Gately and the wraith (pp. 923–924)
Gately wonders if his organic father the ironworker is not now maybe dead and dropping in and standing very still from time to time for a communiqué.
Context
Feverish in the ward, receiving the wraith, Gately extends the visitation to the one father he never met: he wonders whether "his organic father the ironworker" might now be dead and among the patient, Abiding dead dropping in on him. The never-met Estonian of 092 returns here as pure possibility — a father so absent that the only form he could take is a wraith, a father Gately can imagine only as one of the standing-still dead. Absence completing itself as ghost.