In the chap­ter titled “Miles,” the pro­tag­o­nist, Miles, nav­i­gates the hos­pi­tal lob­by, grap­pling with the emo­tion­al strain regard­ing his broth­er Wyn­ton’s con­di­tion while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deal­ing with his feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy fol­low­ing a vis­it from Dean Richards. Miles is try­ing to escape the chaos of the hos­pi­tal when he acci­den­tal­ly trips over an enor­mous man’s foot. This man, sport­ing a han­dle­bar mus­tache and mir­rored sun­glass­es, is sur­pris­ing­ly apolo­getic, which dis­arms Miles momen­tar­i­ly despite his irri­ta­tion.

After this awk­ward encounter, Miles attempts to leave but finds him­self caught again in con­ver­sa­tion with the same man, who iden­ti­fies him­self as Felix Rivera from Den­ver. Felix’s quirky demeanor and atten­tion-grab­bing fash­ion sense—including a col­or­ful shirt and suspenders—add a lay­er of absur­di­ty to their inter­ac­tion. He rec­og­nizes Miles as a descen­dant of Alon­so Fall, an ances­tral con­nec­tion that Miles finds puz­zling, par­tic­u­lar­ly when Felix makes an odd com­ment about Miles’s dog, Dizzy.

Amid the bizarre ban­ter, Felix express­es con­cern for Wyn­ton, mak­ing a com­ment that seems both weird and out of place, stir­ring mixed feel­ings in Miles. Despite his dis­com­fort with the sit­u­a­tion, Miles finds him­self amused at Felix’s eccen­tric behav­ior. Felix refers to Miles glow­ing, a state­ment that per­plex­es Miles even fur­ther, leav­ing him ques­tion­ing the man’s intent and san­i­ty.

Ulti­mate­ly, Miles exits the hos­pi­tal, feel­ing baf­fled yet slight­ly light­ened by the strange encounter. He leaves behind the unset­tling hos­pi­tal atmos­phere for the cool­er embrace of the day out­side, pon­der­ing the pecu­liar­i­ties of human inter­ac­tion that can arise in such emo­tion­al­ly charged envi­ron­ments. This brief encounter high­lights his cur­rent emo­tion­al tur­moil and sets the stage for fur­ther explo­ration of famil­ial rela­tion­ships in the con­text of cri­sis.