Gately's hospital visitors
Gately came up with a start and saw Mrs. Lopate, the objay dart from the Shed that they come and install next to the Ennet House viewer some days, sitting there in a gunmetal wheelchair, face contorted, head cocked, hair stringy, looking not at him but more like seemingly at whatever array of I.V. bottles and signifying monitors hung above and behind his big crib, so not speaking or even looking at him but still in some sense being there with him, somehow. Even though there was no way she could have really been there, it was the first time Gately realized that the catatonic Mrs. L. had been the same lady he’d seen touching the tree in #5’s front lawn late at night, some nights, when he’d first come on Staff. That they were the same person.
Context
The catatonic-lady thread surfaces inside Gately's delirium: Mrs. Lopate, the Shed's "objay dart" — a person filed as furniture — appears wheelchair-parked at his bedside, and the realization that she's the tree-toucher from Unit #5's lawn is real even though her presence isn't. Total psychic shutdown embodied, "in some sense being there with him" while Gately lies mute and immobilized, her temporary twin.