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44 pages 1 hour read

Freida McFadden

Ward D

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Chapter 49-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 49 Summary

Amy returns to Will’s room before Dr. Beck and Ramona enter. They mention Will’s hidden pills and ask him about Mary. Will sees a syringe in Ramona’s pocket and panics. He begins to fight, causing Dr. Beck and Ramona to restrain him. Ramona injects Will, and he slowly falls asleep. They put him to bed and take Amy out of the room.

Chapter 50 Summary

Dr. Beck tells Amy about folie a deux, a situation in which one person has a psychotic disorder and influences another person to believe their delusions. He implies Amy is experiencing this phenomenon. After he leaves, she locates Damon Sawyer’s chart and decides to read it.

Chapter 51 Summary

Amy learns Damon Sawyer has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as well as a history of pyromania. She learns he was brought to Ward D with his girlfriend after attempting to rob several banks with a beer bottle, and realizes Damon is Jade’s boyfriend, not Will.

Chapter 52 Summary

Amy goes to Will’s room, but he won’t wake. She goes to Dr. Beck’s office and finally tells him that the door codes don’t work and the phone lines are down. He checks the doors and confirms what Amy said. He leaves Amy in the staff lounge and goes to find Ramona, hoping she can reset the doors. As Amy waits, she receives a text from Gabby telling her that Dr. Beck is an elderly man.

Chapter 53 Summary

Amy tries to get service on her phone again but can’t. She must escape, so she pours water on a light switch to cause another power outage. It works, and Amy goes to Seclusion One to verify that Damon Sawyer escaped.

Chapter 54 Summary

In Seclusion One, Amy discovers four bodies: Cameron, Mary, an older man (the real Dr. Beck), and a middle-aged woman (the real Ramona). “Dr. Beck” appears behind Amy and says the elderly man was tougher than he looked, requiring two blows to the head to kill. He introduces himself as Damon Sawyer.

Chapter 55 Summary

Jade reveals she met Damon while he was her mother’s drug dealer. She and Damon made the drug cocktail that caused Mrs. Carpenter’s fatal overdose two years ago. They planned to escape Ward D for a while, and the plan began with her freeing him from Seclusion One after the day shift. They killed the real Dr. Beck and Ramona; “Ramona” is a patient named Nicole, whom Mary mistook Amy for. When Amy and Cameron arrived, Jade and Damon decided to kill Cameron due to his large stature. Nicole makes a comment and Jade hushes her, causing her to become argumentative. Annoyed, Damon casually hits Nicole over the head, killing her.

Jade tells Amy that she and Damon plan to burn down Ward D to fake their deaths—with killing her being a bonus. She also confesses to slipping a hallucinogen into Amy’s peach iced teas back in high school, explaining her sightings of the young girl. She gets paint thinner and spills it on the floor. Jade tells Damon to hold Amy down so she can inject her with Ativan. Amy begs for her life, but Jade dismisses her.

Chapter 56 Summary

Amy backs away from Damon as he comes for her. Suddenly, he is yanked back by Spider-Dan and his dental floss-web. As Spider-Dan fights Damon, Jade comes after Amy, wrapping her hands around her throat.

Chapter 57 Summary

Amy pulls out the knitting needle that Mary gave her. She stabs Jade in the ribs and then gets on top of her, holding the needle near her eye. Damon is unconscious. A man knocks on the main door, and Amy yells that they’re locked in; he promises to get help. Jade tells Amy that she won, but Amy doesn’t agree.

Chapter 58 Summary

The main door opens, and a janitor named Chuck enters Ward D. He recognizes Amy as a medical student and calls the police after hearing her story. The police arrive and arrest Jade and Damon. Amy sends a nurse to check on Will, who is not breathing. They take him to the ICU.

Chapter 59 Summary

Amy speaks to a detective, who assures her that Jade and Damon won’t hurt her. She watches as the four bodies in Seclusion One are removed, saddened at the sight of the Ring Dings falling out of Cameron’s pocket; she picks them up. Her phone has service now, and she verifies Will as a reporter. Amy also receives a text from Gabby, asking where she is. The detective allows her to leave, and Amy gets into Gabby’s car without telling her what happened. The women later eat the Ring Dings.

Epilogue Summary

A year later, Amy meets Will at a coffee shop and drinks an iced dirty chai tea latte. They’ve been dating for four months. Will wrote an article about their night in Ward D, and it went viral, and now he’s writing a book about his experiences—dedicated to Amy. Jade and Damon initially went to jail but are now in a psychiatric hospital. Amy has officially chosen family medicine as her specialty. Unbeknownst to anyone, she continues to see the young girl, and the girl helped her in Ward D by telling her to stab Jade with the knitting needle. In the present, the girl tells Amy to kill Will because he will break up with her like other men. Amy doesn’t listen.

Chapter 49-Epilogue Analysis

Amy stands by while Dr. Beck and Ramona sedate Will, unable to decide if Will is trustworthy or not due to Mental Health Diagnoses and Their Impact on Patients. There is also a sense of respect for Dr. Beck that prevents her from interfering. However, upon reading Damon Sawyer’s chart and realizing he is Jade’s boyfriend, not Will, she decides to trust Will again. Soon after, Amy realizes “Dr. Beck” isn’t who he says he is, pushing her to cause another power outage and investigate Seclusion One, convinced Damon Sawyer is responsible for the unease of the night. Again, her choice to stay in Ward D rather than immediately escape frames her fear as not what she says it is—with Seclusion One revealing the murders of Cameron and Mary as well as the real Dr. Beck and Ramona. Miguel was likely killed in Seclusion Two.

In addition to Damon, Jade is formally revealed as an antagonist, her and Amy’s Friendship Becoming Adversity. She confesses to spiking Amy’s peach iced teas with a hallucinogen, possibly the pills she was accused of stealing in Chapter 9. This seemingly explains Amy’s sightings of the young girl, implying she has an otherwise healthy mind. However, in the Epilogue, she is revealed to still see the girl, suggesting she could struggle in the future should she obey this inner voice again. This reveal complicates her character as a heroic survivor, her Fear of Knowing Oneself, and possibly explains her disinterest in Cameron’s disappearance as well as her inaction when Mary went missing and Will was sedated. The foreshadowing of Ativan’s ability to stop breathing comes to fruition when Will has to be saved by medical personnel. He survives due to Amy’s quick thinking, but the Epilogue implies he might be vulnerable to her future impulses.

As for the other characters, Spider-Dan becomes a true hero in the climax when he uses Cameron’s dental floss-web idea to save Amy from Damon. Spider-Dan proves those who experience delusions are not necessarily malicious or harmful, but simply experiencing a different reality. Again, having a mental health condition doesn’t mean one is inherently violent. On the other hand, Jade and Damon plan to burn down Ward D to fake their deaths, but this plan wouldn’t have worked with the main door being locked. This echoes Jade and Damon’s robbery attempts with beer bottles, their logic possibly being inhibited by their own delusions.

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