Clad in a low-pulled hat and giant sunglasses, Gemma heads to the hospital -- not as a patient -- and as she's going through security, Margaret gets a good look at her. She comes over and asks Gemma, "What in God's name happened?" "I flew my broomstick into a brick wall," Gemma cracks impatiently. Margaret's not in the mood to joke. She grabs Gemma by the elbow and walks her down the hall, saying urgently, "This is why Tara has to get out. Do you understand that?" Gemma protests, "My son would never do that!" perhaps conveniently forgetting that she suggested he do precisely that to Ima a few episodes ago -- and Jax did. Because Margaret is not omniscient, she can only rebut, "I'm sure Clay's mother said the same thing about him."

TANGENT AHOY! Margaret's mention of Clay's hypothetical mother brings up a good point: What do we really know about Clay? About where he comes from and what shaped him as a person? Almost everyone else in the club, we have something. But Clay ... all we have ever seen is that as a young man, he was orbiting the Gemma-JT axis; as a young man, he was under Piney's wing. He's a human mockingbird, quietly moving into other people's lives and taking them for his, creating nothing of his own.

Okay, back to the scene. Gemma whips off her sunglasses and says, "I love Tara. You have no idea how much." Margaret replies, "Then don't stop them from leaving." As it turns out, Margaret has tapped into the administrator-fu and made a deal with Providence Hospital: they still want Tara, even with the healing hand, and they're willing to take her on while she's recuperating. This way, Tara's got her way out and St. Please Pass Another Bond can get one well-compensated and incapacitated surgeon off the books. "If you really love her, you will let her take this job, Gemma," Margaret says. She walks off, leaving Gemma reeling.

No sooner has Gemma shaken that off than she runs into Jax in the hall. Jax ... is taken aback at how badly his mother has been battered, and the only reason he does not leave the hospital, hop on his bike, then hunt down Clay to kill him is because Gemma decides not to tell him that "Oh, your stepdad rang my bell because I called him out for siccing a hitman on your wife." Instead, she pushes every button she installed during Jax's childhood. They're in the chapel, and Jax shakily admits, "I thought we could pull this off. Cash out. But I was an idiot. I am as delusional as he is." Gemma says, "No," but does not add, "You are perhaps more delusional, because you are staking some part of your future on the premise that your old lady is going to make it to the end of the season with either her career or her sanity intact." Instead, she says that Jax is a better man that Clay is. Frankly, that's not a difficult accomplishment.