Gately, the wraith, and the figurants — "When Gately opens his eyes again…"
When Gately opens his eyes again Geoffrey Day’s gone, and his hospital bed with its railings and I.V. bottles on stands has been moved way over so that it’s right up next to the bed of whoever the person in the room’s other bed is, so it’s like Gately and this unknown patient are a sexless old couple sleeping together but in separate beds, and Gately’s mouth goes oval and his eyes bug out with horror, and his effort at yelling hurts enough to wake him up, and his eyelids shoot up and rattle like old windowshades, and his hospital bed’s back where it’s always been, and a nurse is giving the anonymous guy in the other bed some sort of late-night-type shot you could tell was narcotic, and the patient, who has a very deep voice, is crying.
Context
A complete false-waking nightmare in one sentence: opening the eyes is itself the dream, and the real waking is bought with pain. The horror-content is proximity to the narcotized — his bed flush against a patient getting the exact late-night shot Gately is white-knuckle refusing; he wakes to the sound of that patient crying. Sets the room's rules right before the wraith arrives.