The blind spot: an odd gullibility in the presence of human sludge

texture · STANDING (YDAU)

• When: STANDING trait; most consequential in the Lenz case (events 14-15, 17-18)
• What: For all the steel, Pat has one characterized weakness, and the novel prices it. She coaches newer Staff to reframe residents they'd like to bludgeon to death as valuable teachers of patience, tolerance, self-discipline, restraint — and she practices the reframe past the point of safety: Randy Lenz reads as obvious human wreckage to everybody at the House except Pat, whose odd gullibility in the presence of human sludge keeps him housed right up to the night his cruelty detonates the catastrophe of event 14. Gately has to remind himself that the same gullibility is one of the reasons he himself got in. Mercy's gate, the timeline's shape suggests, does not discriminate in either direction.