Slashed with a knife and socked in the face by Tinker, propelled through a broken window and onto the floor in order to shake the grasp of O’Connor, dispatching both O’Connor and Pat McGurn in short order while his coworkers take Tinker down, Dalton is done with the Double Deuce for the night. I suppose when you’re pulling down a solid six figgies to make sure a Missouri bar with an unpaved parking lot isn’t overrun by concussed hayseeds who’ll stab anyone who fails to laugh at “if I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me” you can make your own hours. Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life, etc. So out Dalton goes, through a back door into a vaguely defined sea-green area on the other side, the bright crimson stain on his torn shirt traveling with him.

Working late in the trauma unit, Dr. Elizabeth Clay walks across the hospital hall, browsing a patient’s medical file. For a split second we catch a glimpse of a bright red wall-mounted case, for a fire extinguisher perhaps, or some kind of emergency medical device. Professional and presentable, hair in a tight French braid, face half-covered by enormous glasses that make her look as if she’s viewing the entire world on an x-ray readout, she’s a world apart from Dalton, the sweaty, bloody, disheveled man whose (latest) knife wound she’s about to staple shut.

Yet she isn’t, is she a world apart, is she? She is connected, via not-quite-but-close-enough match on action editing, directly to Dalton via his exit through the Double Deuce’s back door. Her movement picks up almost where his leaves off, with just enough of a hiccup to keep it from reading as cutesy. He walks right out of the Double Deuce and into the Doctor’s life. The Doc takes his cinematic arrival literally in stride, like she’d been walking with him all along.