Kate Gompert on the psych ward (p. 78)
Her face, foreshortened by its downward angle, was working in the spread, writhing configurations of weeping, but no tears emerged. ‘I just want you to shock me. Just get me out of this. I’ll do anything you want.’ […] He put her get me out of this in quotation marks. He was adding his own post-assessment question, Then what?, when Kate Gompert began weeping for real.
Context
The scene's close: dry weeping — the configurations of grief without the tears, affect's machinery running empty — turning real only as the doctor converts her plea into chart notation. His "Then what?" is the question the whole theme keeps asking of every exit Kate names.