For the next few minutes everyone waited. The guards finished their cigarettes and busted out a deck of cards. Blaustein and Stanpipe would come over periodically and shine a bright light in O'Hara's eyes and then they would follow it up by checking his vital signs. The Irishman just laid there, wondering if he was going to die. He stared at the wooden clock on the wall, its pendulum swinging back and forth, the seconds ticking by. While he was watching it, the pendulum began to look almost unreal, as if it were contorting itself with every swing, then becoming almost fluid. The hideous wallpaper that covered the lab was a sort of olive green striping on a white background, which now began to peel off of the walls and dance about in mad spirals and unnatural, noneuclidean geometric patterns. As Blaustein and Stanpipe again approached the gurney, their faces were twisted into horrific cartoon characters. Blaustein appeared as an almost elephantine creature, his face gray and wrinkled, his eyes black, and his skin looking leathery and diseased. Miss Stanpipe looked like some sort of creature entirely alien to earth, her skin almost translucent and with her eyes glowing like coals. O'Hara frantically looked over at the counselors, still sitting there playing their card game. Every time one of them placed a card on the cheap pine table the wood seemed to ripple like rolling waves and the cards themselves began to drip off of the table. The guards faces became like flesh-colored gargoyles, menacing and primal, their laughter sending chills through his body as they howled over some joke he couldn't hear, their tongues lolling out like drunken demons. The hum of the lab equipment was almost deafening now, too, and the medical lamps seemed to be brighter than the sun. O'Hara screamed like had never screamed before.