The wraith's report and the fever-vision in the bedside chair

texture · 16/17 Nov YDAU (night)

• When: night of 16/17 Nov YDAU through feverish dawn, in the Trauma Wing — days after Gately is shot.
• What: Wounded, mute, and unvisited by the one person he wants — Gately wishes his sponsor would hobble by — Gately gets two non-literal Gehaneys instead. The wraith claims to have just paid "a small quantumish call to the old spotless Brighton two-decker of one Ferocious Francis Gehaney," where the old man is shaving and putting on a clean white T-shirt, and "predicts F.F. will be visiting the Trauma Wing soon to offer Gately unconditional empathy and fellowship and acerbic Crocodilian counsel." Then at dawn, red with fever, Gately thinks he sees F.F. in the bedside chair — chin dotted with bits of Kleenex, smiling grimly around blue tubes and an unlit cigar — saying "'Well kid at least you're still on this side of the fuckin' sod, I guess there's something to be said for that there. And are you as yet sober, then?'" before disappearing between blinks. Both appearances are dream/hallucination-register and claim nothing about F.F.'s actual whereabouts — a register the fuller Trauma-Wing visit of event 10 turns out to share; even absent, he is the shape Gately's sobriety thinks in.