Fackelmann's scam, the wraith returns (p. 920)
It’s like his shoulder’s grown its own testicles and every time his heart beats some very small guy kicked him in them, the testicles.
Context
Pain-time metered by pulse: Gately's shoulder registers each heartbeat as a discrete blow, the body turned metronome. A low-comic cousin of 166's "the second between heartbeats" — there the space between beats is where Abiding lives; here each beat is a kick. (Tense slip "beats … kicked" as written — Gately's register.)