Patch spends each week in suspended agony waiting for his time with Marty Tooms. On the night before those meetings, Patch barely sleeps, turning possible questions over in his mind and trying to hold on to the most important ones.

The strain changes Patch's daily behavior. Patch grows quieter, and during library work Cooper notices the shift and asks about Patch's mental health. Later, in the yard, Patch walks the perimeter fence while work crews throw up so much dust that it stings his eye.

On Patch's second lap, an elderly inmate called Tug falls into step beside him. Tug, nicknamed for a long-ago murder connected to a riverboat, first badgers Patch about ordering books or material related to Ursula Andress and curses the uselessness of the prison library. Tug then points at an excavator and fantasizes about driving it through the fences during yard time, turning the talk toward escape.

When Patch asks whether anyone has ever gotten out, Tug explains that no one has escaped in forty years. Tug describes how Sonny Parker's outside crew drilled near the prison, tunneled beneath the fences through shallow ground, and used a narrow hole to smuggle in a gun, which Sonny used to force his way out. A brief fight breaks out nearby before Blackjack shuts it down, and Tug asks if Patch is considering something similar. Patch answers that Patch has no place to go, underscoring Patch's exhaustion, isolation, and lack of any life beyond the prison walls.