unconditional positive regard. It seemed like a good time to do it, when an enslaved woman, a Bilhah woman, was reminiscing about a mother she wasn't even sure was alive.

He asked, "where did she practise?"

Ofjoseph replied, "Sommerville, to the northwest. Her name was….. is Holly Maddox."

Yates smiled, "okay, now I get why you took a swipe at Mrs. Waterford! Dr. Maddox, Dr. Holly Maddox, she could be scary!"

Ofjoseph managed her first smile, very weakly, "you've got that right. Can you imagine being raised by her!?"

Dr. Yates returned the smile, "you have my sympathies, Ofjoseph."

Now it was June speaking, "you need to know my intent was to kill Serena. Then I was going to kill Ofmatthew, then I was going to kill you. Then me."

He finished the sutures, and started putting his instruments away. "How long have you had these suicidal thoughts? I mean, I do 'get' that they are common among handmaids."

She corrected him, "'homicidal'."

"Well, one thing's for sure, you're your mother's daughter. Why would you do any of that, knowing if you'd failed to kill yourself, that The Wall would do it for you?"

"I don't know," June answered, "ever since I realized I'd probably never see either of my daughters again. Since I realized that I don't know how mom would react to never seeing me again. It bugs me to know I don't know that about mom."

Dr. Yates: "That's sad, not knowing that about your mom. Your mother was a fighter, June. That's why I stayed away from her. I was never politically correct enough for her. Man, was she stubborn…. and opinionated."

June said, "that's mom!"

BOOTHEEL

I think this place is near the old West Plains, Missouri, either that or just to the south at Mammoth Spring in the old Arkansas, in what's now called The Eastern Colonies. All I know is that the one I toil at, the one I'll die in is the 'Bootheel Colony'. That would make sense, given that we're probably to the west of the old Bootheel of Missouri.

I base that on the talk that we're west of the Crawleys Ridge, and west of the Mississippi Embankment. Geez, I should have paid better attention during civics in school. I was too busy pithing frogs!

This place is in bad need of a doctor. Which means - me. Strike that, the place doesn't need a doctor, except for maybe one in palliative care. Me, I'm useless. This place needs public health people. And equipment. To test the water. And Geiger Counters, to measure the radiation in the soil we're turning over.

They need to limit women's exposure to that soil, NOT whip us into making 10 hours in a day. Don't need a doctor to tell you that.

When Gilead had taken over - when the American government fell like a row of dominoes - me, I felt like I was letting my daughter down. I'd been the one chastizing her for her laissez-faire attitude towards feminists, those of us who were fighting the fight - winning some, losing many others. I never thought we'd lose Roe vs. Wade, but even that was pre-Gilead.

The fundies, they were better organized than us, targetted critical institutions better. That meant their extreme minority status, held sway. How do I know? I have the radiation-lesions on my arms and legs to show for it, as I am cleaning up their mess - out here in the Bootheel Colony.

June's political indifference stung, it really did. She'd had that affair with that Luke-guy, and it didn't take much for him to dump his wife for my daughter. The scuttle-but was that he'd dumped Annie because she'd been infertile. I mean, to me that made him as bad as the Sons of Jacob who'd led the insurrection against the Stars and Stripes. Fertility, it means too much to impotent men.

I'd say to June, "it's time to get out into the street and fight, not just play house." But with Luke, she played house. They had Hannah, so I guess Luke's virility was borne out. Hurrah for him.

FUNNY, THY NAME IS WHITFORD

Wanna hear something funny?

When it wasn't clear which way the old US Constitution would go, I decided to not be so busy at the Womyn's Health Initiative in Boston. I still feel guilty about that. I should have spat in their face. By my cowardice, I denied women the right to choose their reproductive future - I mean, how many times had I lectured younger women about how people my age had marched for those rights?

The rights which first got eroded by a minority of ideologues, then criminalized under Gilead?

Women, we were criminalized.

So here's what's funny. It's how I got in the grip of the fascists to begin with, those who now run things - the fascists who have sent me to die in this radiation filled, 'Bootheel Colony', aptly named because of the breed of 'Aunt' that whips us into shape.

Okay, the funny thing?

I'd agreed to give Mr. Whitford a vasectomy. Not an abortion nor anything that I thought would attract too much attention - a bloody, meaning a bloodless vasectomy. I'd done it 100s of times.

That simple procedure - that Whitford grumbled about - geez, he should try the stuff women have to put up with…

….. well, after his grumbling stopped, he agreed to help June, Luke, and Hannah get to Canada. That was my price, when Whitford said, "this isn't going to be reported, is it?"

I never heard what happened after that, except that Whitford ended up hanged from a lamppost in one of those northern towns. Hanged, not hung. Pictures are hung. People, they are hanged. He said he'd teach June and Luke how to shoot, but it sounded like not everything worked out. I sure hope June et al. made it to Canada.

Whitford's vasectomy, it sunk me, and him. Like a dunce, I'd charted the appointment. Then Guardians, Eyes and Angels raided our Health Initiative, and we'd not burned all of our files. In cowardice, I'd not signed my name to the chart. But my name was on Whitford's insurance claim - one that insured nothing at all, except his death and my arrest.

I guess me being in my late 50s meant I was still good for something, good for digging up this irradiated soil. I thought that since I'd had experience as an obstetrician, that I would be sent to one of their Red Centres. Ha!

Instead of being torn apart by dogs, I turned out to be good for giving relief to sick, enslaved women at the Bootheel Colony in my 'off hours'. I'm now in public health, with no equipment. Given that we all work over 100 hours a week, being whipped and prodded by Aunts, my medical practise here is not exactly Harvard Medical.

Bootheel. May as well rename that area of Missouri, 'Jackboot'. Not that I'd say it out loud, certainly not to an Aunt's face. Those cattle prods they have, they pack a punch!

SOBERING THOUGHTS FOR A SOBERING PLACE

The one thing that would finish me? If June had not got out. I am sure she did, I mean Luke must be good for something. His version of patriarchy would insist it be her and Hannah in Canada, not him. As the 'big man', he'd sacrifice himself and expect praise. Even for me, it would be hard to fathom him alone in Canada, it would be hard to fathom him leaving either of June or Hannah behind.

Which is why I think all three made it north.

There's a woman-rabbi enslaved in the camp here, she soft-peddles 'God', is mainly quiet around us atheists. She says, though, to trust.

I wish I could. A vasectomy, it was what got me here. A fucking, lousy vasectomy.

GEEZ LOUISE

Have I mentioned the need for a good public health program in this place?

There's two new women. They stay out of my way. But one of them is a real-live Ph.D. In something like zoology or microbiology. Man oh man, are her talents being wasted here.

She scares me. She walks around with a biscuit tin of dirty bandages and unmarked pill bottles which she passes off as antibiotics. She has salve, but the only one I ever inspected was just an inert gel, good only for keeping an area moist.

That Ph.D., she must have been a handmaid. It was because right from when Mrs. O'Connor got off of that bus, she dogged her. Befriended her. Offered her the scarcity of her biscuit tin.

Mrs. O'Connor, she ended up on a cross, out on the road between the barn we sleep in and the fields on which we overturn radioactive soil. The Ph.D., she'd murdered that Wife. I know it.

My consolation? That June and Hannah were probably in Canada looking at this horror from afar. That's how far a vasectomy goes these days.

Up until meeting that Ph.D., it had not occurred to me to take our fight hand-to-hand. For me, it was marches, petitions, voter registration, working at the Health Initiative so that women could have access to proper health-care.

I don't know, I'm in my late fifties. Both that, and add in this place - the Jackboot - reminds me of how tired I am.

How much I betrayed my own daughter. I'd simply not prepared her properly.

Heaven help me if she'd be like that Ph.D. woman. They're young women, don't become one of them! They're young women. Okay, in their 30s, but that's young. They've not marched like we did.

HE OF WHOM MUST NOT BE SPOKEN

Mr. O. Even though two years younger than me, thirty-five years ago there had been Mr. O, pronounced, 'oh'. Although very quickly, after I discovered I was pregnant with his… he became Mr. Zero.

He's what I think about as I turn in this cot, trying to avoid laying on radiation lesions.

June's father. I'd have loved to called him, 'June's dad', but he ended up donating sperm, that was all he was to me. He was never a dad. And I am glad for that.

I guess it was when I changed my name - changed it from Maddox to 'X'. I used to love that 'X' in my name. Thirty-five years ago my circle of friends was more radical, less organized, but man oh man the rhetoric was heavy.

June eventually became old enough to care about both her biological past, as well as our name. I kept telling her it was 'X', she kept correcting me - she'd just learned how to spell 'Maddox' and thought the 'X' was neat. She told me that 'Maddox' was the best of both worlds, an-X plus being a real name.

'X' was a real name!

Then my mistake. I swear it was the only time I'd told her, that her deadbeat dad had been named 'Osborne'.

Me, I thought of it as a phase. Then when she went to kindergarten, I got a call, "Dr. Maddox, your daughter says we have her surname wrong, that it is 'Osborne', not 'Maddox'? We just wanted to clarify that with you."

Fine, I told them. Screw it. She was June Osborne. I can't get rid of Mr. Zero.

Such things are what occupy you in the middle of the night when the burlap of the cot rubs into the radiation lesions.

Maybe I can get that Ph.D. woman to do for me, what she did for Mrs. O'Connor.

Except, then I'll never know - did June and Hannah, okay AND her deadbeat husband Luke, did they get out?