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dopescotlandwarrior · 5 years ago

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Unforgettable-Final Chapter

Also on AO3 A very special thanks to @statell for all your help

Chapter Nine

A young man knocks hard on a wood pole of a tukul, a round shelter made of grasses, mud, and wood poles, very common in South Sudan and the only type of structure on this UN base. It is officially known as the United Nations Protection of Civilians Site Bentiu. It was constructed outside the scorched city of Bentiu in the poorest nation of central Africa. The civil war had been raging for three years and when a peace treaty was signed in 2015 it failed to stop the fighting, so the war raged on.

The young man knocked harder on the tukul making the structure wobble in its feebleness. “Claire! Wake up! Treatment three and hurry! The door opened in a rush and Claire stood on the other side pushing her t-shirt into her pants.

“Jesus, I hate waking up to a flood of adrenalin! Nabbi when the tukul shakes like that the creatures in the grass roof fall to the ground, or on me.”

Nabbi smiled mischievously at his favorite nurse, “and now you are up and need very high, doctor says run!”

Claire felt her thighs burning as she sprinted to the treatment ward. Rounding the corner she saw both doctors bent over bodies that were unrecognizable. Casualties of government soldiers shooting, raping, and burning a village in the night.

Sterile gloves slapped back on her hands that were held aloft. There were no sterile gowns and no clean water on most days.

“I’m ready!

A long stream of Gaelic profanity was growled as Jamie threw his instruments on the wooden tray. He hung his head wondering what the intensive nine-month training he endured was for as he lost more than he saved. The patient was removed by workers and another mangled mess was placed on his table. Claire held his gloves open and his huge hands jammed into them.

“Pea! On the double, bring a clamp pack, this boy is bleeding out!

Claire felt like she never stopped running when the wounded arrived from a village raid.

“Clamp the arteries as fast as you can. I have the chest, you take the abdomen. We can save this one if we hurry.”

Claire’s steady hand held the row of clamps as she jammed the forceps into one and pinched a bleeder off by squeezing it around the vessel. She worked fast from three months of practice at this level of trauma. Her eyes flicked at Jamie every few minutes because she was worried about him. He was losing weight and had dark circles under his eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw him smile.

“Eyes on the bleeders sweet pea, your betrothed is fine, just frustrated.”

“I’m worried, Cutter, he doesn’t look well, as a matter of fact, either do you. Thank Christ we’re getting out of here in four days.”

(NSFW under the cut.)

Hours later they each had a bucket of semi-clean water to pour over their heads. One bucket per day. Claire spent many hours daydreaming about long showers with her favorite scented body wash and it was finally just four days away. She took a seat next to Jamie at the grub table and ran her hand down his leg. Looking up at his tired face made her long to lay in his arms and kiss him to sleep. She missed him. Nine months of working his practice while completing his field training had kept him away from her and then they were off to South Sudan to do their part with Doctors Without Borders. He had done that for her and now she just wanted to get him home.

She thought about the visiting doctor they met the week before. He, Jamie, and Cutter had much to talk about allowing Claire to watch his face, the slump of his shoulders, and his haunted eyes. He headed a research team of five other doctors that were sent to Africa to treat the outbreak of Ebola. Once their treatment protocol was established, he flew back to the states to compile the mountain of data that would be coming. All five of those doctors, his colleagues, and friends, died a horrifying death and their corpses were left rotting in the jungle until procedures were developed to bring them safely home.

Claire recognized the symptoms of survivor's syndrome, his guilt that he survived when his team did not was taking a toll on his promising life. Snuffing out the flame that once burned bright. Their contribution to the treatment of Ebola would save thousands of lives, possibly millions in the future. Once the paper was published the doctor resigned his position at Harvard Medical, locked his lab, and left civilization. Now he headed a program for monitoring the doctors on the front lines of emerging pathogens. He had come to examine the medical staff and clear them to return to America.

Cutter left to write a letter to his wife and Claire asked Jamie to take a walk with her. The compound walls stretched for a mile in each direction and U.N. peacekeepers manned the turrets along the wall with machine guns. It was crowded with people seeking refuge from the war making a relaxing walk impossible. Claire’s mantra played over and over in her head, I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home.

New doctors arrived two days later and spent twelve hours with Jamie and Cutter, learning the base, the wards, and the one-hundred seventy patients being treated. They walked through the rape ward where the girls and women were kept away from the other patients. Little was said about the brutality of the attacks. They would find out soon enough.

The pediatric ward was last. It was Jamie’s poison to watch the babies, sick with Cholera, malaria, or malnutrition succumb to their illness, week after week. Cutter had taken over the tour and Jamie sought out the quiet of their tukul. When Claire found him later, he was respondent.

“I’m sorry we came here Jamie, I’m sorry you are suffering because of me. Please talk to me before I die from sadness. I am left to guess what has struck you down, pulled you away from me. When it didn’t happen after three months, I thought I wasn’t cursed anymore. Wh…when you didn’t turn against me I mean, I thought we were safe. It just took a little longer this time, right Jamie? Now you hate everything I do and every breath I take.”

She put her arms around him and cried the words out until he turned to her and held her closely, shushing her and saying no.

“My sweet Sassenach, stop, ye dinna speak my truth lass, I’ve never loved ye more. Ye break my heart when ye cry like that.”

“Then tell me what it is and if we’re over Jamie.”

“We are powerless to save these people that have come here to die. We have no supplies, no sterile theater, and no freshwater. We are but undertakers for the almost dead. The babies, so innocent, so sick, have no chance. Born to a short life of misery. Where is God Sassenach? I can kill a man, face to face because I battle the devil. I would feel better to be let out of here where I can do some good.”

Jamie stood up abruptly and started walking to the door like he would walk out of the base and join the war.

“No!” Claire jumped on him crying no. Begging him to stop, not to leave her, not to die. “Tomorrow Jamie, we leave this dreadful place tomorrow. Please, don’t break my heart today!” She jumped off of him and ran to the door to stand in front of it.

“Let me out, Claire”

“You will have to hurt me for that to happen because I’m not moving! I understand how you feel now, and I agree, this was a terrible choice of location. In sixteen hours we board a plane to get out of this hell, why can’t you hold on until then?”

Jamie knew he wasn’t making sense and he knew this was the last night here. He took a deep breath and held his arms out to Claire.

“Please, Sassenach. Let’s go to bed, and I promise to just hold ye all night. Please, Claire, stop cryin, we will get out tomorrow and go back to our life. Come here.”

Claire flew into his arms and he carried her to bed, to hold her, until morning when this nightmare was over. She couldn’t relax until she pulled a piece of twine from her belongings and tied it around Jamie’s wrist. With much effort and Jamie’s help, the other end was tied around her wrist. She found a comfortable spot but woke up through the night to make sure he was still there.

Before they left, Claire found Cutter coming out of the surgical ward covered in blood.

“Shirt off Cutter.”

He smiled wickedly and pulled his shirt over his head. Claire held him around his middle and cried. She would miss him until they met again next year to find a new location for the summer. Jamie came up behind them and told Cutter to get his disgusting hands off his future wife. The two men shook hands and hugged, both feeling the relief this trip was over.

“Until next time friend,” Jamie said through a smile.

Claire stowed their bags and busied herself with grabbing a blanket for Jamie. She was able to get stiff drinks for both of them when they were finally in the air. She passed a mixed drink and a shot of whisky to Jamie, looking back a minute later to see two empty glasses. She got on her knees and released Jamie’s seat kissing him sweetly. That and the alcohol sent him into the quiet of his dreams for the next five hours. Claire felt relief this exhausted man could sleep, and she guarded him from the steward and other passengers that might wake him. They were accustomed to the brutal heat of South Sudan and she noticed Jamie shaking in his sleep. She turned the airflow away from him and then covered him with the blanket.

When they were notified of landing for their connection, she stroked his arm to avoid jolting him awake. Jamie pulled the armrest up and pulled her to him, covering both of them with the blanket.

Claire leaned into his neck and felt powerful arms around her. She had not felt this close to him in a very long time and wished they could cuddle for another hour. There was another huge feeling in her stomach at the same time. Her phone! She could make calls while they waited for their connection and she was bursting with excitement. She was digging in her purse while they disembarked the plane making Jamie laugh.

“Who will be first Sassenach?”

“Jenny of course,” said as she punched her speed dial.

Jamie looked down at her marveling at her ability to accept changes in her life and then put the effort into creating the life she wanted. He remembered his sister’s stone face when they met for lunch so long ago. Jenny was convinced he had become a total tool and womanizer and nothing he said would change her mind. He was so disappointed she was making him choose between her and Claire. When Claire asked him to invite Jenny and Ian for dinner one weekend, he decided it was time for Claire to know the family dynamic at play. Claire sat across from him at the kitchen table and listened to the timeline he shared with Geneva and how she poisoned Jenny’s mind against her. She felt sad for Jamie because there was now an ultimatum standing between him and Lallybroch. I can fix this, she thought, just need a little luck.

Over the next week, she checked in with Geillis and Laoghaire to get caught up on the details of Geneva’s life. She broached the subject at the club when her friends were three sheets to the wind.

“So I understand Jamie dated this girl Geneva while I was gone. I totally understand because I told him I was not coming back to Scotland, ever. Now she has lied to his sister about their relationship, so I need all her details girls.”

“Her family is rich and she flaunts that over everyone since she was in elementary.” Laoghaire was clearly harboring a dislike for the lady and Claire seized the opportunity.

“I heard she was really nice,” Claire lied.

“She is not nice! She’s a cold, calculating bitch actually. She was all sweet to me until Jamie dumped her and now she doesn’t seem to recognize me. That’s okay, she is gettin what’s due her now.”

“Do tell sweetheart,” Claire inched her chair closer to her friend.

Geillis started to laugh wickedly, “the lass got herself knocked up by some hotshot, handsome, rich, and new to the area. He’s developing the new mall and already well known around town. They were datin for a month and she told him at her birthday party she was pregnant. He instantly left the party and she cried for the rest of the night. We were there and saw the whole thing.”

Claire’s mind was churning the facts and she smiled broadly at her two best friends. ”Is that a fact?”

It took two days for Jamie to fall asleep before she did and she took his phone outside and sent a text message to Geneva to meet him at the house tomorrow, twelve noon. Then she deleted the message and blocked text messages from her.

When she answered the door the next day, she leaned against the door jam and stuck out her hand with a smile. Geneva was not happy about the intrusion of this girl and demanded to see Jamie.

“Of course, come in, let’s get acquainted. I’m Claire by the way, Jamie’s girlfriend.”

It took some persuading to get Geneva to the kitchen table where she could deliver the coup de grace.

“I am so happy to spend time with you before Jamie gets here. You see, his sister Jenny has a misconception of your relationship, and it's causing a rift in the family. I want you to fix that, today.”

Geneva snorted a weak laugh and looked at Claire with utter disdain. “Not likely, I told her the truth. I feel sorry for you because you were duped by Jamie. He was with me, actively with me, until a week before he broke it off. We talked about getting married and then suddenly he was done with me. Poor baby, you’re next.”

“I know the truth of it Geneva and you will come clean to Jenny, today. If you don’t, it’s high time your father knows about your pregnancy to a guy that has run from any association with you. An abortion, trapping him with a paternity test or just hoping he comes back will do nothing but tarnish your family’s good name. You’re a social parasite Geneva and I can see your father cut off your support and throw you to the streets to cohabitate with others as misguided as you. You must be working on solutions to your situation so tell Jenny the truth and I leave you alone. Otherwise, everyone in town will know, including your parents.”

Claire smiled sweetly at Geneva and waited until she bolted out of the house cursing under her breath. She could only hope she was right about the family dynamic and how this news would poison Geneva’s position in it.

Jamie came home the next night with company. His contrite sister was there to apologize to Claire and ask to start over with her. Claire was over the moon and made plans with Jenny for a night out on the town the following weekend so the four of them could have some fun. It was like magic to a grateful Jamie. The four of them got on so well and Claire and Jenny started a friendship that would bond them to each other like sisters.

Jamie grabbed the phone from Claire and asked Jenny to hold on a minute. He pulled Claire to his lips and kissed her deeply sparking a look in her eyes that made him weak. He handed the phone back and dropped his head to the back of his chair, asleep in minutes.

The wait for their connection was long enough for Claire to check in with Laoghaire and Geillis also. She drifted to the gift shop and purchased a beautiful bracelet made in Africa. She felt done with the excursions into remote parts of the world to render aid to the less fortunate. She just felt empty inside for such an effort again. Deep inside she knew the reason. She had her suspicions for a month but couldn’t confirm it. She felt lonely suddenly and walked quickly back to Jamie who was awake.

“Hey, sunshine, how do you feel?”

“Sleepy Sassenach. I want ye to keep me awake so tell me a story, aye?.”

Claire held her breath, wanting so badly to tell him her truth.

“Jamie, I think I’m pregnant.”

He stared at her for a good minute, expressionless, “stay here Sassenach, I’ll be right back.”

Jamie ran to the boarding counter and asked where he could find a drugstore in the airport. He sprinted away while Claire watched in total confusion. He must absolutely hate the idea, she thought as she slipped into depression.

Ten minutes later Jamie ran back with a small bag and lifted Claire to her feet guiding her to the ladies' room.

He put the bag in her hand and pushed her into the room, looking wide-eyed, almost wild.

Claire took the pregnancy test out of the bag and read the instructions. She still could not read Jamie’s emotions and felt her folly at surprising him with something life-changing and yet unverified. Holding the stick in the air to dry it she looked at the results window and felt her world tilt. It took so long to get to the sink when she looked at herself in the mirror Jamie was standing behind her.

“May I see it, Sassenach,” he whispered, looking at Claire’s pale face.

When she lifted the stick for him, he grabbed her and spun her around until she was dizzy. She smiled weakly at him trying to take in his reaction. He was absolutely beaming and kissed her face a dozen times telling her this was the best news. He gushed over her ability to make him deliriously happy, neither of them noticing a toilet flushing and a woman join them at the sink. She smiled knowingly at the two young people in love.

Spoken with a Swedish accent she told them, “now you must get off the street and get a job for your baby. You will be very happy.” She walked out of the restroom leaving Jamie and Claire clearly shocked at what she said.

Claire bent over laughing at the comment. “No shower for three months makes us look like bums on the street!”

Jamie looked like he had seen an angel and wrapped her up in his powerful arms.

“Sassenach, when we land in Scotland, I will have an agenda that will keep my mind occupied for at least two days. I willna have the brain space to utter a single sentence I’m afraid. Come, lass, let’s talk about this miracle and makin an honest woman of ye while I can.”

Jamie pulled her back to their seats and looked at a confused Claire.

“I don’t understand Jamie, what is so important for you when we get home?”

Jamie held her cheek and sighed, letting her see his need for her, making her squirm in her seat. “Oh, I see, well that trumps everything, doesn’t it? I love you Jamie and as long as you still look at me that way, I fear nothing.”

The second leg of their trip home, Claire curled up against Jamie and dove into the calming sea of her dreams. Jamie pulled her head to his lap and made sure nothing and no one disturbed her. It was a magic seven hours for him as he contemplated the family of his future with the fierce loving, free spirit who slept in his lap.

When the front door opened, two battle-weary lovers dropped their duffle bags and struggled to the shower. Jamie covered Claire with her favorite body wash followed by scented shampoo that made her moan with pleasure. He pulled the shower curtain aside and wrapped her in luxurious towels before heading back for his own time with the soap. When he emerged, the beard and mustache were quickly eliminated, and he felt like a new man anxious to devour his love in the slowest, most thorough way possible. He walked into the bedroom with his curls dripping water onto his shoulders and found Claire sitting on the side of the bed, head jerking up from falling asleep. His heart nearly melted in his chest as he pulled her to him and held her down until sleep came and took her away.

Claire woke up feeling groggy from her deep sleep. She knew they had two days to re-acclimate before work pulled them apart. Jamie looked like an angel to her as he slept. She could take a bit of time to recreate the body she preferred. She snuck quietly to the second bathroom and filled the bath with hot water and scented bubble bath. She placed two new razors on the tub and scraped off the unwanted hair that invaded her most intimate body parts over the last three months. It was liberating and unleashed her arousal, dormant for so long. By the time she was done, it was a struggle not to jump on Jamie and win her release that was throbbing between her legs.

Standing at the foot of the bed, she watched him sleep, noticing the room had become grey with the coming sunrise. She knelt to kiss his feet, followed by his calves, licking the back of his knees and causing him to gasp. She ran her tongue slowly up the back of his legs and buried her face under his buttocks to lick his balls until he flipped over and looked at her.

Jamie struggled to contain his need to pound her and his mind was full of this wonderful woman. I must slow my heart, he thought. She is kneeling over me naked and I canna get enough of her, clean shaved, smelling like sex. Her hair is falling around her face as she runs her eyes up and down my body. Jesus, she is beautiful and has no idea how I want to take her. Brutally, lovingly, dominating her body and mind until she gives in to me. I must fight the urge to consume her. She is the mother of my child and I will use all my strength not to overpower her. God, when she pulls my nipple into her mouth it strips my resolve. I want to take her, my way, without consent, without mercy, until she’s mine.

“Sassenach, my love, come here.”

She is resistant. Careful lass, dinna tempt me, I’m no that strong. What is this? No, not a good idea, keep yer beautiful mouth away from me. It’s not fair but oh…my…God it feels so good. Jesus lass, stop or I’ll come down yer throat before I can worship yer body. Come here, love.

Claire felt Jamie pull her to his lips and crush her. He flipped her over and pulled her legs apart feasting his eyes on her gorgeous pussy. She dropped her fingers to her fold and held it apart for him to gorge himself on her throbbing core. She arched her back into her first orgasm and tried to pull him to her. He entered her softly and slowly making her pant for more. She grabbed his face to her and looked him in the eye.

“I don’t want Sunday school. If I say, uncle, I do the wash for both of us. Show me how much you love me Jamie, right now, and don’t hold back or I’ll go back to sleep, I swear I will.”

For the next thirty minutes, Claire felt the power of Jamie and it thrilled her as he pulled her into the most intimate and edgy positions that most women would push away from. She opened her body to him, and he feasted, growling into his orgasm that stung his balls as he ejaculated. Claire was vaguely aware of the quilt pulling up to cover them and Jamie’s soft kisses on her face. They were clinging to each other as they fell into another five hours of sleep only to repeat the intensity once again.

Many hours later, Claire heard the quiet ringtone alerting her to a call coming in. She patted the bed until she found the offending phone and opened her eyes just before clicking the dismiss button. She answered hoping she could stay awake long enough to let him talk.

“Joe, why are you calling in the middle of the night?”

“It is one in the afternoon gorgeous and it’s time to get up.”

“No, it’s time to sleep some more dear one. What do you want?”

“I want to say welcome back to civilization, hear about your tour in Sudan, and one more thing Claire.”

She looked at the phone and shook her head, trying to wake up. “What other thing Joe?”

“I found Luna.”

“What?!”

“She’s in an orphanage Claire, has been since the raid on the hospital. The rebels leveled the settlements nearby and Luna’s family was wiped out. Thank God those monsters have respect for the innocent. I thought you would want to know.”

Claire was on her feet and pounding Joe with questions as she paced the bedroom. Running for her laptop she brought up the URL Joe dictated and raced through the pictures of babies and children that were up for adoption. Her fingers abruptly stopped when she found the face of her angel and she gasped at the sight of her.

“Jesus Christ Joe, she’s been in that place for over a year! How can I get her out?”

“It’s not easy Claire, but someone has to help her.”

Joe gave Claire the number to call the adoption agency in Honduras and what little he had discovered about Luna. He warned her the adoption protocols were temporarily closed for unknown reasons and forwarded the email listing the steps to adopt a child from a country outside of Honduras. It included two stays in-country to live among the culture of the child as the agency went over her dossier.

Claire was crying with the love and fear she felt for Luna and promised Joe she would keep him posted. When she felt Jamie’s hand on her bare shoulder she looked up into compassionate eyes and she felt him say, I’m here to help you, trust me with your truth, I will help you bring her home.

Claire clicked off from Joe and dissolved into her tears and fears while Jamie held her with his strength.

Jamie looked at the pictures of Luna on the website and felt his heart open up and pull her in. Her face was the picture of innocence, her huge eyes revealed her loveless life and fear. He waited for Claire to be distracted and returned to her picture again and again. Claire loves this beautiful little girl like she was her own. Something had to be done.

Luna became their project during their off-hours. Returning to work was hard enough, but Luna was a constant presence in both their minds. The requirement for being considered as an adoption family were rigid including two prolonged stays in-country. When Jamie brought that up Claire would start shaking and he could see the war going on in her head.

“Stay in Honduras for two weeks? I could see Luna during that time, but we must be invited and they have had our dossier for three weeks, Jamie. When are we going to hear from them?”

Claire was clearly scared shitless about entering that country again, even when Jamie assured her the city was safe. He talked it over with John during an afternoon hike when Claire was working. When John bid him farewell he followed up with, “I’m going with her Jamie because you can’t. Tell her to schedule the visit right away before I’m assigned to a case.”

When Jamie told Claire John would go with her to Honduras she cried and hung on his neck. Within a week, Claire was invited by the agency to come and see Luna. Jamie had mixed feelings letting go of her at the airport.

“Sassenach, I’m so sorry I canna go with ye. Are ye alright with John lass?”

She looked into his eyes feeling such gratitude he would let her go without him. She smiled and kissed him before breaking out of his embrace to jog to her boarding gate. John settled into the seat next to her and complained that her pregnancy put a stop to partying enroute to Honduras.

“You’re a very selfish person, curbing my happiness on this trip. I just wanted you to know that Claire.”

She smiled at him and got comfortable for the long plane ride to a country she hated.

They strolled through the nursery the next day, a requirement of the agency to look at all the children up for adoption. Claire could hardly breathe waiting to see Luna. She heard a familiar cry and looked through a window at numerous cribs with children inside. The minute her eyes saw Luna she struggled to stay on her feet. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she smiled at the infant who was having a tantrum, shaking a stuffed toy in Claire’s direction. They were forced to view the rest of the infants before returning to the nursery where Luna was.

Claire walked directly to Luna and smiled at her obvious recollection. She held her arms out for her and Luna moved into them gripping Claire’s hair with both fists and burying her face in Claire’s neck. They both clung to each other with tears that flowed freely. Even John was choked up and turned around to cough harshly. The rest of the afternoon, Claire held Luna in a huge rocking chair and seemed far away in a world she shared with Luna alone. John paced the hallway watching with growing concern.

“Jamie, I’m worried. These two are obviously bonded and Luna remembers her. Claire is in another world and just wants to hold her. I’m not sure this will end well for Claire. What should I do?”

“Protect her John. Dinna let anyone close to Claire. Other than that, let it play out. Ye willna be able to drag Claire away until they tell her to go, aye?” Claire cried so hard on her last day with Luna. She heard the baby wailing for her until they were out the door of the orphanage. John held a weeping Claire all the way back to Scotland and was anxious to hand her to Jamie to console. He really didn’t get the emotional part of this mission.

Claire returned to work and pushed Luna out of her mind so she could function. The next in-country requirement was a four-week stay in Honduras and Claire made contact with the agency every week asking for an invitation to come. She was being stone-walled without any explanation and it was taking its toll on her.

Jamie watched her brave attempts to act normal but as her pregnancy progressed her expanding waistline reminded him constantly of her delicate condition. He was prepared to accompany her to Honduras as soon as they were allowed. The weeks turned into months and Claire could not take it anymore. Jamie held her close and promised to find an answer to why they had not been processed already. He looked into her eyes and asked her with a sincere and loving heart to marry him, right now.

The following weekend, they were married at the Justice of the Peace with Jenny and Ian standing as witnesses. Claire was six months pregnant and Jamie knew the window of opportunity to travel to Honduras was closing.

Cutter answered Jamie’s call with a heartfelt hello to his friend. Jamie asked about other means to push the adoption through since the agency had closed the proceedings at the order of the government. It was a match to kindling as Cutter felt Claire’s despair to save Luna. He remembered her asleep on the Lazy Boy with a hand in the incubator, waking every hour to feed this doomed child. He was mobilized to cut through this ridiculous bureaucracy and get some answers from the agency.

On a whim, Cutter wrote a letter to the president of the United States, detailing the surgical procedure that saved Luna and how one nurse fought for her against all odds. He told of her bravery when the hospital was raided, how she was shot and barely escaped her own death. These terrible events befell her because she pledged two years of her life to help the Hondurans. He included her husband’s bravery when he got all of them out of the country, risking his own life. He completed the letter with his wish to reunite this forgotten child with the only mother she ever knew. “Go with God.” The envelope was sealed and sent.

A month later, Cutter received a letter from the White House. A duplicate letter was received by Jamie and Claire. Both letters were signed by the President with the amazing news that Luna was coming to America the following weekend and they were invited to the Dallas airport to greet her.

Claire sat down hard in the rocking chair and stared at the floor as Jamie read the letter. She looked up expecting the next shoe to fall and watched Jamie typing into his phone. Claire was frozen watching Jamie pace as he arranged a flight for the following weekend. She felt the tears fall down her cheeks as she waited to hear bad news or wake up from a dream.

Jamie knelt on the floor to look into her eyes. “She is coming home Sassenach, in four days! The president arranged this for you, and for Luna. Be happy Sassenach, it is happening and we will have her home with us by next week!”

Jamie pulled Claire into bed and held her close telling her it was going to be perfect and to have faith. Claire gripped his sides and shook, feeling so small in this miraculous undertaking.

Claire gripped Jamie’s hand at the Dallas airport and heard her mantra repeated over and over again, please let her be on that plane, please let her be on that plane. She looked up at an entourage coming out of the plane. They were obviously secret service and surrounded a woman in the middle of all those bodies. Claire and Jamie stood waiting, barely breathing.

A petite, young, blonde woman with striking features was revealed and she held Luna in her arms looking around for a familiar face. When her eyes found Jamie she smiled and walked to him, seeing Claire’s face she knew who she was. Luna was handed to Claire as she dissolved in grateful tears and sat down to avoid falling over as Luna’s face pressed to hers.

Jamie looked down at the office manager and his eyes were shouting his thanks to her. “Mission accomplished soldier, I would salute ye if I could. I am so grateful.”

She looked at him with compassion, her face showing her delight in helping this mission come to pass. She placed her hand on Jamie’s arm.

“The U.S. President salutes you, Jamie, from behind the scenes as you and I have come to know it. It was a three-country effort to arrange the adoption, the U.S., Scotland, and Honduras. How the U.S. President got involved I’ll never know but it was his clout that got the attention needed. Luna belongs to the two of you now. I pulled strings to get assigned to this mission so I could carry her to you. It’s my going away present and no one is more deserving than you.”

Jamie was reeling from the disclosure. He looked up and saw Dougal hanging back looking like he was a stranger, waiting to board his flight. He turned slightly and locked eyes with Jamie and the two men nodded slightly to each other. Jamie looked at Claire and Luna feeling like his heart would burst in his chest. There was much to do to ready the house for this precious child and another soon to be born. He took a deep breath and looked for the office manager but she was gone, as was Dougal. They melted into the airport population on their way back to Scotland.

Jamie felt the tears on his cheeks and sat down next to Claire and Luna, holding them close and thanking God for this miracle. His head was bowed as he prayed his thanks until a tiny hand reached out for him and pushed her body toward him. He pulled Luna to him and locked eyes with his new daughter.

“I’m Da, Luna.”

She touched his face and then his tears with her finger, looking at him like he was the most important person she had ever met.

“No more fear lassie, ye’ll have a life of love, I promise.”

Jamie struggled to push the tears back. Not for his pride or appearing weak. He wanted his eyes clear so he could see his two lassies and Claire’s round abdomen that held his next son or daughter, closely protected and fiercely loved.

The End.

The spirit in me bows to the spirit in you...Namaste and thank you.

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katieamazeballs · 4 years ago

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2020 tho......

Not sure who wrote it, but it's genius.:

Borrowed. ABSOLUTE GOLD. Curse words have been changed or deleted.

Dear Diary 2020 Edition,

In January, Australia caught on fire. I don’t even know if that fire was put out, because we straight up almost went to war with Iran. We might actually still be almost at war with them. I don’t know, because Jen Aniston and Brad Pitt spoke to one another at an awards show and everyone flipped out, but then there was thing happening in China, then Prince Harry and Megan peaced out of the Royal family, and there was the whole impeachment trial, and then corona virus showed up in the US “officially,” but then Kobe died and UK peaced out of the European Union.

In February, Iowa crapped itself with the caucus results and the president was acquitted and the Speaker of the House took ten years to rip up a speech, but then WHO decided to give this virus a name COVID-19, which confused some really important people in charge of, like, our lives, into thinking there were 18 other versions before it, but then Harvey Weinstein was found guilty, and Americans started asking if Corona beer was safe to drink, and everyone on Facebook became a doctor who just knew the flu like killed way more people than COVID 1 through 18.

In March, poop hit the fan. Warren dropped out of the presidential race and Sanders was like Bernie or bust, but then Italy shut its whole self down, and then COVID Not 1 through 18 officially become what everyone already realized, a pandemic and then a nationwide state of emergency was declared in US, but it didn’t really change anything, so everyone was confused or thought it was still just a flu, but then COVID Not 18 was like ya’ll not taking me seriously? I’m gonna infect the one celebrity everyone loves and totally infected Tom Hanks, but then the DOW took a crapper on itself, and most of us still don’t understand why the stock market is so important or even a thing (I still don’t), but then we were all introduced to Tiger King. (Carol totally killed her husband), and Netflix was like you’re welcome, and we all realized there was no way we were washing our hands enough in the first place because all of our hands are now dry and gross.

In April, Bernie finally busted himself out of the presidential race, but then NYC became the set of The Walking Dead and we learned that no one has face masks, ventilators, or toilet paper, or THE FREAKING SWIFFER WET JET LIQUID, but then Kim Jong-Un died, but then he came back to life… or did he? Who knows, because then the Pentagon released videos of UFOs and nobody cared, and we were like man, it’s only April….

In May, the biblical end times kicked off historical locust swarms and then we learned of murder hornets and realized that 2020 was the start of the Hunger Games but people forgot to let us know, but then people legit protested lockdown measures with AR-15s, and then sports events were cancelled everywhere. But then people all over America finally reached a breaking point with race issues and violence. There were protests in every city, but then people forgot about the pandemic called COVID Not One Through 18. Media struggled with how to focus on two important things at once, but then people in general struggle to focus on more than one important thing, and a dead whale was found in the middle of the Amazon rain forest after monkeys stole COVID 1 Through 19 from a lab and ran off with them, and either in May or April (no one is keeping track of time now) that a giant asteroid narrowly missed Earth.

In June, science and common sense just got thrown straight out the window and somehow wearing masks became a political thing, but then a whole lot of people realized the south was actually the most unpatriotic thing ever and actually lost the civil war, and there are a large amount of people who feel that statues they don’t even know the name of are needed for … history reasons..... but then everyone sort of remembered there was a pandemic, but then decided that not wearing a mask was somehow a God given right (still haven't found that part in the bible or even in the constitution), but then scientists announced they found a mysterious undiscovered mass at the center of the earth, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH IT, but then everyone took a pause to realize that people actually believed Gone With The Wind was like non-fiction, but then it was also announced that there is a strange radio single coming from somewhere in the universe that repeats itself every so many days, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE WITH IT, but then America reopened from the shut down that actually wasn’t even a shut down, and so far, things have gone spectacularly not that great, but everyone is on Facebook arguing that masks kill because no one knows how breathing works, but then Florida was like hold my beer and let me show you how we’re number one in all things, including new Not Corona Beer Corona Virus. Trump decides now is a good time to ask the Supreme Court to shut down Obama Care because what better time to do so than in the middle of a pandemic, but then we learned there was a massive dust cloud coming straight at us from the Sahara Desert, which is totally normal, but this is 2020, so the ghost mummy thing is most likely in that dust cloud, but then I learned of meth-gators, and I'm like that is so not on my 2020 Bingo card, but then we learned that the Congo's worse ever Ebola outbreak is over, and we were all like, there was an Ebola outbreak that was the worse ever?

In July…. Aliens? Zeus? Asteroids? Artificial Intelligence becomes self aware?

Thanks to whoever started this for the copy and paste. I have no idea who wrote this; and damn it, I want to know. Also, why didn't I know about the whale in the Amazon?

#what a shit show #how is this real life

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madilayn · 4 years ago

Text

2020 - the story so far...

This is a very US-Centric look at 2020 - but still hilarious!

I saw this earlier from a friend and couldn’t stop laughing

You gotta read this in one breath.

Dear Diary 2020 Edition

In January, Australia caught on fire. I don’t even know if that fire was put out, because we straight up almost went to war with Iran. We might actually still be almost at war with them. I don’t know, because Jen Aniston and Brad Pitt spoke to one another at an awards show and everyone flipped the fuck out, but then Netflix released Cheer and everyone fell in love with Jerry, but then there was thing happening in China, then Prince Harry and Megan peaced out of the Royal family, and there was the whole impeachment trial, and then corona virus showed up in the US “officially,” but then Kobe died and UK peaced out of the European Union

In March, shit hit the fan. Warren dropped out of the presidential race and Sanders was like Bernie or bust, but then Italy shut its whole ass down, and then COVID Not 1 through 18 officially become what everyone already realized, a pandemic and then a nationwide state of emergency was declared in US, but it didn’t really change anything, so everyone was confused or thought it was still just a flu, but then COVID Not 18 was like ya’ll not taking me seriously? I’m gonna infect the one celebrity everyone loves and totally infected Tom Hanks, but then the DOW took a shit on itself, and most of us still don’t understand why the stock market is so important or even a thing(I still don’t), but then we were all introduced to Tiger King. (Carol totally killed her husband), and Netflix was like you’re welcome, and we all realized there was no way we were washing our hands enough in the first place because all of our hands are now dry and gross.

In April, Bernie finally busted himself out of the presidential race, but then NYC because the set of The Walking Dead and we learn that no one has face masks, ventilators, or toilet paper, or THE GOD DAMN SWIFTER WET JET LIQUID, but then Kim Jong-Un died, but then he came back to life… or did he? Who knows, because then the Pentagon released videos of UFOs, and we were like man, it’s only April….In May, the biblical end times kicked off historical locust swarms and then we learned of murder hornets and realized that 2020 was the start of the Hunger Games but people forgot to let us know, but then people legit protested lockdown measures with AR-15s, and then sports events were cancelled everywhere,

But then people all over America finally reached a breaking point with race issues and violence. There were protests in every city, but then people totes forgot about the pandemic called COVID Not One Through 18. Media struggled with how to focus on two important things at once, but then people in general struggle to focus on more than one important thing, and a dead whale was found in the middle of the Amazon rain forest after monkeys stole COVID 1 Through 19 from a lab and ran off with them, and either in May or April (no one is keeping track of time now) that a giant asteroid narrowly missed earth.

In June, science and common sense just got thrown straight out the window and somehow wearing masks became a political thing, but then a whole lot of people realized the south was actually the most unpatriotic thing ever and actually lost the civil war, and there is a large amount of people who feel that statues they don’t even know the name of are needed for … history reasons, but then everyone sort of remembered there was a pandemic, but then decided that not wearing a mask was somehow a god given right (still haven't found that part in the bible or even in the constitution), but then scientists announced they found a mysterious undiscovered mass at the center of the earth, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH IT, but then everyone took a pause to realize that people actually believed Gone With The Wind was like non-fiction, but then it was also announced that there is a strange radio single coming from somewhere in the universe that repeats itself every so many days, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE WITH IT, but then America reopened from the shut down that actually wasn’t even a shut down, and so far, things have gone spectacularly not that great, but everyone is on Facebook arguing that masks kill because no one knows how breathing works, but then Florida was like hold my beer and let me show you how we’re number one in all things, including new Not Corona Beer Corona Virus, Trump decides now is a good time to ask the Supreme Court to shut down Obama Care because what better time to do so than in the middle of a pandemic, but then we learned there was a massive dust cloud coming straight at us from the Sahara Desert, which is totally normal, but this is 2020, so the ghost mummy thing is most likely in that dust cloud, but then I learned of meth-gators, and I'm like that is so not on my fucking 2020 Bingo card, but then we learned that the Congo's worse ever Ebola outbreak is over, and we were all like, there was an ebola outbreak that was the worse ever?

In July…. Aliens? Zeus? Asteroids? Artificial Intelligence becomes self aware?

Ty, Ted Monnich

#2020 #Apocalypse #Recap #Brace for July!

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msexplorer · 4 years ago

Text

😂 Dear Diary 2020 Edition,

In January, Australia caught on fire. I don’t even know if that fire was put out, because we straight up almost went to war with Iran. We might actually still be almost at war with them. I don’t know, because Jen Aniston and Brad Pitt spoke to one another at an awards show and everyone flipped the out, but then there was thing happening in China, then Prince Harry and Megan peaced out of the Royal family, and there was the whole impeachment trial, and then corona virus showed up in the US “officially,” but then Kobe died and UK peaced out of the European Union.

In March, crap hit the fan. Warren dropped out of the presidential race and Sanders was like Bernie or bust, but then Italy shut its whole arse down, and then COVID Not 1 through 18 officially become what everyone already realized, a pandemic and then a nationwide state of emergency was declared in US, but it didn’t really change anything, so everyone was confused or thought it was still just a flu, but then COVID Not 18 was like ya’ll not taking me seriously? I’m gonna infect the one celebrity everyone loves and totally infected Tom Hanks, but then the DOW took a 💩 on itself, and most of us still don’t understand why the stock market is so important or even a thing (I still don’t), but then we were all introduced to Tiger King. (Carol totally killed her husband), and Netflix was like you’re welcome, and we all realized there was no way we were washing our hands enough in the first place because all of our hands are now dry and gross.

In June, science and common sense just got thrown straight out the window and somehow wearing masks became a political thing, but then a whole lot of people realized the south was actually the most unpatriotic thing ever and actually lost the civil war, and there are a large amount of people who feel that statues they don’t even know the name of are needed for … history reasons..... but then everyone sort of remembered there was a pandemic, but then decided that not wearing a mask was somehow a God given right (still haven't found that part in the bible or even in the constitution), but then scientists announced they found a mysterious undiscovered mass at the center of the earth, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH IT, but then everyone took a pause to realize that people actually believed Gone With The Wind was like non-fiction, but then it was also announced that there is a strange radio signal coming from somewhere in the universe that repeats itself every so many days, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE WITH IT, but then America reopened from the shut down that actually wasn’t even a shut down, and so far, things have gone spectacularly not that great, but everyone is on Facebook arguing that masks kill because no one knows how breathing works, but then Florida was like hold my beer and let me show you how we’re number one in all things, including new Not Corona Beer Corona Virus. Trump decides now is a good time to ask the Supreme Court to shut down Obama Care because what better time to do so than in the middle of a pandemic, but then we learned there was a massive dust cloud coming straight at us from the Sahara Desert, which is totally normal, but this is 2020, so the ghost mummy thing is most likely in that dust cloud, but then I learned of meth-gators, and I'm like that is so not on my 2020 Bingo card, but then we learned that the Congo's worst ever Ebola outbreak is over, and we were all like, there was an Ebola outbreak that was the worst ever?

In July…. Aliens? Zeus? Asteroids? Artificial Intelligence becomes self aware?

Thanks to whoever started this for the copy and paste.

I have no idea who wrote this; and dang it, I want to know.

Also, why didn't I know about the whale in the Amazon?

#not my writing #made me laugh

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justmelagain · 4 years ago

Text

Copied and pasted and 100% ACCURATE!🤣🤣 It’s looong but SO GOOD...

Dear Diary 2020 Edition, In ❄️ January, 🔥 Australia caught on fire. I don’t even know if that fire was put out, because we straight up almost went to war with Iran 🇮🇷 . We might actually still be almost at war with them 🤔. I don’t know, because 👩 Jen Aniston and 👨🏻 Brad Pitt spoke to one another at an awards 🏆 show and everyone flipped the crap out 😲, but then there was this thing happening in 🦇 🇨🇳 China, then 👑 Prince Harry and Megan ✌🏼 peaced out of the Royal family, and there was the whole impeachment trial 👩‍⚖️ , and then corona virus 🦠 showed up in the US ✔️“officially,” but then 🏀 Kobe died 😭and UK 🇬🇧 peaced out of the European Union.

In February, 🌽 Iowa crapped 💩 itself with the caucus results and the president was acquitted and the 👩🏼‍💼Speaker of the House took ten. Whole. years. to rip up a speech , but then The👨‍🔬 🌎WHO decided to give this virus a name COVID-19, which confused 🤔some really important people 👔 in charge of, like, our lives, into thinking there were 18 other versions before it, but then Harvey Weinstein was found guilty👨🏻‍⚖️, and 🇺🇸 Americans started asking if Corona beer 🍺 was safe to drink🤦🏻‍♀️, and everyone on Facebook became a doctor 👨‍⚕️ who just knew the 🤒flu like killed way more people than COVID 1 through 18.

In March, stuff hit the fan👿. Warren dropped out of the presidential race and Sanders was like Bernie or bust 💥, but then Italy 🇮🇹 shut its whole country down 🚷, and then COVID Not 1 through 18 officially become what everyone already realized, a 😱pandemic and then a nationwide state of emergency 🆘was declared in US 🇺🇸 , but it didn’t really change anything, so everyone was confused or thought it was still just a flu 💁🏻‍♀️, but then COVID Not 18 was like ya’ll not taking me seriously? 💡 I’m gonna infect the one celebrity everyone loves and totally infected Tom Hanks👨🏻, get y’all to close all of the schools so y’all can 🙏🏼 appreciate teachers 👩‍🏫 for once (because you can’t teach them anything other than how to use a touch screen🤦🏻‍♀️ ) close down all of salons so you can’t get your 💇‍♂️ hair or your nails done💅 , everyone had to work from home and attend Zoom meetings in their underwear. The 📉 DOW took a crap 💩 on itself, and most of us still don’t understand why the stock market is so important or even a thing 🤔 (I still don’t), We were then all introduced to 🐅 Tiger King and the ONE thing we can all agree on this year , 👍🏼Carol totally killed her husband⚰️ ..... whacked him! And then Netflix was like you’re welcome, and we all realized there was no way we were washing our hands enough in the first place because all of our hands are now dry and gross and were all searching for lotion now.

In 🌧 April, Bernie finally busted✌🏼 himself out of the presidential race 🏃 , but then NYC 🗽became the set of The Walking Dead 💀 and we learned that no one has face masks 😷, ventilators, or toilet paper, or THE FREAKING SWIFFER WET JET LIQUID , and by now our 🦁outgrowth is showing, so there’s a shortage on 📦 box hair dye and all of our hair dressers are like , 😱 NO DONT DO IT!!! But, then Kim Jong-Un died, but then he came back to life … or did he? Who knows, because then the Pentagon released 🎥 videos of UFOs and nobody cared, and we were like man, it’s only April….

In 💐 May, the biblical end times kicked off , historical locust swarms, we learned of murder hornets 🐝 and realized that 2020 was the start of the Hunger Games🙈 however people forgot to let us know. people legit started to protest lockdown measures with 🔫 AR-15s, 🏀⚾️sports events were cancelled everywhere. But then people all over America finally reached a breaking point with race issues and violence. There were 🗣protests in every city🌃 ,which was confusing to some of us because people were definitely gathering in 👫crowds of more than 🖐🏼🤚🏼10 and for sure closer than 6 foot away ⬅️➡️from each other . Those people must have forgotten about the 😖pandemic called COVID Not One Through 18. Media 📺 🗞 struggled with how to 🤬focus on two important things at once, people in general struggle to focus on more than one important thing. A dead whale 🐋 was found in the middle of the Amazon rain forest 🌳 after monkeys 🐒 stole COVID 1 Through 19 from a lab 🔬 and ran off with them, and either in May or April (no one is keeping track of time now) that a giant asteroid ☄️ narrowly missed the Earth🌍.

In ☀️ June, science and common sense just got thrown 🤾🏼 straight out the window and somehow 😷 wearing masks became a 🏛political thing, but then everyone sort of remembered there was a pandemic, but then decided that not wearing a mask was somehow a ✝️God given right (still haven't found that part in the bible or even in the constitution). then 👨‍🔬scientists announced they found a mysterious undiscovered mass at the center of the earth, and everyone was like 🙅🏽‍♂️🙅🏻‍♀️🚧DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH IT, but then everyone took a pause to realize that people actually believed Gone With The Wind 💨 was like non-fiction, but then it was also announced that there is a strange 🛰radio signal coming from somewhere in the universe 🌌 that repeats itself every so many days 🗓 , and everyone was like 👽 DON’T YOU DARE ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE WITH IT‼️🚫 but then America reopened 🙌🏼from the shut down that actually wasn’t even a shut down, and so far, things have gone spectacularly .... not that great 👎🏼. All of the Karen’s came out at once, and people started tearing down 🔨 statues. Everyone is on Facebook arguing 🤼‍♀️ that masks kill because no one knows how breathing works 👃🏼, but then Florida 🏖 was like hold my beer 🍺 and let me show you how we’re number one 🥇 in all things, including new Not Corona Beer Coronavirus. Trump 👱🏻‍♂️decides now is a good time to ask the Supreme Court 🏛 to shut down ❌Obama Care because what better time to do so than in the middle of a pandemic 💁🏻‍♀️ , but then we learned there was a massive dust cloud ☁️ coming straight at us 📍from the Sahara Desert 🐫 , which is totally normal, but this is 2020, so the 👻 ghost mummy thing is most likely in that dust cloud. We then 📚 learned of meth-gators 🐊 , and I'm like that is so not on my flipping 2020 Bingo card 😡 can we use it as the free space?? 🤷🏻 Then we learned that the Congo's worst ever Ebola 🚨 outbreak is over 😓, and we were all like, there was an Ebola outbreak that was the worse ever? 👀 ....... and don’t forget we just discovered FLYING SNAKES! 🐍, seriously! FLYING SNAKES!!!!

So here comes July…. at this point we are over it , just tell us what’s next .... 👽 Aliens? 🔱Zeus? ☄️ Asteroids? Artificial Intelligence becomes self aware? Can it just be something cool 😎 or fun for once? Maybe even a good laugh , like hahaha 😂 April Fools! We all actually wouldn’t mind that joke at this point.

I have no idea who wrote this.

Also, why didn't I know about the whale in the Amazon? Or a few other things because I just can’t keep up anymore!

But I’m sharing it because as long as we make it through 2020, I really want this to pop back up in the memories a few years from now.

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dalechevy32004 · 4 years ago

Quote

Re-posted Dear Diary 2020 Edition, In January, Australia caught on fire. I don’t even know if that fire was put out, because we straight up almost went to war with Iran. We might actually still be almost at war with them. I don’t know, because Jen Aniston and Brad Pitt spoke to one another at an awards show and everyone flipped the f--- out, but then there was this thing happening in China, then Prince Harry and Meghan peaced out of the Royal family, and there was the whole impeachment trial, and then corona virus showed up in the US “officially,” but then Kobe died and UK peaced out of the European Union. In February, Iowa crapped itself with the caucus results and the president was acquitted and the Speaker of the House took ten years to rip up a speech, but then WHO decided to give this virus a name COVID-19, which confused some really important people in charge of, like, our lives, into thinking there were 18 other versions before it, but then Harvey Weinstein was found guilty, and Americans started asking if Corona beer was safe to drink, and everyone on Facebook became a doctor who just knew the flu like killed way more people than COVID 1 through 18. In March, shit hit the fan. Warren dropped out of the presidential race and Sanders was like Bernie or Bust, but then Italy shut its whole ass down, and then COVID Not 1 through 18 officially become what everyone already realized, a pandemic, and then a nationwide state of emergency was declared in the US, but it didn’t really change anything, so everyone was confused or thought it was still just a flu, but then COVID Not 18 was like ya’ll not taking me seriously? I’m gonna infect the one celebrity everyone loves and totally infected Tom Hanks, but then the DOW took a shit on itself, and most of us still don’t understand why the stock market is so important or even a thing (I still don’t), but then we were all introduced to Tiger King. (Carol totally killed her husband), and Netflix was like you’re welcome, and we all realized there was no way we were washing our hands enough in the first place because all of our hands are now dry and gross. In April, Bernie finally busted himself out of the presidential race, but then NYC became the set of The Walking Dead and we learned that no one has face masks, ventilators, or toilet paper, or THE FREAKING SWIFFER WET JET LIQUID, but then Kim Jong-Un died, but then he came back to life … or did he? Who knows, because then the Pentagon released videos of UFOs and nobody cared, and we were like man, it’s only April ... In May, the biblical end times kicked off historical locust swarms and then we learned of murder hornets and realized that 2020 was the start of the Hunger Games but people forgot to let us know, but then people legit protested lockdown measures with AR-15s, and then sports events were cancelled everywhere. But then people all over America finally reached a breaking point with race issues and violence. There were protests in every city, but then people forgot about the pandemic called COVID Not One Through 18. Media struggled with how to focus on two important things at once, but then people in general struggle to focus on more than one important thing, and a dead whale was found in the middle of the Amazon rain forest after monkeys stole COVID 1 Through 19 from a lab and ran off with them, and either in May or April (no one is keeping track of time now) that a giant asteroid narrowly missed Earth. In June, science and common sense just got thrown straight out the window and somehow wearing masks became a political thing, but then a whole lot of people realized the South was actually the most unpatriotic thing ever and actually lost the Civil War, and there are a large amount of people who feel that statues they don’t even know the name of are needed for … history reasons ... but then everyone sort of remembered there was a pandemic, but then decided that not wearing a mask was somehow a God-given right (still haven't found that part in the bible or even in the constitution), but then scientists announced they found a mysterious undiscovered mass at the center of the earth, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH IT, but then everyone took a pause to realize that people actually believed Gone With the Wind was like non-fiction, but then it was also announced that there is a strange radio signal coming from somewhere in the universe that repeats itself every so many days, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE WITH IT, but then America reopened from the shut down that actually wasn’t even a shut down, and so far, things have gone spectacularly not that great, but everyone is on Facebook arguing that masks kill because no one knows how breathing works, but then Florida was like hold my beer and let me show you how we’re number one in all things, including new Not Corona Beer Corona Virus. Trump decides now is a good time to ask the Supreme Court to shut down Obama Care because what better time to do so than in the middle of a pandemic, but then we learned there was a massive dust cloud coming straight at us from the Sahara Desert, which is totally normal, but this is 2020, so the ghost mummy thing is most likely in that dust cloud, but then I learned of meth-gators, and I'm like that is so not on my f-ing 2020 Bingo card, but then we learned that the Congo's worst ever Ebola outbreak is over, and we were all like, there was an Ebola outbreak that was the worst ever? In July ... Aliens? Zeus? Asteroids? Artificial Intelligence becomes self-aware? I'm thinking Dinosaurs will come back to life. 🦖🦕🦖 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻Thanks to whoever started this for the copy and paste. I have no idea who wrote this; and damn it, I want to know. Also, why didn't I know about the whale in the Amazon? I copied and pasted this so it will show up on my notifications next year to remind me of what happened before July 1, 2020 - not that I could ever forget. 🙃🤭😷

And we still have 6 more months of 2020!😱

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years ago

Text

14x07 watching notes

In Which It Is Now Completely Apparent Which Of Buck And Leming Are Writing A Scene At Any Given Time

A Tale Of Lizbob Being Tormented By Toddlers

Hello it is 3:32am and I am awake from a dream of what the episode might have been (plus side: overt Destiel motel room sharing, downside: Jack accidentally killed Dean) because my tantruming toddler neighbour who just moved into the haunted house next door was screaming, and threw something at our adjoining wall. At 3am. So I'm not exactly well-rested and I'm kinda pissed, which isn't the best combo for a Buckleming episode, but when you wake up with a scream and a thump, you aren't going back to sleep for a lil while :P

Kudos to the rest of the writing team, we're 7 episodes in and I've thoroughly forgotten Nick exists. I've just been assuming he was caught, featured on a true crime program, and is already gone and locked up for the new murder and likely solving of a cold case.

Ahahahaaaa the opening of the recap is "when it comes to killing you, I'll be the one to do it" so that's ominous. As you might tell, my psyche is utterly wrapped around this whole Shakespearean tragedy of Jack vs Dean, and perhaps they're not gonna murder each other today but the constant reminders they're living in a murder or get murdered delicate thematic plot balance is exactly the sort of thing that we need to have hanging over their dynamic, as well of course as being the start point of their relationship to show how far they've come and how much they've changed and now love each other and how just last episode Dean got in his "fine i have a son now" episode a season or two later than everyone else and just in time for it to be "so now you bonded with him of course he's caught Doom because you can't have nice things for literally a single episode and this is your fault for bonding with him, Dean"

This recap is designed to wound me, a Jack fan and lover of how TFW loves their son

Ew, it's Nick. The first time in my life I've been tempted to skip at least a lil of the recap.

Imagine how tight it would have been to just do a 10 second "here's Jack" recap and cut to the action

and the action includes an episode without Nick stealing time from the boy

You know i spend exactly 0 time speculating on how Eugenie might write her personal fave bits of the episodes but if you had to throw together "nick is now a serial killer ritually murdering priests on a satanic bender" then that would have been a pretty close thing to what I could have come up with as distilled Buckleming essence. (gross)

There's a vague continued overlap of the human!Cas arc with the parallel to the open of 9x03 and the general aesthetic of season 11's Lucifer's satanic rampage bender thrown together but you know what that's more meta than this arc deserves and my boy is sick

OH NO CAS IS THE ONE WATCHING OVER HIM ABORT ABORT

His grace looks pathetic. Maybe he's trying not to wake Jack up. Maybe he doesn't have a whole lot left.

That's not helping, Cas

ANXIOUS PARENTS OUTSIDE HIS ROOM

I bet Cas sent them away because they were hovering

Dean this is not what happens to kids, stop trying to kid yourself that this is like having a regular demonic toddler

Man am I glad I do not have kids right now both because I don't have to worry about them and also because they scream and throw stuff at the walls at 3am

Dean angry at Cas cuz he's worried about Jack oh no oh no oh no look at these stressed parents. Cas is forced into the doctor role because he magic but he is just as stressed as they are and tensions are high, and then the boy starts convulsing

Oh my god they snapped, they are actually bringing Jack to an emergency room. This is horrifying and kind of a trip to imagine what they're going to tell any authority figures about who this guy is and what their relationship is to him.

Do they remember that he has barcode fingerprints and probably is gonna be Medically Weird just as default?

(Alex is 29 like me and Misha is early 40s and Jimmy is canonically a year older than Misha for some reason, so at a push Cas could be his dad and have made some very early mistakes but the boy is biologically only like 10 years younger than them on average... JACK looks another half that at times but this is a hospital so idk if "smiles like a toddler" "early teenage adorableness" is a good measure of age)

(I'm stress-typing)

"His full name, please"

All 3 dads look at each other baffled.

Sam goes with Jack Kline, which, a season and a bit later, is the first canonical use of it as Jack's surname

They're cautious about using Winchester, understandably, but it's a nice reminder that Kelly is family too and as the dead parent, naming Jack in tribute to her should have been something they were doing all along (like, season 13 all along), especially as he even visited the Klines earlier this season. Sam being the one who thinks to do this is nice because he's the most dad-aligned to Jack in a traditional sense when it's come to raising him (Cas got the pre-birth role as the traditional father role) and Cas obviously had the strongest connection to Kelly before that but this isn't a moment about her so much as these 3 stressed dads.

LOL Date of birth. Sam wins another point for knowing it, while Dean makes back and forth guesses on '99/2000, making Jack 19 or 20, which would at least mean any one of them could have fathered him and chopping 10 years off Alex's age to compromise between look and feel.

Given Jack's symptoms the nurse should have been a lil more concerned asking about trips to West Africa or other likely Ebola places lately. (This may be poor timing on the show's part but isn't there a fresh outbreak right now?)

(Oof I googled it and there's "Congo Ebola outbreak 2nd worst in history" articles dated 6 hours ago... Maybe a bad year to write haemorraghic diseases for fun and also how comes no one is talking about this in the news and it's all blah blah brexit... Have we just stopped fearing it now a few outbreaks have shown it mostly stays contained in African countries so now they can just suffer it on their own? I'm making a 4am donation to relief efforts)

*returns from the doctors without borders website* anyway back to the fictional sick white boy

And his very stressed dads

I have no idea how much of this is medically accurate but I feel like this is particularly dramatised to match hospital visits people have experienced which did not involve bringing in a stumbling, feverish, person who is having seizures and coughing blood

it's still objectively sad to see TFW lined up all stressed out and Cas and Dean holding hands while they stare through the giant window

The doctors aren't wearing masks even though he has been COUGHING BLOOD

sheesh this entire hospital is in quarantine now

Nick saying he was "getting hammered" the night of the murder isn't super subtle

Cas aggressively still trying to watch over Jack even though they won't let him in the room. Dean paces and talks about ghouls in the middle of the hospital to let off stress.

Cas goes to watch over him in person while Sam and Dean have a personal chat. This is awful D:

I appreciate the sentiment of busting Jack out before they pay the hospital bills because they're running out of medical options and need to turn to magic ones, a la every dramatic event ever in their lives except that one time Dean broke his leg and Sam was too out of it with the Hallucifers to sell his soul to make it better, but if Jack's in system shutdown wouldn't at least keeping him with state of the art equipment mean things like transfusion and machines that keep him propped up?

Mind you his bloodtype is probably, like, X evil negative or something Bucklemingy

It's in his DNA... He might be cute but he's still born of their episodes and wacky non con ideas... It was gonna catch up to him eventually D: You can't outrun it forever!!

I accidentally hit a button and 8x02 started playing on VLC

"DEEEAN" Cas shoves him through the portal out of purgatory, credits roll, this was officially the weirdest episode ever.

(No I didn't watch the whole thing, I was literally paused on the last shot from where I was about to gif it last night when I fell asleep)

Sam already called Rowena... Smart cookie

obligatory yell at Cas shedding the coat to put on Jack so they don't walk him out in a hospital gown

Oh my god Jack's so sick he's white as a sheet and being carried out by 2 of his dads and he still has a lil well of snark to be like "fine we're leaving" to the doctor.

"There's just no talking to him when he gets like this"

We're at the promo scene and I'm still not 100% sure after sleeping on it that Rowena definitely did not have the Book of the Damned, and that she hadn't been able to make off with it at the end of season 11, never for it to be seen again, because she was very much in the process of stealing the Black Grimoire in 13x22, but this does, I guess, make sense in regards to which book would serve Jack better, and Mittens tried her best to convince me that Rowena plausibly did not have it because the Winchesters did... I'm still suspicious because I really did just assume that she took it and the implication was we didn't see it because SHE had hidden it, and from a line in a Buckleming episode as well. And either way around her showing up with it makes sense that she had it but I'd have occam's razor'd it that she stole the obvious books at the obvious times and not that 13x22 became a BotD heist on top of everything else :P

Jack is up and about!!

He's using a more gravelly voice and it's actually a really hot voice and for literally the first time the Alex/Jack divide (gulf) in my head that one is my age and hot and the other is a 12 year old is a bit shaken. I mean Jack's canonically now supposed to be around 19-20? Which explains why he has a "wooo spring break" attitude when we see in the promo he snaps and wants to go to Vegas.

They grow up so fast.

Anyway considering he was in total organ shutdown a lil while ago it seems a night's rest has done him well if he's wandering around the bunker

Can't tell if we swapped writers or what... well, it seems like it's possible given Jack's fluctuating sickness, which of course could just be a plot thing but also a mark of the inconsistencies in Buckleming episodes. It's still odd to me that in the filming process it didn't occur to them that Jack might not at least sway on the spot at little, but he's really standing there like a little trooper, upright and talking confidently.

And betraying to Rowena that his dads like her and say nice things about her behind her back, which is catastrophic for them. How dare. You're damaging the foundations of their relationship.

*cough cough*

"Bollocks"

Yep, her heart has softened, Jack won her over in record time, and she's just thinking about that time she adopted a wee Polish lad and loved him as her own because Jack is genetically engineered to be a blank slate son version of a Mary Sue. You take one look at him and he is Your Son in whatever way will most harm you.

Good grief I wish Crowley was still around to see what HILARIOUS overlap with Gavin we'd have wrung out of Jack's main superpower.

Cas offering his grace to stabilise Jack on the spot. Halp. It's more important to him that his son lives by miles, that this isn't even an internal debate for him. In a way, obvious that Cas would be like this as a parent, in another, Cas just offered to give up his grace live on TV

Rowena shoots down the obvious solution (oh and thank god that for once the show actually even references obvious solutions) and starts talking about how we need archangel grace and as soon as she says that I think "oh, Michael" and Dean starts to come over weird with a wooziness that makes me wonder if that was timed for the audience "oh there's one out there right now" and why would DEAN be personally affected right thiiiiiis second..............................

When they go on spring break together we're getting right to the murderin

I mean SOMETHING is up and Dean's right now having his own weird moment as Rowena talks about how Jack will now have a fluctuating set of symptoms for the sake of the plot so

It's possible this is just his internal POV emotional reaction to bad news because this is what happens to me when I hear it but I suspect Dean is a lil more healthy than me in the first place so doesn't verge on passing out whenever a catastrophe happens regularly. And also Sam and Cas aren't similarly struck with physical symptoms at the news their son is dying.

Ya know, Buckleming, or probably Eugenie specifically which makes it all the worse, writing this woman taking a call in a dark alleyway, then not being terrified to be approached by a weird man and on top of that stopping and turning to invite him to join her in the club... this is the kind of thing where they're writing someone going against all natural instinct that it's bad characterisation for someone we've literally never met before just to put her in danger.

I mean at least they didn't make Nick stab a random woman (and a black woman at that to add to their overall awful stats)

I like how Jack's just decided Vegas or Tahiti are places you just kinda go to die... I mean I don't know what he's learned about them but it all has to be absorbed through the media in his most innocent way. I feel like there's something very sweet about whatever he thinks you do in these places of reputed sin and blaze of glory live fast die young lifestyles, but also utterly tragic. Consumptive tragic hero but with a twist of the reckless and dangerous later tropes of... It's 5am and I can't think but like. Vegas. Drugs and gambling high life style tropey films and books from the American tradition.

And of course it's Dean (who utterly fits into this trope and even has yearly Vegas trips with Sam since discovering his psychic powers back in season 1 and also lives a blaze of glory mindset) who brings him the deadly glass of milk (film trope about innocence but also like, people dying) and a sandwich loaded with salami. Dean went all out to make that for Jack - a couple of episodes after sending a woman off to "make him a sandwich" and regretting it as he spoke, we see the yank the cloth away reveal of Dean's nurturing side where he is the caregiver who shows affection through food and will go to the trouble of making his boy a delicious sandwich.

"Nice." See? He's Dean's son and Dean approves his choice of places to die. "You sure this is the best time?"

"Pretty sure it is," Jack says, backpack on, already almost out the door. He's found a brown corduroy jacket which is both unlike his beige jackets and suits from the rest of his life aside from the blue apocalypse world one, and also very very much like Sam's iconic season 1-2 brown corduroy jacket that he mostly stopped wearing although I think was the one Dean wore in 4x01 as one of its sporadic dwindling appearances, if I'm not wrong.

I probably am but either way, it's a change to darker colours, something Sam-associated to fit the gap of this smol dangerous dying kid Dean has to deal with, and puts Jack in thick earthier tones, thicker clothes to ward against the cold of death, and dressed more like TFW than normal as he usually has quite a distinct child-like version of their clothes.

Jack's concept of life and mortality is fucked, possibly because he was a functioning being after a day or two of gathering his thoughts and starting to come to terms with asking deep philosophical questions about himself, so in a way discovering he only has a couple more weeks to live is hardly anything. He's a fucking mayfly.

Ugh it's now solidly 5am and I am clearly not going back to sleep so I give up, I'm finally getting coffee. The rest of the notes will be maybe a wee bit more coherent :P

Anyway kettle thought: due to Jack and Dean's murder or be murdered relationship (lordy how is this the only way you relate to fatherhood, my guy?) I kinda suspect that Dean's about to abscond with Jack without even telling dad 1 or dad 2, because he is dad 3 and that's totally cool and he's a responsible adult, but, you know, woozy and doomed while Jack is also consumptive and doomed. BAD COMBO.

I charge you with grounds of diminished responsibility due to mutual murder narrative doom

"I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it"

Okay remember in season 1 episode 14 where Dean was like "LOL WE SHOULD GO TO VEGAS BECAUSE YOU ARE PSYCHIC"? and I referenced that like 5 minutes ago so you should, obviously I've only ever been able to headcanon the reveal of Vegas Week in season 7 (Dabb episode, take a shot) dates back to that and is one of their between episode activities which makes sense that since they only started travelling as adults together in the canon of the show (and Sam 1 year older than drinking age) that it might as well have been when they started the tradition?

Well Jack here is reacting like Dean would have if HE were the one in Sam's shoes in 1x14, and being the fun lil brother who actually would be like fuck it let's go to Vegas and see how psychic I am in the casinos! In the context of season 1 Sam is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too angsty and tragic to do anything other than come across as a stick in the mud who thinks Dean is joking and they're gonna carry on being tragic and hunting monsters instead. Dean in season 2, episode 9, also wanted to fuck off and go have fun when Sam's scary destiny got too much for him to carry, and that was when he was locked in the murder or save him vow from John's last words, which is a similar burden to the narrative bind he's in with Jack.

Jack, all of his fathers' son, finally shows up as the god damn first person to take his doom sensibly and actually want to fuck off to Vegas, and that's demon!Dean levels of fuck it.

Incidentally I half-suspect that Crowley, who has billions of dollars and once bid the moon in an auction (hi I watched 99% of 8x02 yesterday and 1% of it just now) probably was steering demon!Dean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay carefully around the thought of wait a minute I have an extremely rich and powerful sugar daddy and no responsibilities... VEGAAAAAAAS.

Like, any time Dean started to form the thought, bam, naked triplets show up in their room.

Anyway Jack's busy being tragic, talking about wanting to get a tan (Beach now linked to something to do before death) or see a hockey game (oh shit we forgot Adam) or get a parking ticket (oh so that's why Dean murders him)

"And when it's all over... die."

Dean looks over his shoulder, mind made up to abduct the boy and take him joyriding

"So that's your plan, huh?"

"I don't want to waste time arguing"

"Did I say I disagree"

jack, this is Fun Dad

I know, the concept is completely radical and you've never seen Dean be fun but trust me.

Even with your very, very limited options, Sam has literally had 3 episodes about how he's Scrooge, and Cas is... Cas. But Dean is legitimately fun dad when you get him on a good day. Trust me.

No one's speaking to Rowena??? How wild.

Poor thing is never going to get her mega coven

Dean (who has rocked up already wearing his jacket) spaces out as Sam starts blahing on about the culturally appropriative shaman Ketch has located.

Same, buddy

At least Dean isn't lying to them about stealing Jack. Somewhat. Not the whole Vegas plan.

Jack smiles at Sam and Cas in a kind of way that somehow conveys in its entirety "this may be the last time you see me but I'm cool with you NOT seeing me die of coughing my lungs up and fun dad has this covered and we've always had a weird death cult about our relationship anyway so I'm okay with it and you guys were the best dads but now fun dad is going to take me out back and shoot me where you can't see and I love you bye"

"Why don't you drive?"

Jack is like ?!?!?!?!? D:

EVEN ON HIS DEATHBED he hadn't figured this would ever happen

It's the make a wish foundation :')

This is, of course, the ultimate sign of Dean loving you and caring for you in Dean's own special way of not telling you he does but showing it with a gesture of absolute confidence and letting you in, and in the vast annuls of the show dates back to the second ever episode where Dean let Sam drive at the end for all of 1 shot (seriously, they've swapped back by the long shot at the end of 1x02 where you can't see them in the car but the prop drivers are definitely doing a generic Sam in the passenger seat Dean driving routine for stock footage :P)

Anyway Dean loves Jack enough that he's letting a kid who does not know how to drive learn to drive in the Impala, like he and Sam did.

I can see Alex sweating bullets about being seated next to Jensen in the beloved Impala and having to mess up turning it on... never mind the fact that both Jensen AND Dean will murder him if he harms the car, and being murdered on both levels at once is spiritually unsettling and he will probably end up an unquiet ghost.

And yet, the glee at being behind the wheel of this legendary gal

TRAGIC NYOOOOOM

"It's like I'm you! :D"

"No, it's not! :D (but with implied murder)"

"THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER"

Look if he survives this, you're creating a speed demon who will want his own classic car

And then you'll have to teach him how to maintain it

oh god

But yeah, non-toxic parenting in the John Winchester As He Could Have Been style.

At least as long as Dean is in the Make A Wish mode and not back to tragic murder mode

And that wooziness that he may or may not be associating with no sleep and too much stress suggests this isn't going to last as a Fun Day Trip For The Boy

"Cas are you sure you want to handle this alone?"

NO HE NEEDS A HUG HIS SON IS DYING

Sam, go hug him, you need a hug and your son is dying.

Also, of course, you mutually need each other in this instance and Sam is reaching out to Cas with presumably the intent that he wants to be in on it but is asking as if just concerned about Cas

Cas, being Cas, has somehow deduced that Dean is "taking this particularly hard" despite the fact all three of them are Concerned Dads and CAS WHAT THE FUCK are you doing being selflessly concerned about DEAN and sizing up his emotional state when all three of you are wrecked and your son is dying?

You literally have 3x the sitting at his bedside holding his hand moments of any of them and montaged the heck out of the concern at the start of the episode

I remember way back someone wankily made a chart of how often people talked to Dean about stuff and other people talked to each other about Dean, and Sam is now crying about Dean beating himself up over being mean to Jack at the start of season 13 and regretting it, so this entire conversation is Sam and Cas man paining at each other about how much man pain Dean is in.

I say with no wank in my heart, just sheer horrified amusement at this data point if they still are hate-watching the show and being horrified about how Sam never gets stuff for himself etc (I mean. He and Cas both have had extended chunks of seasons about them parenting Jack and this is Dean's time to come belatedly to what the two of them already had)

Cas finally says "son" a season and change after Jack was wandering around calling him "father" and Sam doesn't seem inclined to disagree that this is how it feels for all 3 of them.

Obviously he's crying about Jack and it was just the context above that made it look like he was crying about Dean and I always knew that, I'm not a monster, I'm just deflecting because owwwwwwwww this hurts

HUG EACH OTHER YOU DUMB FUCKS SO I FEEL BETTER

Cas walks off instead and Sam finally after 1000 years discovers how Dean feels when Cas does that when he was angling to come along and they miscommunicated and didn't say what they meant. Except Sam wanted to come out of mutual Dad Angst comfort while Dean normally wants to go with Cas places so he can hold his hand.

Jack's so proud of himself for being able to drive.

"Born with a wheel in your hand"

He literally stole the Impala from you when he was 7 months in the womb

Dean is like, we could get you laid? And Jack is like. Nah. I have a better idea.

No idea what right now but he still doesn't wanna bang anyone

Ugh a Nick scene. Tag yourself I'm the old tyre in the foreground

Is this the house from Family Remains aka the self-admitted worst episode of the show by Kripke and Carver's explicit design

I am going to puke Jack wanted to go on a fishing trip with his dad

There were spoilers about them doing this but I repressed it the fuck down and lied to myself that Jensen was randomly teaching Alex to fish on set because I didn't want to think about Dean doing this with Jack because oh my god someone has taken my heart and gouged it out with a rusty spoon.

Also: someone design Jack a t-shirt with a witty slogan about fishing rather than hook ups. Like, dude bro fishing culture but in a world where you're as likely to get dumb slogans about not wanting sex as you are for it making you a babe magnet

"I'd rather be fishin" is a thing people get on mugs for the workplace but we could start with this sentiment and play

ALSO AS I MENTIONED I WATCHED 8x02 IN THE LAST 24 HOURS AND DEAN NEAR RIVERS SUCKS. We also have 10x01 and Daniel the fishing angel (who was the pizza man from Monster Movie, see above: slogans about fishing, pizza man innuendo, we got a thing going here) who was happy on Earth just fishing and enjoying the planet and not wanting to go back to Heaven, in a very heavy metaphor for Cas to deal with, as the angel who once compared free will to teaching poetry to fish. Lots and lots to unpack here, when we turn this into a Dean and Jack father son bonding moment and throw in Dean's peaceful dream of fishing in 4x20 that Cas interrupted. Fishing is about peace and idyll and comes as a temporary respite in this show. Traditionally, also, of course it's a sport of patience, and a classic father son bonding activity as the long stillness allows for both manly silence and sharing beers in peace, but also talk if they want to open up a conversation.

For Jack, it's an overlap of both Cas and Dean parental stuff, Cas's issues with angelic nature, where he wants to be, WHO he wants to be (just OFFERING to give up his grace to save Jack) and then with Dean we have more classic human cultural tropes but none less painful for Jack's nature and relationships. Especially throwing in that this was his choice and Dean is indulging him completely here.

John may or may not have taught them to fish but I feel like it may have had a "so you are dying in the woods" aspect to it rather than for peace and bonding. BOBBY taught Sam and Dean some basic woodsmanship so he was more likely to be the father figure teaching them to fish if anyone did.

Okay so obviously I typed that just after clutching my heart at the reveal and hitting pause, as Jack immediately goes on to say that John DID teach Dean how to fish and that it was his happiest memory of him - and it comes as a surprise for the expectations (like, that the above paragraph now stands as what I would expect of canon if I was only taking from it and not as an actual writer of the show being allowed to insert new details in which challenge us about the characters, which is where I find the line between fan fic and original fiction really is when it comes to characterisation... Anything out of left-field and you have to tag it as an AU version or explain why instead of just writing it as taken for granted).

And it's unexpected in the sense that it is such a peaceful thing and above all I think the message is that Jack intuited from whatever Dean said about it that it WAS a happy peaceful memory of John which stood so much at odds with the rest of his life. Filed under as well the thing where Mary started talking about how nice John was to Sam and Sam recoiled in confusion until Mary clarfied it was her John, not theirs. Good memories of a gentle soft John are alarming, and yet perhaps this is a way to really confront and exorcise his ghost more than anything - the sort of funeral servive memorialising of the good with the bad and working through it to come to peace in a different sort of way that lets the wounds heal and the anger leave those scars.

"It was how you said it. I could tell." He's such a smart cookie and I think that often takes Dean by surprise in the sense that Jack has been very shrewdly watching him and learning from him and absorbing anything and everything he does, which unfortunately gives him the ability to cold read Dean like very few people do, seeing past the layers and bluffs and into Dean's core.

Jack just murdered Dean by saying if he doesn't make it he wouldn't miss Tahiti or the Taj Mahal or implied going to seedy bars and hooking up, he'd miss more time with Dean.

I mean that's not a literal way to kill someone but you should see Dean's face. He's been shot.

And again, it's a metaphor for what you want from life for DEAN to absorb, the prompt that his family is right here and he doesn't need to chase pleasure outside of them, that hook up bar nearby their home base where he never strikes out, that's irrelevant to the family he has built and it's been put in the subtext of what Dean goes after that's empty pleasure when he has this core family unit around him, by the way Jack has also rejected it and is explaining to Dean the real meaning of Christmas.

Of course, this all gets a bit weird unless you account for the fact he has an angel wearing a trenchcoat made of husband material waiting back at the Bunker because the chronic singleton life otherwise probably ought to account for an outlet for Dean like a hook up bar if his happy ending is a platonic family bond so, you know, end the show 10 minutes from now with everyone happy and alive and not dying, and all Dean's learned is they're 3 dads, one son, a mom and her AUBobby, but he still has unused romantic potential and for seasons and seasons they've been trying to close the door on him seeking out random hook ups in the subtext of what Dean WANTS vs what he thinks he can have. This frank conversation about what Jack wants from life before it's all over is once again ignoring fleeting human connection for the family bonds he values above everything.

"I've had a good life, Dean" the other reason they're having this sentimental conversation by a river is because Jack is a fucking mayfly and I hate this

@ Dabb please never make me see Cas driving this car ever again

Why are you irritating Cas like this. First boring holy fire oh it must be thursday followed by the indignity of making him sit on a pouffe? Listen, when Cas gets irritated he gets snarky and then people die because he snarked them to death. I saw it he did it to the Empty. And Lucifer in 13x12. And Kip.

I just feel sorry for Cas. Why can't he go on fishing trips with the boy. Oh no he has to sit on a squishy pouffe that won't let him be intimidating so that he can cure the boy even though Jack's already decided he's gonna die and will probably Ophelia himself into the river at the end of the fishing trip.

Sergei is basically like "Have you tried turning it off and on again"

Nephilim have a reboot button on the back of their neck, if you get a paperclip and poke it in there.

At least Sergei is so... whatever he is... I can't even tell who he is supposed to be offensive towards :P I guess with the name, I lean Russian, and then he has world esoterica and occult nonsense in his caravan...

The real question is how does he know anything about Nephilim and why hasn't Cas asked that already.

LOL he has a vial of Gabriel grace just lying around. Of course, because Gabriel was just offering it up to everyone.

Considering how he was exploited for it by Asmodeus there's a weird tinge of retconning his own abuse by saying he was going around giving it to everyone before Asmodeus ever bought him and started stealing it on the regular.

Still, it IS awfully tempting a fix to have Uncle Gabriel help Jack out from beyond.

/distantly: "I'm not dead!"

sometimes I can still hear his voice.

It's way more likely Shit Goes Down and this is lost but then Cas has learned what to do with archangel grace to fix Jack just so long as they can pin down Michael and grab his instead.

But I guess in that circumstance at least once again Gabriel gave them part of the answer from beyond the grave as he did in season 5.

("Still not dead!!")

shush Gabriel. The show wants us to think you're dead and my complete disbelief in that doesn't change anything for now.

Except that maybe Gabriel came back, is fine, but has been removing his grace and selling it in the here and now while claiming not to be Gabriel and that he just haaaappens to have it and because he has no grace he could just be any old guy who happens to have an endless renewable resource of archangel grace secretly on tap to sell to fund his life of laying low. Sergei even says HE got it as part of keeping Gabriel hidden.

I'm kind of assuming Sergei isn't Gabriel unless he offers Cas kielbasa

I mean unless later I get a bonus cookie for immediately assuming Sergei is Gabriel based on the holy fire he just happened to have prepared and how similar it looked to Gabriel being trapped in 5x08.

On the other hand this may be the first time this season but pointing at literally everyone and going, that's probably Gabriel, will get old and also dock me cookie points the more wrong guesses I throw out there. Still, this one has pretty strong evidence, from messing with Cas to making him say "Porn stars"

To, um, having Gabriel's grace

Okay so Sergei gives Cas all of this out of the goodness of his heart and a "you owe me" and I AM wondering if that's a Buckleming special because remember in 8x19 where they were like hi we need to go to Hell immediately, and Ajay was like sure, I will take you to Hell and this episode is even titled after me so clearly I am an important character who *stab stab reaper dying noises* wow look I guess we don't have a bargain after all despite me saying you owe me but then Crowley just maaaaagically made it so you never had to find out what a reaper would want in exchange for taking you to Hell off the books.

Also fuck you I never got to finish my pizza

While I've been typing some random ass justice for Ajay screed, Nick has revealed a flashback to 14x02 where it turns out his neighbour said it was a cop who he saw coming out of the house. I literally went back and checked the episode and that wasn't in it, so perhaps it's a new flashback for here, fleshing out that conversation and revealing more for us, and changing the narrative of what Nick's up to, but honestly who cares enough about all this... I was double zoned out for flashbacks I'd already seen for a side story i don't care about

Wow, Nick, demons killed ya family. Could have told you that.

Aw, Dean brought Jack home. No dying out in the wilderness for you, clearly Cas phoned up before Jack could work out his plan to fling himself into the river.

Also Nick has taken up too much of this episode so there's no room for complicated twists and turns, if Buckleming are banned from introducing too many of them.

It's incredible how subdividing them so Eugenie writes all the Nick stuff and Brad writes the rest has elevated the parts of the story we care about to pretty much passable, give or take whatever Sergei was and who he was offensive to aside from the whole concept of calling yourself a shaman because you travelled the world collecting occult stuff in a sort of Aleister Crowley way.

'cept you can't namedrop Aleister on this show because both Alastair and Crowley have stolen too much from him.

So you get a knock off Sergei instead.

Jack hasn't been having as many of the supposed fainting fits that had everyone dogpiling him as I thought - maybe that's next episode too. Could have had one at the start but that doesn't seem enough to be a repeated annoyance of Alex's life :P

Anyway I was just going to comment on his sweater but that thought hopped in there first wondering if the spell was about to knock him flat, as he's sitting on a chair instead of safely in bed.

All the more dramatic for flinging yourself around if the spell messes you up

(honestly if the spells don't work, and they took him out of the hospital, how much of a bizarre commentary is this on trusting modern medicine and vaccinating your nephilims?)

It's 7:20 and my neighbours are yelling again

At least being awake since 3 meant I got a bit more peace and quiet than normal. I feel gross but I may go to yoga just to not be stuck in this room with such awful screeching on both sides of me >.>

Oh I can tell Sergei is Gabriel, he put the grace in a gold container instead of the silver ones

I'm sorry for the expenses, Zerbe

I wonder if they use her products on the show and I'm gonna go on my dash and find her beaming about a specially commissioned shiny gold grace that she made for them :P

"Here, hold this bottle of your uncle's essence"

".... okay I understand how weird that sounded on hindsight"

I love the idea of Jack's grace now being fuelled by Nice Uncle Gabriel who felt kindly towards him, even if this can't be a permanent fix, it changes his internal make up just a bit so that he symbolically has his grace stolen by his shitty bio father but the power only came from him in the first place and there was all the hoo ha about if Lucifer as his father made him inherently evil. Now whatever happens to Jack, he's had a grace transplant from a suitable donor, very much like a parallel of say he needed a kidney transplant and his 2 viable donors were his shitty deadbeat dad who gave him the kidney condition in the first place and his nice dead uncle who happened to have been an organ donor and was the only other one with the same type (if Lucifer's was X evil negative, then I guess Gabriel's is like X tricksy negative which has enough receptors to be a compatible transfusion, while Cas has like, Z dumbass positive grace and no compatibility)

And Gabriel is a beloved character who proved his kind feeling towards Jack even if they had very little bonding overall, he clearly cared and there was an immediate sort of uncle-y kindness about him in relation to Jack (just the comment alone about identifying that Jack liked shiny things and magic tricks is very much how uncles view small children who they may watch and entertain but not in the end have parental responsibility for), which is hilarious to me because Gabriel deeply reminds me of all 3 of my uncles on my mum's side, who are all 3 different shades of trickster god in their own right, and he always has reminded me of them, and now the show has sort of made Uncle Gabriel his new legacy.

I mean. I love it to bits.

It's not a sacrifice FOR Jack like Cas would have given up his grace, but it's still a part of him passed on to Jack.

I am very very aware that like me running my mouth about John (ironically the name of one of my uncles) while hitting pause, I've stopped while Jack is looking up with glowing eyes and he's almost certainly about to spew a fountain of blood across the room and fall on the floor. But I like that the grace even interacted with him and lit up his eyes and unless he physically barfs out the grace to I'm sticking by that ramble.

Cas smiled!! That's the once per season and we already hit it at episode 7, woe betide us

This does look, however, like the scene where they were all looking on from the door so... blood spew in 5 4 3 2 1...

DOGPILE THE BOY

Er, I mean, help him

God I would not want Jared to dogpile me, the man weighs literally as much as an actual moose

Uhoh Sergei made Cas mad

I mean

he made him sit on a pouffe, this was always coming

What do you mean Eugenie can't let Lucifer go wow what a shock

*kicks a pebble*

Ah, here's the concerned dads scene. I'm just going to let that be a balm to my soul while Dean laments ever taking Jack out to have fun.

"You made him happy. You did more for him than any of us"

1 dude you tried, 2 you took him on hunting trips and had fun already this season so he got his Cas Time before he died like he wanted 3 just fucking abduct him wrapped in a duvet and go fishing in the dead of night if you have to, trust me, he'd love it and your family is such a mess he wouldn't even think it's weird.

I mean you've literally absconded illegally with him before, what's a trip up to that beach where he was born and some fishing gear really going to cost you with annoyance from Dean

"What can we do?" "Watch over him," Rowena says with Cas in the background, and continues to carve me out with a rusty spoon

"As he dies"

Nah he'll be fine shut up Rowena D:

*whimper*

Well that was a very good episode if you act like me and pretend that none of the Nick stuff happened at all.

#14x07 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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precaffeinatedsalomon · 6 years ago

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Could You Pass the Brains Please? Western Zombies in Korean Film, Train to Busan (2016)

Could You Pass the Brains, Please?

Western Zombie Mythology Used to Reflect on Eastern Anxieties in Train to Busan (2016)

On April 16, 2014, South Korea suffered the horror of losing over three hundred of its citizens-mostly Middle School aged children- to the neglect of what is now called the Sewol Ferry Disaster. In 2015 the Country fell into a panic as the number of Middle East Respiratory Virus (MERS) outbreak deaths increased while Governmental disclosure on the matter decreased. In 2016, One-fifth of the South Korean population saw the release of its very first zombie film, Train to Busan. This essay argues that Film Director, Yeon Sang Ho appropriated the flexibility for metaphor the Western Zombie Mythology provides to critique Korean society, their government, and reflect on contemporary anxieties.

Though Korean Zombies may be new in the East, from Haiti to Hershel’s Farm the United States has 80 years’ worth of Zombie lore in their popular culture arsenal. In How to Make a Zombie, Frank Swain recounts the first-time zombies entered into consciousness around the world. He explains how in 1889 well respected Harper’s Magazine journalist Lafcadio Hearn went to the Caribbean Islands in search of evidence about rumors of “walking dead” haunting which haunted the islands. When inquiring about zombies to locals, Hearn would get descriptions based on complex Haitian “Vodou tenets” which only confused Hearn, who never got to see one. The descriptions, in essence, boiled down to a “zombie cadaver” being “a physical entity that is living but has not will of its own.” ( Swain 3-7) Hearn’s article on zombies went on to intrigue the colorful William Seabrook, an American writer and explorer, as well as a drunk, sadist, abuser, and experimental cannibal. In 1928, Seabrook traveled to Haiti to investigate the phenomenon. In 1929, he published his findings in what eventually became a best seller book titled The Magic Island. In his book, he describes what he saw when locals took him to visit a sugar plantation: “My first impression of the three supposed zombies, who continued dumbly at work, was that there was something about them unnatural and strange. They were plodding like brutes, like automatons, the eyes were the worst…They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man…the whole face…was vacant, as if there was nothing behind it.” (Swain 8-13) It continues, that while attempting to make conversation with one of the zombies, he was told [blacks’] affairs are not for whites” (Swain 14), a line that would later be used in one the first Hollywood zombies in film rendition.

What Seabrook called zombies, were likely slaves working 18-hour days in sugar plantations during the United States occupation of Haiti. In 1804, Haiti was considered a “threat to imperialism” and was vilified in the Western world after successfully gaining independence from France with a well-staged rebellion. Despite efforts by the Catholic Church to influence Haitian natives, Voodooism was a deeply embedded part of the culture. Because of this in the West, “Voodoo culture was perceived to be a signifier of the country’s savage inferiority” (Crockett)- Anxieties that would later be reflected in film. Haiti’s freedom and independence ended when in 1918 the United States invaded the country in fear of how the political unrest there would affect their business ventures in that country, particularly the Haitian-American Sugar Company (HASCO). Haiti was recolonized until 1934, with what Swain laments as “enduring consequences for the country and its people” (Swain 6-7). Zombie’s origin story becomes important in how they would later become represented in film.

From 1932 to the present; from xenophobia to extremism, zombie representations in film have morphed over time as metaphors to externalize, examine and critique the era’s social anxieties. The Bela Lugosi led, White Zombie (1932), is considered the first full-length zombie film. In it, a man convinces a couple to celebrate their wedding in Haiti. While there, the man uses a Voodoo master to steal the bride away from her fiance and keep her to himself. Unfortunately for him, she turns into an unfeeling person in a zombie-like state. Complaining to the Voodoo master only gets him turned into a zombie himself (IMBD) Luckily, “in the end, the white couple emerges unharmed, and the voodoo master is pushed off a cliff to his death” Though criticized, the film’s success saw a series of similarly plotted and themed films. Such as, In Ouanga (1936), Walked With a Zombie (1943)VOX explains that “until the 1940s, zombies were largely a reflection of the fears of voodooism and blackness.” (Vox) In other words, an externalization of xenophobia and sense of white superiority.

After WWII, from the 1950s to mid-1960s, zombies films like Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952) Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) were used to represent Cold Ward and Space Race anxieties of the time. However, after 1968 in the midst of the social unrest caused by the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, zombies would be changed irrevocably.

The modern zombie was born with George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). Though the word ‘zombie’ is never is used in the film, from this rendition on, Leo Braudy explains how “instead of being an exotic black monster birthed in the Caribbean, [zombies] become an all-embracing metaphor for the unthinking attitudes and blind obedience of an entire society” (107) The time for zombies to aid in the protest of society begins here.

Supporting this notion, Peter Biskind claims that by taking the zombie- a monster, outside the enclosed spaces of personal dwelling and moving them to the “backyard” … horror could reflect upon contemporary life. Furthermore, having a black hero-five months after the death of Martin Luther King Jr.- killed by the sheriff with the excuse that he thought he was monster, “changed the genre into a vehicle for social commentary”. A vehicle that now is being used by South Korea, just as it has been used in the West. Biskind argues, “zombies lend themselves to metaphoric interpretation; they are an all-purpose ‘Them’, with their significance in the eye of the beholder.” ( 77) Meaning that as a new fear arises, the type of zombie we get will change along with it.

From Romero’s Night of the Living Dead monsters are “reawakened by changing cultural circumstances” (Braudy 107). From here on we get the new codes for zombie lore. Such as a never-ending hunger for human flesh, pack mentality and hunting in kind, inability to stop, one bite, one new victim. Dawn of the Dead (1978) has Romero commenting on consumerist culture as raised by a capitalist society. In the era of the ‘80s to early 2000s with fears of epidemics like AIDS, Swine Flu, and Ebola virus, we get the Contagion Zombie. Braudy claims these apocalyptic zombies reflect “an increasingly globalized world in which diseases spread rapidly across continents and populations due to increased commercial contact, ease of transportation, and openness of borders.” (Braudy 107) As expansion from these fears, we get World War Z (2013). This film shows walls as an attempted tool to keep not only zombies, but humans out. A Vox article argues that the scene in which “Jerusalem is besieged by hordes of zombies, which crawl up the walls like a slow-moving bacterial infection. Unlike the creatures of previous films, these migrant zombies move at fast speeds, with a sense of urgency, riffing on our fear of rapid migration rates.” (Crockett)Fear of migration gives us the television series The Walking Dead. Biskind claims, these zombies are a representation of America’s current extremists’ views.

In Peter Biskind’s, The Sky is Falling, he notes that the way monsters and even superheroes are now represented in Films and Television are making “America great for extremism.” The main premise in his boos is that now, instead of the word ‘extremist’ being an insult, it “has become an accolade while ‘mainstream has become ‘lamestream. These extremist notions, he insists it is this extremists’ that have given us Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. Zombies as extremists he continues, “don’t care what we want…Marauding in mobs, they huff and puff until they blow the house down” (Biskind 2, 76). Thus, in addition to representing current extremists’ anxieties in the United States, the post-apocalyptic society currently in vogue also represents a lack of reliable government that is beholden to the people and their interests.

As time passes by, is culture change or change culture? popular culture is regarded tends to be regarded quite poorly as an agent of change, always behind in credited importance to politics or economics, however, Biskind warns, “it’s a mistake to underestimate the power of culture to inflame our emotions. “He states that, despite seeming free and innocent of political ideas, films and TV series are filled with subtle political messages. He concludes, “it’s no exaggeration to say that values, and therefore politics, are embedded in the very fabric of movies. (Biskind 6) The way monsters such as zombies in the film have indexed social change can serve as evidence of how television and film mirror cultural changes.

Watching films or television shows require the conscious effort from the viewer to suspend disbelief. For horror, however, Braudy argues that it goes beyond a simple act of believing what’s on screen, he claims it “goes much deeper, if only for the moment, [you have to believe]in the existence of evil, the possibility for good, and their eternal combat” (Braudy 32) In other words, horror films require more involvement than most other genres.

Before Yeon’s, Train to Busan, there were no zombies in their national folklore. South Koreans have their own monster lore, such as ghosts, goblins, and nine-tailed foxes, but no zombies. However, the West’s zombies film influence and their symbolic traits can be noted in the way the film chose to depict its own zombies. Train, tells the story of a man (Gong Yoo) working as a corporate hedge fund manager, who prefers work above else. He is a neglectful father to his only daughter. In an attempt to make up for missing her birthday, he takes her in a train to the city of Busan to visit her mother. As the doors of the train are about to close, a girl we soon find out is infected, makes it into the train, where chaos occurs as she starts biting people and the contagion spreads.

From this point on it becomes a story of survival and exploration of Korea’s current culture. It is from here on that, the film uses a chimaera of history, codes, and the possibility for social criticism in its zombies and plot devices that Yeon borrows from all the zombie movies from the West and proceeds to break apart, contort, distil, and repurpose to evoke a thought-provoking social commentary in Train.

This LA Times review of the film, support’s this paper’s original claim that South Koreans are using zombies as a metaphor for their social anxieties by stating:

“It's not just the eye-popping visuals and a high-paced monster story that has made "Train" a hit: The movie is also touching a nerve by reflecting the present-day reality of South Korea, an increasingly stratified and competitive a society where many citizens feel elites can't be trusted to lead in times of crisis, and those caught up in the chaos have to fend for themselves. Cine21, one of South Korea's most-read film magazines wrote in a review that "Train" is "motivated by sadness and anger over a situation where the weak cannot be protected." (Browiec)

Two instances which exemplify South Korean’s dissatisfaction with their government are dramatized in Train are, the Sewol Ferry accident and the MERS epidemic. One of the greatest reasons for anger in the Sewol Ferry accident was how easily the children could have been saved if they had not listened to Ferry captain that it would all be alright. This combined with the long Coast Guard response time to come to the rescue and the Captain taking a boat to save himself while the rest drowned seemed like an inconceivable rude awakening to people in that country. Additionally, in the MERS epidemic case, the government failed to notify its citizens of what was happening with the virus, how to prevent it from spreading further, or even what symptoms to look for to get it treated at the hospital.

These moments of shared grief and anger are externalized in Train. In it, we see how the people do not trust the government, quickly set up factions, and it is the elitist corporate man who is willing to use everyone else to save himself at every turn. In a powerful metaphoric moment in the film, this corporate man and similarly minded others, expel from the finally secured train cart the pregnant protagonist- whose husband had fought and died to protect them earlier in the film, two teenagers, the main father and his daughter to a different train cart after they had finally saved themselves from the zombies. They are in essence, being sent to die. In a plot twist, an elderly woman whose sister had already turned into a zombie, disgusted with the mob’s selfish actions opens up the door that had until that moment served as the only protection from the zombie horde. The message of how such attitude and mentality will ultimately lead to collective doom is hard to miss.

It could be claimed that with the success of Train to Busan and its symbolic power, more zombie films and TV shows are being made. In Kingdom (2019) A Netflix original series takes zombies to Korea’s Joseon period, and Train to Busan 2 which is expected to hit theaters next year. Now the question is, just as South Korea learned to express their anxieties from the United States’ example of doing so, will The United States be clever enough to learn from South Korea and learn how to protest against a corrupt government and get rid of an incompetent president.

Works Cited

Biskind, Peter. The Sky is Falling: How Vampires, Zombies, Androids, and Superheroes Made America Great fro Extremism. New York: The New Press, 2018.

Braudy, Leo. Haunted On Ghosts, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Other Monsters of The Natural and Supernatural Worlds. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016.

Browiec, Steven. "Korea's Smash Summer Hit Is A Zombie Movie That Strikes a Deep Chord." The Los Angeles Times 16 August 2016. www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-korea-zombie-movie-snap-story.html.

Crockett, Zachary and Zarracina, Javier. How the Zombie Represents America's Deepest Fears. 31 October 2016. www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/31/13440402/zombie-political-history.

Swain, Frank. How to Make a Zombie. The Real Life (and Deaths) Science of Renimation and MInd Control. Terragon: OneWorld Publications, 2013.

Train to Busan. Yeon Sang-Ho, et. al. Next Entertainment World, 2013. Netflix.

#train to busan #gong yoo #zombies #haitian vodou #george romero #world war z

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gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years ago

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Many US Health Experts Underestimated the Coronavirus … Until It Was Too Late

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A year ago, while many Americans were finishing their holiday shopping and finalizing travel plans, doctors in Wuhan, China, were battling a mysterious outbreak of pneumonia with no known cause.

Chinese doctors began to fear they were witnessing the return of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, a coronavirus that emerged in China in late 2002 and spread to 8,000 people worldwide, killing almost 800.

The disease never gained a foothold in the U.S. and disappeared by 2004.

Although the disease hasn’t been seen in 16 years, SARS cast a long shadow that colored how many nations — and U.S. scientists — reacted to its far more dangerous cousin, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

When Chinese officials revealed that their pneumonia outbreak was caused by another new coronavirus, Asian countries hit hard by SARS knew what they had to do, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Taiwan and South Korea had already learned the importance of a rapid response that included widespread testing, contact tracing and isolating infected people.

The U.S., by contrast, learned all the wrong lessons.

This country’s 20-year run of good luck with emerging pathogens —including not just SARS, but also the relatively mild H1N1 pandemic, Middle East respiratory syndrome, Ebola, Zika virus and two strains of bird flu — gave us a “false sense of security,” Adalja said.

KHN’s in-depth examination of the year-long pandemic shows that many leading infectious disease specialists underestimated the fast-moving outbreak in its first weeks and months, assuming that the United States would again emerge largely unscathed. American hubris prevented the country from reacting as quickly and effectively as Asian nations, Adalja said.

During the first two decades of this century, “there were a lot of fire alarms with no fire, so people tended to ignore this one,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, who acknowledges he underestimated the virus in its first few weeks.

In a Jan. 24 story, Dr. William Schaffner told KHN the real danger to Americans was the common flu, which can kill up to 61,000 Americans a year.

“Coronavirus will be a blip on the horizon in comparison,” said Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “The risk is trivial.”

The same day, The Washington Post published a column by Dr. Howard Markel, who questioned China’s lockdown of millions of people. “It’s possible that this coronavirus may not be highly contagious, and it may not be all that deadly,” wrote Markel, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan.

JAMA, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, published a podcast Feb. 18 titled, “The 2020 Influenza Epidemic — More Serious Than Coronavirus in the US.” A week later, JAMA published a large infographic illustrating the dangers of flu and minimizing the risks from the novel virus.

Dr. Paul Offit, who led development of a rotavirus vaccine, predicted that the coronavirus, like most respiratory bugs, would fade in the summer.

“I can’t imagine, frankly, that it would cause even one-tenth of the damage that influenza causes every year in the United States,” Offit told Christiane Amanpour in a March 2 appearance on PBS.

President Donald Trump picked up on many of these remarks, predicting that the coronavirus would disappear by April and that it was no worse than the flu. Trump later said the country was “rounding the turn” on the pandemic, even as the number of deaths exploded to record levels.

Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, worried — and tweeted — about the novel coronavirus from the beginning. But she said public health officials try to balance those fears with the reality that most small outbreaks in other countries typically don’t become global threats.

New sitrep out from Wuhan pneumonia outbreak. 59 cases between 12/12 and 12/29. SARS ruled out, but no other etiology identified. Still no evidence of H2H. https://t.co/b8ZdEGIzyJ

— Caitlin Rivers, PhD (@cmyeaton) January 5, 2020

“If you cry wolf too often, people will never pay attention,” said epidemiologist Mark Wilson, an emeritus professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Experts were hesitant to predict the novel coronavirus was the big pandemic they had long anticipated “for fear of seeming alarmist,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist advising President-elect Joe Biden.

Many experts fell victim to wishful thinking or denial, said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response during the Obama administration.

“It’s hard to think about the unthinkable,” Lurie said. “For people whose focus and fear was bioterrorism, they had a world view that Mother Nature could never be such a bad actor. If it wasn’t bioterrorism, then it couldn’t be so bad.”

Had more experts realized what was coming, the nation could have been far better prepared. The U.S. could have gotten a head start on manufacturing personal protective equipment, ventilators and other supplies, said Dr. Nicholas Christakis, author of “Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live.”

“Why did we waste two months that the Chinese essentially bought for us?” Christakis asked. “We could have gotten billions of dollars into testing. We could have had better public messaging that we were about to be invaded. … But we were not prepared.”

Dr. Fauci Doesn’t Cast Blame

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease official, isn’t so critical. In an interview, he said there was no way for scientists to predict how dangerous the coronavirus would become, given the limited information available in January.

“I wouldn’t criticize people who said there’s a pretty good chance that it’s going to turn out to be like SARS or MERS,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noting this was “a reasonable assumption.”

It’s so easy to go back with the retrospect-o-scope and say ‘You coulda, shoulda, woulda.’

— Dr. Anthony Fauci

Fauci noted that solutions are always clearer in hindsight, adding that public health authorities lose credibility if they respond to every new germ as if it’s a national disaster. He has repeatedly said scientists need to be humble enough to recognize how little we still don’t know about this new threat.

“It’s so easy to go back with the retrospect-o-scope and say ‘You coulda, shoulda, woulda,’” Fauci said. “You can say we should have shut things down much earlier because of silent spread in the community. But what would the average man or woman on the street have done if we said, ‘You’ve got to close down the country because of three or four cases?’”

Scientists largely have been willing to admit their errors and update their assessments when new data becomes available.

“If you’re going to be wrong, be wrong in front of millions of people,” Offit joked about his PBS interview. “Make a complete ass of yourself.”

Scientists say their response to the novel coronavirus would have been more aggressive if people had realized how easily it spreads, even before infected people develop symptoms — and that many people remain asymptomatic. “For a virus to have pandemic potential, that is one of the greatest assets it can have,” Adalja said.

Although COVID-19 has a lower death rate than SARS and MERS, its ability to spread silently throughout a community makes it more dangerous, said Dr. Kathleen Neuzil, director of the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

People infected with SARS and MERS are contagious only after they begin coughing and experiencing other symptoms; patients without symptoms don’t spread either disease.

With SARS and MERS, “when people got sick, they got sick pretty badly and went right to the hospital and weren’t walking around transmitting it,” Christakis said.

Because it’s possible to quarantine people with SARS and MERS before they begin spreading the virus, “it was easier to put a moat around them,” said Offit.

Based on their knowledge of SARS and MERS, doctors believed they could contain the novel coronavirus by telling sick people to stay home. In the first few months of the pandemic, there appeared to be no need for healthy people to wear masks. That led health officials, including U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, to admonish Americans not to buy up limited supplies of face masks, which were desperately needed by hospitals.

Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk! https://t.co/UxZRwxxKL9

— U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) February 29, 2020

“We are always fighting the last epidemic,” Markel said. “Our experiences with coronaviruses was that they kind of burn themselves out in warm weather and they didn’t have the capacity to spread as viciously as this one has.”

Many scientists were skeptical of early anecdotes of pre-symptomatic spread.

“It takes a lot to overturn established dogma,” Wilson said. “Jumping on an initial finding, without corroborating it, can be just as bad as missing a new finding.”

As evidence of pre-symptomatic spread accumulated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in April changed its advice and urged Americans to mask up in public.

I continue to be baffled that we keep making the same mistakes. It’s almost like we’re doomed to repeat this cycle endlessly.

— Dr. Amesh Adalja

Adalja notes that the CDC’s earlier advice against wearing masks was based on research that found them to be ineffective against spreading influenza. New research, however, has shown masks reduce the transmission of the novel coronavirus, which spreads mainly through respiratory droplets but can travel in the air as tiny particles.

Adalja said the U.S. should have learned from its early stumbles. Yet in spite of abundant evidence, many communities still resist mandating masks or physical distancing.

“I continue to be baffled that we keep making the same mistakes,” Adalja said. “It’s almost like we’re doomed to repeat this cycle endlessly.”

Some Saw It Coming

There were scientists and journalists who immediately recognized the threat from the novel coronavirus.

“We had to immediately react as if this were going to hit every corner of the Earth,” said Adalja, who began blogging about the novel virus Jan. 20. It was clear “this was not a containable virus.”

Adalja led a 2018 project identifying the features that allow emerging viruses to become pandemic. In that prescient report, Adalja and his co-authors highlighted the threat of certain respiratory viruses that use RNA as their genetic material.

The more Adalja learned about the novel coronavirus, the more it seemed to embody the very type of threat he had warned about: one with “efficient human-to-human transmissibility, an appreciable case fatality rate, the absence of an effective or widely available medical countermeasure, an immunologically naïve population, virulence factors enabling immune system evasion, and respiratory mode of spread.”

Although the CDC set the wheels of its response in motion early, establishing an incident management structure on Jan. 7, the agency’s early missteps with testing are well known. The outbreak escalated rapidly, leading the World Health Organization to declare a health emergency on Jan. 30 and the U.S. to announce a public health emergency the next day.

Adalja and other experts dismissed some of the Trump administration’s early responses, such as quarantines and a travel ban on China, as “window dressing” that “squandered resources” and did little to contain the virus.

“There was political inertia about the public health actions that could have avoided lockdowns,” Adalja said. “We let this spill into hospitals … [and] if you give a virus a three-month head start, what do you expect?”

In a Jan. 7 post on a website of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Dr. Daniel Lucey labeled the pneumonia “Disease X,” using the WHO’s term for an emerging pathogen capable of causing a devastating epidemic, for which there are no tests, treatments or vaccines.

Lucey, adjunct professor of infectious diseases at Georgetown University Medical Center, notes that the international response was hampered by misinformation from Chinese officials. “The Chinese government said there was no person-to-person spread,” said Lucey, who traveled to China hoping to visit Wuhan. “That was a lie.”

When China revealed on Jan. 20 that 14 health workers had been infected, Lucey knew the virus would spread much farther. “To me, that was like Pandora’s box,” Lucey said. “I knew there would be more.”

When the number of infected health workers grew to 1,716 on Feb. 14, Lucey said, “I almost threw up.”

Although his blog is read by thousands of infectious disease specialists, Lucey emailed a special warning to journalists and a dozen doctors and public health officials, hoping to alert influential leaders.

“I put this heartfelt commentary in my email and just got silence,” Lucey said.

Succeeding With Vaccines

At the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, scientists had studied the protein structure of coronaviruses for years.

Researchers had developed a vaccine against SARS, Fauci said, although the epidemic ended before researchers could widely test it in humans.

“We showed it was safe and induced an immune response,” Fauci said. “The cases of SARS disappeared, so we couldn’t test it. … We put the vaccine in cold storage. If SARS comes back, we will do a phase 3 [clinical] trial.”

Dr. Barney Graham, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center, asked Chinese scientists to share the coronavirus’s genetic information. After the genome was published, Graham went immediately to work.

“We jumped all over it,” Fauci said. “We had a meeting on Jan. 10 and five days later they started [working on] a vaccine.”

Although scientists knew the COVID outbreak might end before a vaccine was needed, “we couldn’t take the chance,” Fauci said.

“We said, ‘We have no idea what is going to happen, so why don’t we just go ahead and proceed with a vaccine anyway?’”

Although his team worried about finding the money to pay for it all, Fauci told them, “‘Don’t worry about the money. I’ll find it, you do it, if we really need it, I’m sure we’ll get it.’”

Health experts hope the U.S. will learn from its mistakes and be better prepared for the next threat.

Given how many novel viruses have emerged in the past two decades, it’s likely that “pandemics are going to become more frequent,” Gounder said, making it critical to be ready for the next one.

Of all the lessons learned during the pandemic, the most important is that “we can’t be this unprepared again,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, who directed the CDC during the Obama administration.

“To me, this should be the most teachable moment of our lifetime, in terms of the need to strengthen public health in the United States and globally,” Frieden said.

But Gounder notes that U.S. public health funding tends to follow a cycle of crisis and neglect. The U.S. increased spending on public health and emergency preparedness after the 9/11 and anthrax attacks in 2001, but that funding has declined sharply over the years.

“We tend to invest a lot in that moment of crisis,” Gounder said. “When the crisis fades, we cut the budget. That leads us to be really vulnerable.”

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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stephenmccull · 4 years ago

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Many US Health Experts Underestimated the Coronavirus … Until It Was Too Late

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It can be republished for free.

A year ago, while many Americans were finishing their holiday shopping and finalizing travel plans, doctors in Wuhan, China, were battling a mysterious outbreak of pneumonia with no known cause.

The disease never gained a foothold in the U.S. and disappeared by 2004.

The U.S., by contrast, learned all the wrong lessons.

In a Jan. 24 story, Dr. William Schaffner told KHN the real danger to Americans was the common flu, which can kill up to 61,000 Americans a year.

“Coronavirus will be a blip on the horizon in comparison,” said Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “The risk is trivial.”

Dr. Paul Offit, who led development of a rotavirus vaccine, predicted that the coronavirus, like most respiratory bugs, would fade in the summer.

New sitrep out from Wuhan pneumonia outbreak. 59 cases between 12/12 and 12/29. SARS ruled out, but no other etiology identified. Still no evidence of H2H. https://t.co/b8ZdEGIzyJ

— Caitlin Rivers, PhD (@cmyeaton) January 5, 2020

“If you cry wolf too often, people will never pay attention,” said epidemiologist Mark Wilson, an emeritus professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Many experts fell victim to wishful thinking or denial, said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response during the Obama administration.

Dr. Fauci Doesn’t Cast Blame

It’s so easy to go back with the retrospect-o-scope and say ‘You coulda, shoulda, woulda.’

— Dr. Anthony Fauci