The Patient
Told through a gripping series of internet message board posts, this thriller follows Parker, an arrogant, newly minted psychiatrist at a grim New England mental hospital. Parker becomes fixated on the asylum's darkest secret: a forty-year-old patient locked away since childhood, whose ever-shifting symptoms have driven every previous doctor to madness or suicide. Defying the terrified hospital directors who keep the patient in strict isolation, Parker takes it upon himself to cure the incurable. Instead, his overconfidence unlocks a nightmare that shatters his entire understanding of the world.
- Parker H. - Psychiatrist at Connecticut State Asylum
- Jocelyn - Parker’s fiancée
- Dr. Rose G - Medical Director at Connecticut State Asylum
- Joe - Patient at Connecticut State Asylum
- Nessie - Nursing Director at Connecticut State Asylum
- Dr. Bruce P - Parker’s supervisor at Connecticut State Asylum
- Dr. Thomas A - Joe’s original therapist at Connecticut State Asylum
- Nathan - Sexual assault victim, patient at Connecticut State Asylum
- Martha and Charles - Joe’s parents
- The book is told through a series of posts on a forum where Parker talks about his experience at Connecticut State Asylum.
- Joe has been a patient for over twenty years without a diagnosis.
- Parker finds Joe’s file, which says Joe was admitted at age six with night terrors and hallucinations of a creature living in his bedroom walls that attacked him at night.
- Joe was discharged but was brought back by his parents the next day with symptoms of propensity towards violence and sadism.
- When Parker was ten, his mother was sent to a psychiatric hospital for paranoid schizophrenia.
- Nessie dies - Joe is told she threw herself off the roof after delivering Joe his medication.
- Several patients that Joe was forced to share a room with ended up committing suicide or dying mysteriously.
- Every therapist that has treated Joe has had a mental breakdown and most ended up committing suicide.
- Dr. G. allows Parker to treat Joe.
- Parker’s first impression of Joe is that he is lucid and sane but bitter and frustrated.
- Joe tells Parker that all his doctors knew he was sane but couldn’t do anything about it because his parents paid the asylum to come up with a reason to keep him there.
- Parker makes a plan to help Joe break out of the asylum, but Dr. P. figures it out and stops him.
- Dr. A. tells Parker that Joe exploited Parker’s biggest fear: not being able to save someone he cared about. Joe made Parker care about him and attempt to save him by acting sane.
- Parker thinks Joe is possessed by a demon.
- Parker goes to visit Martha (Charles died ten years ago).
- Parker breaks open the wall in Joe’s old bedroom that Martha said the monster came from and finds a child’s skeleton.
- Parker thinks it is Joe, that he died the first night he came home from the hospital and the fiend took his form to replace him.
- Parker goes back to the hospital to confront the fiend calling itself Joe.
- The fiend turns into his true monster form and tells Parker that he stays at the asylum because there is so much misery to feed on there.
- The next day the fiend calling itself Joe escapes from the asylum.
- Dr. A is found dead from heart failure.
- A few days later Martha commits suicide by jumping out of Joe’s old bedroom window.
- Parker never hears anything mentioned about someone finding a child’s skeleton in the wall in that room.
- Jocelyn is attacked and her description of the man matches the human form of the fiend calling itself Joe.
- Parker thinks the fiend was trapped in the asylum because the real Joe called it human, so it failed to stop being ‘human’, and when Parker told it he knew it was a monster, it was freed from its human form.
- Parker and Jocelyn get married.
- Parker goes into private practice treating children who suffer from fear disorders.
The Patient is a dark, deeply unsettling book that got right under my skin. Hearing the entire story through Parker’s perspective as he recounts past events gave the narrative a claustrophobic edge. The way Parker details his time at the psychiatric hospital with this mysterious patient created a constant, creeping sense of dread for me. Watching the psychological spiral he experiences as his initial confidence starts to break down was gripping to read.
Dewitt doesn't hold back on the disturbing elements, so I think it is worth noting this one comes with plenty of trigger warnings. The plot moves fast, leaning hard into psychological horror. I found the final twist to be completely earned, and it pays off the eerie buildup well.
If you like isolated psychiatric settings, dark psychological horror, and twisty narratives, then you will enjoy this book.
- Nessie - Dead - Jumped off the roof of the asylum
- Dr. A. - Dead - Heart failure
- Joe - Dead - Killed by The Thing that took his identity
- Martha - Dead - Suicide
- Parker - Alive - Working in private practice treating children with fear disorders
- Jocelyn - Alive - Pregnant with Parker’s child
- Suicide
- Rape
- Sexual abuse of a minor
- Animal cruelty
- Severe mental illness
- Self harm
ISBN: 9780358181767
Publication Date: July 7, 2020
Note: Details are for the original edition. Other formats, editions, and audiobook versions may be available.
