Gately's dream M.D. temptation
Second. Second. He tried to Abide. No single second was past enduring. […] His shoulder beat like a big heart, and the pain was sickeninger than ever. No single second was past standing. Memories of good old Demerol rose up, clamoring to be Entertained.
Context
Just woken from the dream where the singsong Pakistani M.D. nearly got to name Demerol: heart monitor going silently nuts, sweat coming off every part of him, and Gately working the program in real time — Abiding compressed all the way down to bare second-counting, "Second. Second." This is 166's doctrine enacted rather than stated, arguably the practice's purest on-page moment — spine even though the scene itself stays untagged (dreams and memory-forgetting own its machinery; binding exclusion). "sickeninger" is Gately's register, as written.