Gately, Sorkin, and the Twin Towers — "Gately lay in the Trauma Ward…"
Gately lay in the Trauma Ward in terrific infected pain, trying to Abide between cravings for relief by remembering a blinding white afternoon just after Xmas, when Fackelmann and Kite were off disposing of some of a furnished apartment’s furnishings and Gately was killing time in the apartment laminating some false MA drivers licenses rush-ordered by rich Philips Andover Academy kids for what turned out to be the last New Year’s Eve of Unsubsidized Time.
Context
The frame sentence that turns the whole Sorkin retrospect into an act of survival: mid-scene, the narration surfaces to show what the remembering is for — Gately is using memory the way he used to use Demerol, as the thing that stands between him and the craving. Abiding-by-memory in a single grammatical unit: pain, the temptation of "relief," and remembering as the wall between them.