Gately, the wraith, and the figurants (pp. 842–843)
What makes Gately most uncomfortable now as he starts to try to wake up in the lemonlight of true hospital morning is that he can’t remember putting the maimed flies out of their misery, ever, after the M.P. passed out, can’t mentally see himself stepping on them or wrapping them in paper towels and flushing them down the toilet or something, but he feels like he must have; it seems somehow real vital to be able to remember his doing something more than just hunkering blankly down amid his Transformer-cars and trying to see if he could hear tiny agonized screams, listening very intently. But he can’t for the life of him remember doing more than trying to hear, and the sheer cerebral stress of trying to force a more noble memory should have awakened him, on top of the dextral hurt
Context
Memory failure as moral verdict: Gately needs there to be a memory of mercy, feels there must be one, and the faculty won't produce it — you can't retro-fit a nobler self into the record. Third firing of the book's recall-block idiom ("can't for the life of him"), here at its most damning.