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Georgie works as an orderly in the hospital emergency room. He performs non-medical tasks, such as cleaning and basic patient care. Georgie steals drugs from the hospital and works under their influence. The drugs seem to heighten the trauma related to the emergency room setting. For example, Georgie continues to see blood on the floor despite already mopping it clean. He is terrified by the sound of his shoes squishing, presumably from the imagined blood. Georgie exhibits emotional distress, crying and trembling without being able to express why, and he quietly accepts (or possibly doesn’t notice) the Family Services doctor’s condescending attitude toward him. Because of his drug use, Georgie has trouble seeing, understanding, and remembering. For example, he forgets that his truck has no headlights until the sun sets and he is unable to drive.
Despite the story’s overt attention to Georgie’s drug-induced dysfunction, he is a complex and sympathetic character. He displays resourcefulness and compassion. For example, he removes the hunting knife from Mr. Weber’s eye and then uses the same knife to remove the baby bunnies from their dead mother’s womb, briefly obsessing about their care. He worries about the narrator, longs to go to church, and ultimately offers to help the AWOL Hardee escape to Canada. He asserts that his job is to save lives, leaving readers to interpret how much of his self-assessment reflects reality and how much of it is delusion or a manifestation of unfulfilled desire.
