The hospital serial opens — surgery, infection, muteness, the mute-confessional visitors

pivotal · c. Thu 12 → 20 Nov YDAU, St. Elizabeth's Trauma Wing

• When: the first full night and following days in St. Elizabeth's Hospital Trauma Wing (scene 161 header "?/12-15 Nov"); Joelle visits/mops his forehead on 14 Nov (scene 139). Exact day-count deliberately blurred (Dating note 7)
• What: Gately is in the Trauma Wing after emergency remedial surgery: the.44 round fragmented on impact and tore the soft tissue around his right humerus/scapula, missing bone. A massive infection sets in (staff monitor for what he mishears as "Noxzema" = toxemia); his throat is "raped" from intubation and he is effectively MUTE, only able to produce feline/bovine sounds — a state he experiences as being buried alive. The room's ceiling "breathes" with fever; figures flicker at vision's edge; a shadow of a man in a hat sits outside his door. Visitors stream in and unload on the mute Gately — Tiny Ewell (a broken confession of his childhood Money-Stealers'-Club fraud), Pat Montesian (weeping), the catatonic Mrs. Lopate ("almost certainly dreamed and unreal," 161), Joelle, Calvin Thrust. Gately is in escalating, near-unbearable pain and terror.