Gately's Higher-Power confession and Bob Death
And his dreams late that night, after the Braintree/Bob Death Commitment, seem to set him under a sort of sea, at terrific depths, the water all around him silent and dim and the same temperature he is.
Context
The single closing sentence of the Braintree Commitment scene, and the first dream in Gately's late-book dream-cycle. Hours earlier a biker named Bob Death leaned off his idling hawg and told Gately the wise-old-fish parable — "'Morning, boys, how's the water?'" / "'What the fuck is water?'" — and overnight the parable is metabolized into this: Gately set in the water, at its own temperature, the medium finally felt instead of invisible. It seeds the whole hospital water-architecture and the novel's final beach image.