The Dilaudid binge (p. 937)
Gately nodded out into a dream where he was on a Beverly-Needham bus whose sides said PARAGON BUS LINES: THE GRAY LINE. In his stuporous recall over four years later in St. E.’s he realizes that this bus is the bus from the dream that wouldn’t end and wouldn’t go anywhere, but has the sickening realization that the connection between the two buses is itself a dream, or is in a dream, and it’s now that his fever returns to new heights and his line on the heart monitor gets a funny little hitch like a serration at the 1st and 3rd nodes, which makes an amber light flash at the nurse’s station down the hall.
Context
One sentence holding a Y.W. nod-dream, its YDAU recognition, and the book's deepest dream-regress: mid-binge Gately nods out onto the PARAGON gray bus, and the remembering Gately in St. E.'s recognizes it as the unending bus of the fever-dream (p. 933) — then has the sickening realization that even the connection "is itself a dream, or is in a dream," and the fever spikes on cue. The one place the book pulls the frame out from under dream-recognition itself, escalating 018's you-can-ask-if-you're-asleep and 162's dream-he-knew-was-a-dream past any stable floor. ("[O]ver four years later" is the standing scene-173/175 chronology flag, as printed; "the nurse's station" vs. p. 922's "the nurses' station" — each carried as its page has it.)