54 pages • 1-hour read
The Clinic
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Prologue-Chapter 24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use, addiction, death, death by suicide, child abuse, and sexual content.
Prologue Summary
In a luxury rehab known as the Clinic, country singer Haley Banks sneaks out of her room late at night to steal drugs from a locked supply closet. When she enters the room, she sees something that convinces her that she is going to die.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Meg”
Meanwhile, Haley’s sister, Meg, disguises herself to appear intoxicated while working at Luckie’s Casino in Los Angeles, California. Meg convinces another player, a suspected loan shark, to offer her a loan and then signals for security to kick him out. While leaving the casino floor, she overhears and ignores a news report about her sister.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Cara”
Two days after Haley’s death, clinic manager Cara Morse waits for police to arrive. Memories of seeing Haley’s body at the crime scene and at the morgue overwhelm her. Cara recalls the first time she visited the clinic, after being offered her current position via letter by a mysterious researcher named Dr. Alexander Lutz.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Meg”
In the casino’s security hub, Meg debriefs with Harry, a former New York City police officer and fellow undercover security agent. Meg takes two oxycodone for her shoulder pain and then texts a drug dealer to secure more. She notices a series of frantic missed texts from her sister Haley but decides to ignore them, assuming that Haley is trying to manipulate her.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Cara”
Cara welcomes Police Chief Hanson and Officer Meyers to the Clinic to begin their investigation. Cara is shocked to see that Meyers has brought her infant daughter along with her. Cara reveals that Lutz took the address of the Clinic off online maps to protect patient privacy.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Meg”
Meg’s boss, Sol, warns her that her job performance is slipping and that her attitude is costing the casino thousands of dollars. He urges her to go to a therapist to work through the trauma of an encounter with gangsters affiliated with someone named Saint-Clair. Meg rejects the suggestion but agrees to take a few days off to rest.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Cara”
Cara explains to Hanson and Meyers that the Clinic was formerly a prison and that Lutz personally oversaw its renovation. She leads the officers out of the main house, past therapy and spa rooms, to meet Lutz, who looks like an aging hippy. Lutz reveals that Cara came to the Clinic after working at the prestigious Beaumont Hotels.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Meg”
Meg retrieves three bottles of oxycodone from a hiding spot near the casino and then invites Harry to meet her for a drink at the casino’s bar. Meg broke up with Harry after the incident with Saint-Clair’s men. She now tries to explain that emotions complicate things but accidentally reveals that she worries a relationship will make her vulnerable. After Harry leaves, Meg learns of her sister’s death from a TV report.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Cara”
Hanson and Meyers ask why Haley’s autopsy was conducted so quickly and seem not to accept Lutz’s explanation that he was following protocol. Hanson questions the Clinic’s official story: that Haley stole and injected medical-grade heroin before dying in a shared dormitory. Meyers suggests that maybe Haley was trying to get help.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Cara”
Lutz and Cara reject Hanson’s suggestion that Sierra Johnson, the pop star who found Haley’s body, was somehow involved in her death. Hanson requests to see the medicine room, but Lutz refuses, insisting that the cause of death is settled. Hanson expresses concern about the safety of other patients, and Lutz tells him to get a warrant.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Meg”
Meg wakes in her sparse apartment with Harry, who explains that he returned to the bar after learning of Haley’s death and brought Meg home. He admonishes her for her oxycodone use and the absence of personal items in her home. Meg asks Harry to contact his friends at the NYPD, insisting that her sister was murdered.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Meg”
Meg insists that Haley would not have died by suicide without contacting her and that she would never have injected heroin. She suggests that Saint-Cloud may have killed Haley to get back at Meg. While Harry calls a friend to ask about the autopsy, Meg discovers a voicemail from Haley, begging Meg to call her back.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Meg”
Harry tells Meg that the autopsy is clear that heroin was the cause of Haley’s death. When he jokingly suggests that Meg go to the Clinic herself for treatment and therapy, Meg accepts the idea, reasoning that she can read people better than most police. Harry tells her to ask Sol for the money to pay for the treatment.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Cara”
Cara wakes early to complete her daily tasks but is interrupted by Dr. Max Reynolds, the Clinic’s psychologist. Max reveals that he believes Haley was making real progress and that she was desperate to contact her sister before she died. Cara notes that a new patient, Megan, will be joining the Clinic the next day.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Meg”
Meg drinks heavily on her way to the Clinic and brings a secret stash of oxycodone. She receives a phone call from her mother, a vain and aging actress, with details about Haley’s funeral in three days. Her mother expresses concern that the press will leak Haley’s therapy notes, and Meg questions whether she’s afraid of people learning how poorly she treated Haley and Meg when they were children.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Meg”
On arrival at the Clinic, Meg is injected with an unknown substance intended to help her sober up. She realizes that she is drunker than she intended to be. Cara shows her around the Clinic, refusing to answer any questions about Haley. She takes Meg to a room that she will share with three patients: Sierra, Jade, and Madeline. Cara leaves after receiving a page.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Cara”
Hanson and Meyers return to the Clinic with a warrant to search the medicine room, where Haley allegedly stole and injected heroin before her death. Hanson questions whether Haley, who checked in for cocaine and alcohol addiction, would have known the medical name for heroin or how to inject pre-loaded medicine. Lutz reveals that her body has already been cremated.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Meg”
Cara returns and searches Meg, finding some but not all of her pills. Alone, Meg takes pills and tries to call Harry but is interrupted by Jade, a young English woman with fresh black eyes. Meg begins to feel ill, and Jade panics, insisting vaguely that Max promised to stop. As Meg passes out, Jade urges her to leave without signing anything.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Cara”
Max brings Cara a bag full of Haley’s personal belongings, including a journal and some jewelry. Cara is disappointed not to see a key since Haley’s private room is still locked. Max reveals that files from Haley’s medical file are missing and that the police are searching for them. Cara notices that pages have been ripped out of Haley’s file.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Meg”
Meg wakes strapped to a hospital bed with IVs and wires attached to her. She has a sudden, visceral memory of a man with “playing-card eyes” trying to hurt her and Haley (85). Max introduces himself and explains that she has been in a medically-induced coma for two days to kickstart her treatment and sobriety. He warns that she may experience hallucinations and paranoia as she detoxes.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Meg”
Meg’s interview with Max reveals that she began attending therapy with her mother in third grade, after she developed recurring nightmares about a man with playing cards for eyes. She rejects Max’s suggestion that she has a substance addiction. When Max briefly leaves the room, Meg takes more of her hidden oxycodone and finds a note from her sister warning her not to ask questions.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Cara”
Cara reads Haley’s journal, which is empty except for the first pages. The journal reveals that Haley was having an affair with a man, whose three-letter name she has redacted. A patient named Dex approaches with a confession about Haley. He is interrupted by Harry, who warns Cara that Dex has a sex addiction. Cara suspects that Harry is jealous.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Meg”
Cara gives Meg a watch with a personalized schedule programmed into it. Meg receives a call from Harry and reveals everything that has happened. Harry worries she is growing paranoid. He reveals that Haley’s death is now being investigated as a murder and urges her to come home. She insists that she can use her poker and investigative skills to discover the truth.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Meg”
Meg overhears Cara having a heated conversation with Dex and suspects that Dex tried to break into Haley’s room. In group therapy, she wants to choose an advantageous spot, but a wave of weakness forces her to sit next to Jade. She meets Sierra, a young pop star with nervous energy, and is immediately suspicious. She is shocked when Sierra recognizes her.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Meg”
Meg realizes that she and Sierra met at a party Meg attended with Haley, but she denies the connection. She quickly sizes up her fellow patients: honest and open Jade, anxious Sierra, secretly mean Tom, and impulsive Dex. Dex accuses Tom of ganging up on Haley at their last meeting, and Sierra insists that both men were antagonizing her. Dex implies that Tom is unsafe.
Prologue-Chapter 24 Analysis
The opening chapters of The Clinic depict the novel’s two narrators as complex protagonists with deep personal struggles. One of Meg’s primary characteristics is her resentment of her sister. In these opening chapters, Meg twice ignores news headlines about her sister because of this antagonism. In the first chapter, after helping casino security to snag a suspected card shark, she sees a report about Haley and thinks, “Typical. I catch bad guys. But my big sister, Haley, is the one who makes headlines” (9). This pattern repeats in Chapter 5: After being scolded by her boss about her alcohol use, she overhears another report and thinks, “Typical. No matter how hard my day is, big sister Haley is front line news” (25). The fact that these passages are nearly identical suggests that Meg’s resentment of her sister has become both rote and deeply intertwined with how she approaches her own life. The irony of the novel’s basic premise—that Meg must investigate the death of a sister she did not even particularly like—lays the groundwork for a broader confrontation with her past and the way that it has shaped her. This hints at the theme of The Lasting Effects of Trauma, as do the references to the man with “playing-card eyes.” This memory/nightmare clearly distresses Meg, yet she works at a casino, where she is constantly exposed to playing cards. The motif of poker and the playing card imagery thus underscores the extent to which Meg’s trauma defines her current existence.
Meg’s other (related) defining characteristic is her relationship with alcohol and the painkiller oxycodone. Although she repeatedly dismisses the concerns of Harry and Sol, the novel suggests that Meg is quickly losing control of her addictions. In Los Angeles, Meg experiences “early-morning shakes” that only subside after she drinks vodka (50), suggesting that she has a physical addiction to alcohol. Meg agrees to check into the Clinic, but the fact that she sneaks in oxycodone suggests that her primary goal is to investigate her sister’s death rather than to receive treatment. Meg’s journey to the Clinic similarly suggests that she is not in control of her drinking: She twice falls asleep in the car and eventually admits that she “got a little drunker than [she] intended on the airplane” (68). Meg’s struggle with her addictions will be central to her character arc.
The novel’s other narrator, Cara Morse, is a similarly unconventional heroine. From her opening chapters, Cara is depicted as simultaneously judgmental of others and insecure about herself. Initially, Cara’s judgment is aimed at Officer Meyers, whose haircut she describes cuttingly as “ill-advised.” Later, when Meyers expresses surprise at the existence of a “pillow menu” for Clinic guests, Cara thinks dismissively that Meyers’s own pillows likely come from Walmart—i.e., that they are cheap. Cara’s cruel assessment of Meyers’s appearance and perceived class status suggests snobbishness and lack of empathy, yet Cara’s moments of insecurity imply a slightly different explanation. Her insecurity is triggered most often by Cara’s interactions with Max, the Clinic’s psychologist. In one of their first interactions, Cara dismisses herself as a “klutz,” lamenting that she is “not a PhD graduate or whatever he is” (61). Later, when discussing Haley’s progress at the Clinic, Meg misinterprets Max’s awkwardness about patient privacy as a suggestion that she’s “not important enough to see any medical files” (84). She later admits that she feels unintelligent around Max. Cara’s insecurity thus centers on her sense that she may not deserve the position she holds, implying that her judgmental attitude toward other professionals is in part projection.
Although the primary focus of the novel is the mystery surrounding Haley’s death, both Meg and Cara have active love interests, and the novel fulfills certain genre expectations for romance novels. Harry is openly interested in Meg from the start of the novel. However, Meg insists that she is “not the sort of girl you take to dinner” and that “relationships leave you vulnerable” (32). Meg’s emotional unavailability contrasts with Harry’s honesty, making them the kind of unlikely pairing common in romance novels. Cara and Max reflect a different romance trope: slow-burn workplace crushes. Cara feels increasingly nervous around Max, questioning, “[W]hat is it about Max that makes stupid things come out of my mouth?” (62). She begins to suspect that her crush might be requited when Max asks her not to talk to a patient: “I dismiss it right away, but it pops back up. A tiny part of me thinks Max might be jealous” (95). The slow buildup of the relationship between Max and Cara adds a romantic layer to her storyline that contrasts with the central mystery.
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