Fackelmann, Sunshine, the beach (p. 974)
Somebody overhead asked somebody else if they were ready, and somebody commented on the size of Gately’s head and gripped Gately’s head, and then he felt an upward movement deep inside that was so personal and horrible he woke up. Only one of his eyes would open because the floor’s impact had shut the other one up plump and tight as a sausage.
Context
The novel's last hinge. In the trauma-wing present, hands grip the febrile Gately's head and lift — and he "woke up" not in the hospital but on the wet floor of Fackelmann's apartment, inside the worst memory he owns, where the narrative then stays to the end of the book. Waking runs backward: the frame and the remembered material swap places without a seam. From this sentence on, "now" in Infinite Jest is a memory.