Redsand Canyon did he go on down the mountainside, and leave you all alone?

I mean, if you want things. Again, his voice is inflectionless. It is so close to being a fully-formed question, and without the uptick, it seems comically downturned. Someone you want to stay with, somewhere you want to go...a god to worship.

He looks over at Riley again when he feels he's ready to. The imagined knife in his torso, it twists.

Nothing behind the eyes. He feels foolish for even suggesting the possiblity of wanting. There were boys that came straight out of the womb with sailor caps or a telescope already set far beyond an electric horizon, filled to the brim with juvenile but ultimately pointless hopes and dreams-- and then there were boys like Riley, moribund. 

Dementia patients had more pipe dreams than he would ever hope to have (provided that hope was in his limited arsenal of neurological chemicals.)