In the aftermath of an evangelist attack on the kitchens one day and skeleton hell the next, Dick Dickerson has the look of a man who would very much like to switch off the game and go outside for a walk. He’s ill-rested, drawn, and exposed in a kept setting he prefers to inhabit as the keeper, with pants and a shirt and maybe a handsome vest.

So he breathes in long and slow under her scrutiny and he says:

“Please.”

He’s between applications of salve, burns scabbed at his elbow over the sheets, stitches in his cheek ready to come out. Superficial. The round clay tab of a small talisman sits at his sternum on a leather cord.

Beneath the blanket, his right leg doesn’t look ready to take his weight without cracking and oozing: a work in progress, better than it was. A crutch might be enough to see him back to his own quarters, provided he doesn’t miss a step.