Gately's hospital visitors (pp. 818–819)
Then at some later point Joelle van Dyne was sitting in a chair just outside the railing of the bed, veiled, wearing sweatpants and a sweater that was starting to unravel, in a pink-bordered veil, not saying anything, probably looking at him, probably thinking he was unconscious with his eyes open, or delirious with Noxzema. […] The girl’s silence and the blankness of her veil frightened him after a while, and he wished he could ask her to come back later.
Context
The bedside vigil: Joelle silent behind the pink-bordered veil, Gately voiceless behind a ruined throat — two blank surfaces facing each other with no channel open. The veil experienced from the outside, as frightening blankness rather than shame-free concealment: the hard counterweight to U.H.I.D.'s own doctrine, and it frightens the one person in the book who will later be trusted to look under it.