Gately dreams the M.D.'s temptation
Gately’d always found Demerol with a slight Talwin kicker such a smooth and orderly buzz. A somehow deliciously symmetrical buzz: the mind floats easy in the exact center of a brain that floats cushioned in a warm skull that itself sits perfectly centered on a cushion of soft air some neckless distance above the shoulders, and inside all is a somnolent hum. Chest rises and falls on its own, far away. The easy squeak of your head’s blood is like bedsprings in the friendly distance.
Context
Carlisle's Squeaks-motif catch: "to hear the squeak" is the A.F.R.'s own idiom for sensing danger, so the drug's most seductive self-description arrives with the book's danger-signal already embedded in it. His linkage, recorded, not adopted.