given a pen and still unable to say the simplest thing — "They never think to tell Gately…"
They never think to tell Gately what day it is. That Gately can't communicate even this most basic of requests makes him want to scream.
Context
The notebook doesn't rescue him. Forced to write left-handed against nothing, Gately produces marks that come out cuneiform, illegible even to himself — the channel handed to him fails at the first word. And the muteness keeps him from the smallest human data: nobody thinks to tell him what day it is, and he cannot form the question, so a man who wants only to know the date is locked out of it entirely, wanting to scream and unable even to do that. [sweep · shared-ground addiction-recovery]