the Year of Glad collapse: computing the draw from the gurney
I will be out in plenty of time for tomorrow's semi; I trust Uncle Charles. Tonight's winner is almost sure to be Dymphna, sixteen but with a birthday two weeks under the 15 April deadline; and Dymphna will still be tired tomorrow at 0830, while I, sedated, will have slept like a graven image.
Context
Strapped to a psychiatric stretcher and bound for an E.R., Hal's mind runs the draw with perfect tournament fluency — seeds, age-deadlines, opponents' fatigue, his own 0830 start. The trained competitive body/mind keeps computing outcomes when everything else has collapsed; the tennis apparatus is the last operating system still up, so total that it reads sedation as a recovery advantage over a tired opponent. The instrument outlasts the person.