Gately's hospital visitors (p. 818)
Almost certainly dreamed and unreal was the interval when Gately came up with a start and saw Mrs. Lopate, the objay dart from the Shed that they come and install next to the Ennet House viewer some days, sitting there in a gunmetal wheelchair, face contorted, head cocked, hair stringy, looking not at him but more like seemingly at whatever array of I.V. bottles and signifying monitors hung above and behind his big crib, so not speaking or even looking at him but still in some sense being there with him, somehow. […] And that this realization was real even though the lady’s presence in the room was not, the complexities of which made his eyes roll up in his head again as he passed back out again.
Context
Between Pat Montesian's visit and Joelle's silent one: a visitation explicitly filed as dream ("Almost certainly dreamed and unreal") that nonetheless delivers a true waking insight — the trimmed middle is Gately's first-ever realization that the catatonic Shed lady and the late-night tree-toucher outside Unit #5 are the same person. Dreamed frame, real content: the exact hinge the wraith-night of 162 will live on.