the Serenity Prayer over the brawl

The recovery world's liturgy running as an undercurrent to the violence: while residents kick a downed man and Gately bleeds in the street, Charlotte Treat stands reciting the Serenity Prayer on a loop — the Program's central prayer deployed as the only tool she has against a chaos entirely beyond her control, which is precisely what the prayer is for. The institution's language surfaces reflexively in extremis, doing its work whether or not it can change anything.