Chap­ter 220 unfolds in the evening, at sev­en-fif­teen, when Patch is sweep­ing the floors in the met­al shop. The pow­er sud­den­ly goes out, an event that is not entire­ly uncom­mon in the facil­i­ty. Black­jack, as usu­al, grum­bles about the sit­u­a­tion, voic­ing his com­plaints as the work­ers deal with the inter­rup­tion. War­den Riley had long planned to replace the out­dat­ed Kohler sys­tem with a more effi­cient com­mer­cial-grade gen­er­a­tor, though that was still in the future. For now, the flick­er­ing lights sig­nal the begin­ning of anoth­er long and uncom­fort­able night, with the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem fail­ing to work, caus­ing the heat to build up inside the cells. The build­ing’s atmos­phere becomes more sti­fling, with the dim emer­gency light­ing cast­ing a sick­ly yel­low hue, mak­ing the whole place feel like a dete­ri­o­rat­ing busi­ness soon to close its doors. Despite the dis­com­fort, Patch con­tin­ues with his sweep­ing, unfazed by the dim­ming lights and the grow­ing heat, focus­ing instead on the monot­o­nous task at hand.

Once Patch fin­ish­es sweep­ing, he puts the broom, buck­et, cloths, and cleanser back in the sup­ply cup­board, then walks deep­er into the build­ing. His des­ti­na­tion is the library, where Coop­er is fin­ish­ing up his work for the day. Every last Thurs­day of the month, Coop­er takes stock of the library, grum­bling about the lack of over­time pay but still enjoy­ing the peace and qui­et it brings. As Patch arrives, he men­tions that War­den Riley instruct­ed him to over­see the remain­der of the month until some­one else can be trained to take over his duties. Coop­er, always will­ing to help, asks if Patch can assist with the box­es before he leaves. Togeth­er, they move the books into the store­room, and as they fin­ish, Patch takes his leave, fol­low­ing his usu­al route through the build­ing, turn­ing left twice and then right, before reach­ing the main block. As he walks down the famil­iar path, he fuss­es with his eye patch and then enters his cell, where he lies on his bunk and pulls a book from beneath the mat­tress. The new guard locks him down for the night, mark­ing the end of his duties for the evening.

Mean­while, Coop­er wraps up his own shift in the library, tak­ing his hat from the rack and slip­ping it on. He grabs his rain­coat and worn leather satchel, which con­tains a sin­gle book, an apple, and a copy of The Exam­in­er. After lock­ing up, he heads down toward B Block, pass­ing through two doors, one of which catch­es for a moment, before he arrives at the desk. He drops his keys into the draw­er and waits for the buzzer to sound, sig­nal­ing his exit. Black­jack, sit­ting at the desk, casu­al­ly reads the Sports sec­tion of the news­pa­per, whistling at the men­tion of the Yan­kees head­ing toward a his­toric sea­son. He com­ments on a pho­to of a young boy in the arti­cle, spec­u­lat­ing that the boy might be the next big name in sports, sim­i­lar to Jack Nick­laus. Coop­er, not par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the sport, responds indif­fer­ent­ly before sign­ing out and prepar­ing to sign in for the morn­ing shift. As he does so, he and Black­jack exchange a few words about the game, with Coop­er humor­ous­ly acknowl­edg­ing that it might become his sport after all. As he walks away, Coop­er rais­es a hand in farewell, while Black­jack press­es the buzzer to let him out. If Black­jack had glanced up from his news­pa­per, he might have noticed some­thing out of the ordi­nary. That night, Coop­er walks with a slight limp, a sub­tle but sig­nif­i­cant detail that hints at some­thing more beneath the sur­face, per­haps a lin­ger­ing injury or an unno­ticed event that took place ear­li­er.