redflagged as a relapse-risk, and the newcomer's Higher Power — "Some newcomers’ Higher Power is like…"
Some newcomers’ Higher Power is like Nature, the sky, the stars, the cold-penny tang of the autumn air, who knows.
Context
The institution's surveillance apparatus doing its rounds: going-off-alone as a flagged relapse-risk, the All-Staff Meeting, the repeated spot-urines, the E.M.I.T. screen — the machinery by which a House watches its residents for the thing it exists to prevent. And Gately's charitable read, that a newcomer's Higher Power might just be the night air, is the Program's open-handed side standing directly beside its policing side, both aimed at the same man, both wrong about him.