The Trauma-Wing dream-visit: empathy, gossip, and the refusal to decide for him

pivotal · prob. 19 Nov YDAU

• When: prob. Thu 19 Nov YDAU, the morning-to-midday stretch of scene 169.
• What: The wished-for visit arrives — though the whole scene will turn out to be a dream, rendered as waking narration until the reveal. Gately looks past a nurse's hip and there he is — gnarled, crew-cutted, clear-eyed, totally relaxed, O2 tank in his lap. "Coughing is F.F.'s way of saying hello"; the spoken greeting is the tank-joke turned outward: "Still sucking air I see." He needles the hero-narrative — "'Figured God needed a little help the other night did you?'" "'You saw yourself as in charge. Thought you'd step in. Protect your fellowman from his consequences.'" — and relays the street's gossip: "Glenny Kubitz calls me and describes the thing blow by blowjob," Gately as God's personal Shane. Then the test: the Pakistani M.D. sweeps in singing the case for a Demerol drip to the mute, agonized narcotics addict, and "The M.D. doesn't even seem to be aware 34-year-sober Ferocious Francis is there. And Francis isn't making a peep." He lets the M.D. mistake him for "Mr. Gately Senior" without correcting it, ignores Gately's desperate Please-Jump-In-Here looks, and finally rises — "'Look kid, I'm gonna screw and let you settle this bullshit and come back up later,'" — delivering the sponsorship's last word from the doorway: "'Not my business to say one way or the other. Kid's gonna do what he decides he needs to do for himself. He's the one that's feeling it. He's the only one can decide.'" Then, going, "'You keep your pecker up, kid, and I'll bring some of the son of a bitches by to look in again later.'" — and, slipped in from the white hall: "'Might want to Ask For Some Help, deciding.'" Then the M.D. inhales to name Demerol, Gately's dream-fist closes on the man's groin, and the operatic scream wakes him: the visit dissolves — the visitor-chair back at the wall, only Joelle's folded-down bed-railing surviving as evidence anyone real was there. No waking F.F. visit is narrated anywhere in the hospital sequence; this dream is the last time the book puts him in a room, and it plays his pedagogy note-perfect.