Marathe's intake interview with Pat (pp. 750–751)
‘The legs—I do an overdose in Berne, which is in my home of Switzerland, while alone, and I fall down face-down while my legs, they remain how you say tangle, tangled in the chair on which occurred this injection, fix. A stupid. I lie down without conscious or to move for many days, and my legs, they—comment-on-dit?—they are sleepy, lose the circulating, suffer gangrene, become infectious.’ Marathe sniffed while stoically shrugging. ‘As well the nose and mouth, from facial squishing of lying face-down in a position without conscious for days. I die almost. All is amputated, for my life.
Context
The cover story built to explain the stumps and the veil in one stroke: a fabricated overdose that rederives his train-cult amputations and an invented facial ruin as consequences of addiction. The legend works because it converts deformity into recovery-narrative currency — Pat receives it with "This is your story. This is your first step."