Gately down: 'Flesh-wound.'

Bleeding out in the street, Gately's speech is all hard-boiled understatement — "Flesh-wound," "Thanks for the feedback," "You owe me urine, Lenz" — and the register matters because it looks like irony and isn't. Unlike Day's protective wit, Gately's deadpan isn't a wall against feeling or a bid to seem above the situation; it's plain, affectionate, and load-bearing (he's still doing his job, still managing his residents, still worried about the Log and about not vomiting on Joelle). The joking is single-entendre — a way of staying present and keeping the others steady, not of escaping into cleverness. It's the anthology's fine distinction drawn in extremis: the same clipped comedy can be armor (Day) or plain courage (Gately), and the difference is whether it's used to leave the moment or to stay in it.