Patch is placed in an old solitary cell while prison workmen tear down another block, leaving him in a cramped, damp space that feels like a relic from a harsher era. His swollen fists show the cost of the recent fight: Patch held back against the younger attacker but badly injured the bigger man, sending him to the infirmary.

Because of that fight, Patch understands the stakes have changed. He believes he is now effectively marked for death inside prison, comparing himself to Marty Tooms as another man waiting for an inevitable end.

Alone in the cell, Patch drifts to a memory of Grace telling him that if he ever got out, he had to leave the past behind and live. Her words force Patch to confront how completely he feels he has failed, not just in his search for her but in the larger course of his life.

The silence is broken by the young inmate in the next cell, whose nose Patch had broken in the fight. The boy nervously asks if Patch is all right, admits he does not want to be there, and begins to cry. Patch, without hatred, tries to steady him with blunt advice and a rough joke.

When Patch asks the boy’s age and name, the teenager reveals he is nineteen and that everyone calls him White. He says his foster father called him Tommy, though he thinks of himself more as Tom. As White keeps talking to fend off fear, Patch listens and reflects on how prison will slowly erase the boy’s former life until the system becomes the only world left to him.