Ferocious Francis and the Pakistani M.D. — "Then perhaps you would please, Mr…"
‘Then perhaps you would please, Mr. Gately Senior, if you please help us help your concerned and brave boy here […]’ the Pakistani sings over his shoulder to Ferocious Francis, as if they were the room’s only adults. He’s assuming Ferocious Francis is Gately’s organic Dad.
Context
The drug-pushing M.D., trying to enlist an ally, looks at the old man in the bedside chair and calls him "Mr. Gately Senior," and "Gately knows a Crocodile never bothers to correct anybody's misimpression." The scene quietly confers a title the book has been circling: Ferocious Francis, Gately's AA sponsor, is the father Gately never had, and the outside world reads him as such on sight. The moment lands because of who else is in the room — Gately's real fathers were the absent ironworker and the abusive M.P., and here, at his most helpless, mute and in agony, the man occupying the paternal chair is one he chose and who chose him back. The found father doesn't claim the name or deny it; he just lets it stand, which is itself a kind of adoption.