The Patient

Is Gideon Grandhope lucky or luckless? On one hand, he was luckless enough to have a ceiling beam nearly kill him during a terrible accident. On the other, he's lucky to have survived with just some broken bones and a cracked skull. Luckily, his doctors kept him in a medically-induced coma until the injury to his brain was no longer life-threatening. Unluckily, the awful head injury left him blind. Luckily, when he came awake, he was able to hear the voices of family and friends who came to visit him. Unluckily, there was one that only he could hear. Many people hear voices. For some, they're a comforting and positive part of their lives. For others they're frightening and disturbing; urging those who hear them to perform destructive acts against themselves or others. And perhaps - quite rarely - they might be...something else entirely. This novel is an epistolary; a series of articles, journal entries, memos and personal letters between the characters that allow us to watch and share the struggles of two extraordinary men. The first is our patient, Gideon Grandhope; fighting to survive and recover from his nearly-fatal accident. The second is Dr. Edmund Witten, the psychiatrist whose attempts to guide Gideon through his amazing and other-worldly journey changes forever the lives of both the doctor and the patient.