by White Flag suggestion, hit your knees
It occurs to Gately by White Flag suggestion that who gives a fuck how it’d look, he ought to hit his knees right here on the headlit blacktop and ask for guidance on this from a Higher Power. But he stands there, Lenz chattering in his shadow.
Context
The Program reaches Gately at gunpoint: the White Flag meeting's suggestion — hit your knees, ask for guidance — arrives unbidden as the actual counsel his mind offers in a lethal moment, the doctrine internalized deeply enough to speak inside a standoff. And the honest "But he stands there" marks the exact distance he still is from it: the suggestion is real and available and he does not take it, a man who knows the sober move and cannot yet make it with a Bulldog trained on his residents. The recovery is genuine and incomplete in the same sentence.