Hai closes HomeMarket alone because BJ leaves early and Sony has to return to his group home. The store empties after an AA crowd passes through, and Hai, foggy from exhaustion and withdrawal, grows uneasy when he thinks someone is watching the drive-thru. Just before closing, a drunk older man comes in for leftover food, then reveals himself as Detective Lippman. Lippman asks to post a flyer about Rachel Miotti, a young woman murdered nearby seven years earlier, and explains that he is informally helping reopen the cold case. After Lippman leaves, the encounter intensifies Hai’s unease as he walks home through the dark.

At the house, Hai goes straight to bed but wakes to explosive noises and fears something is wrong with Grazina. The sounds turn out to be fireworks across the river, but they have already triggered Grazina into a wartime state. Hai finds her terrified and disoriented, speaking of her brother Kristof and acting as if she is back in Europe during World War II. Because ordinary reassurance fails, Hai decides to meet Grazina inside her delusion and invents a military persona, calling himself Sergeant Pepper.

As "Sergeant Pepper," Hai tells Grazina that her family is safe and that they must evacuate to "Gettysburg." Grazina responds with sudden clarity and authority, warning him about both Hitler and Stalin and giving him messages for her father. To keep her from wandering, Hai turns the bathroom into an imaginary jeep, seating them in the bathtub and driving her through the night. The game steadies Grazina: she talks about roads, bombed water, her childhood lake, and survival, while also feeding Hai a Pop-Tart for the journey. Hai drifts in and out of the performance, suspended between his own life and Grazina’s past, until dawn finally comes and she falls asleep.

When the night quiets, Hai covers Grazina with a pillow and quilt and notices a hidden framed photograph above the tub showing a much younger, joyful Grazina with her family. Seeing that image pushes Hai into a deeper understanding of her illness: he imagines dementia as memory collapsing and rearranging itself until the past floods the present. The realization overwhelms him. After forty-seven days sober, Hai retrieves the pills he has been hiding and swallows them.

Back beside the tub, the drugs begin to blur Hai’s senses. Grazina half wakes and says they have reached Gettysburg because she can still see him. Then she asks whether he has killed anyone yet, forcing Hai into silence. As the pills take hold and the world narrows into static and darkness, Hai tries to shut everything out, ending the chapter in relapse, exhaustion, and dread.