the man everyone talks at, who cannot ask · S2
the drowned panic of not being able to ask questions or have any input into what somebody's saying is so awful it sort of dwarfs the pain
Context
The figurant condition turned inside out and made unbearable: shot, raped-throated, unable to make a sound, Gately lies while a parade of visitors talks at him — and the discovery is that the muteness is worse than the gunshot. Not being able to ask a single question, to get one word of input into what's being decided about his life and his legal fate, produces a drowning panic that literally dwarfs the physical agony. He can only blink and mew; the surrender the scene arrives at is a surrender to speechlessness itself, mute and powerless in a room full of people speaking. [sweep · shared-ground addiction-recovery]