Dodo arrives at Pennhurst’s hospital wing badly hurt from his fall off Chona Malachi’s roof: both ankles broken, hip shattered, and his right fibula snapped. After a week in a Pottstown hospital bed in traction and handcuffed, the handcuffs are removed at Pennhurst admissions, where Dodo—confused and expecting Aunt Addie and Uncle Nate—struggles to get up and is sedated.

A doctor with a foreign accent performs a quick exam that Dodo cannot understand through the drug fog and declares him an “imbecile.” Attendants bag Dodo’s belongings, including marbles Chona gave him for luck, and Dodo never sees any of it again. He is wheeled away from the bright admissions area into darker corridors where a growing stench overwhelms him; when Dodo vomits, attendants respond by strapping him into a straitjacket and continuing on.

Dodo is left on Ward C-1, a crowded ninety-bed ward, still in traction and unable to move. When Dodo wakes, he sees a painfully thin white boy in the next steel crib, twisted into severe knots and wearing only a diaper and undershirt; Dodo privately names him “Monkey Pants.” Alone in the ward during the day, Dodo tries to communicate and cries for home, while Monkey Pants watches, attempts to speak, and struggles to make himself understood.

Dodo gradually realizes Monkey Pants is urgently trying to teach him something, using eye movements and strenuous, spastic gestures. After Dodo sings a hymn to comfort himself, Monkey Pants becomes purposeful and, with great effort, raises a finger to his lips in a clear warning. Dodo understands the message: to survive here, Dodo must play dumb, stay quiet, and not reveal himself.

As adult male patients begin wandering back into the ward and move toward the new boy, Monkey Pants curls into his protective posture and soils his diaper, creating a stink that draws attention away from Dodo. Dodo recognizes the gesture as deliberate protection—an act of solidarity and love in a place defined by cruelty and loneliness.