- It's 1am the following morning.
- Louis and a nurse named Emily are sitting in Prior's hospital room. Emily tells Louis that Prior will be all right.
- Louis says that isn't true.
- Okay, no he won't be, says the nurse. She tells him she's given Prior something to put him to sleep.
- He asks her how deep.
- "Orbiting the moons of Jupiter," says the nurse (2.3.6).
- The nurse awkwardly asks if Louis is Prior's partner.
- Louis says yes.
- Emily says this must be hell for Louis.
- "It is. Hell. The After Life. Which is not at all like a rainy afternoon in March, by the way, Prior," says Louis (2.3.10).
- The nurse notes that Prior Walter is kind of a weird name, saying it sounds like "the Walter before this one" (2.3.14).
- Louis tells her that there were lots of other Walters before Prior. His family goes all the way back to the Mayflower and even to the Norman Conquest of England. There's a Prior Walter embroidered into the Bayeux tapestry.
- Louis starts talking about how dedicated Mathilde stitched this crazy elaborate tapestry while her husband, William the Conqueror, was off at war for a long time. He talks about how devoted she must have been to William, how even if he'd come back crippled and infected she still would have loved him.
- Louis wonders why he can't be more like Mathilde.
- He asks Emily to tell Prior, if he wakes up, that he had to go. Louis says he's going for a walk in the park.