ABSTRACT
Patrick was slowly waking up. Not in the immediate sense, of coming out of a nap; but in the more profound way: he was slowly coming to understand the length and breadth of what had happened, of what was happening. Where in the previous weeks his understanding was fractured and temporary at best, limited to what was right before him, or had only just passed—limited, too, by the sense of things his dreams and hallucinations left in their wake—now he was beginning to piece longer periods of time together, to comprehend the broad outlines (though not yet the specifics) of our shared story’s beginnings, to comprehend that he currently occupied its middle. As awakenings of this sort are wont to do, this one also began to nurture in Patrick a longing for the story’s end, a desire to know how things were shaping up and when things would begin to take their place as part of his past.
