Chapter 12 Summary and Analysis

James wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of screaming. Roy has returned to the Clinic and is standing in the Lounge, swinging a cudgel and calling himself Jack the Man-Hammer. Lincoln and two security guards restrain him, but James feels disturbed by the scene and cannot go back to sleep. Instead, he revisits his memories of his college girlfriend and recalls the first time he spoke with her. The memory of his first love always pulls an extreme reaction from James, usually the urge to abuse drugs or liquor. However, this time he simply goes outside in order to escape the confines of the Clinic, where he meets Leonard. Leonard tells James a story about his surrogate parents, Mikey and Geena, and how Leonard found himself at the Clinic. The simple moral of Leonard's story is...