fresh meat, page 98 (end)

well, that's it. the comic's finally over, at 3 times the length i initially estimated it would be... but still shorter than 100 pages (and drop-out).

the last 2 pages of this comic were a rapid succession of earlier locations flashed to the reader, with page 97 exhibiting multiple locations within the ward as she's sort of regurgitated out of the structure's inner workings, and page 98 serving to flash some areas which were previously only viewed at night.
functionally, the first 6 panels are a bit awkward, and could have been on the last page just as much as this one. there wasn't necessarily a burning need to show kim exiting the ward through the first waiting room, with a hard cut from transplanting the first 6 panels onto page 97 to kim walking out just as well communicating that she left, but i included it for a couple of reasons.

the first reason is a personal one: i didn't enter the psych ward that this one is based off of the same way kim did. i didn't go to the ER, because i knew that overdoses were not usually successfully fatal, and was instead introduced to this waiting room first, with a family member directed to the building, and then both of us entering that blue door to the second waiting room with the TV. at this point, i wasn't able to leave, even if i hadn't technically signed away my rights, and my family member was incapable of leaving until my admission, as well.
when i re-entered the first waiting room after release, i thought of how friendly it seemed compared to the rest of the ward. it was fairly calm, awkward, and a bit sterile, like any medical waiting room, but this one seemed to go out of its way to assure you that this is a good place that cares about you right until that first door shuts.
it can seem a bit like an exaggeration, but it was very poignant to me because there were two waiting rooms at all -- one well-lit, with a wide amount of space, a receptionist obviously trained more in PR than medical knowledge not shown here, comforting magazines and brochures and posters... and the second one, which seemed to designed to pack as many people in as it could, for some reason, dim, with strange barriers in a cramped hallway, and a TV that just continually played commercials for psychiatric medicines.
fresh meat was not just a story about one bad ward, or aimed to be particularly cathartic to me by writing extremely accurately to my own personal experience, because after leaving, i learned that this is a pretty widespread issue. the reader is encouraged to think about other wards, whether they have nicer staff or more compassionate treatment, and whether the issue is the front-facing unpleasantness of the staff, or the rules, regulations, and system of force they exert. kim is given the same pills, worksheets, and safety restrictions as anywhere else. so in the final pages of the comic, i expect the reader to be thinking about the intention behind the story as much as how anything with kim is wrapped up (or not wrapped up). i want them to think about this waiting room, and why it looks so nice compared to the rain outside and the hallway on the other side of the wall, what people in this room must think before they get behind that door, and why there are two waiting rooms.

the second reason i chose to have this included in the sequence is for a breath of fresh air for the audience. between the harsh, dirty fluorescent lighting of this hallway, and the somber, dim greys of the rain outside, i wanted the reader to have a moment of calm joy in the color language before fully confronting the ending. it is happy that she gets to leave, even if it's also sad or bitter.
a couple of other reasons are because i wanted a clean transition into showing the reader that it's raining instead of throwing them into it immediately, to build some tension and anticipation as you can see kim still in the building from the outside, and to have kim see her own reflection in the facade of the building rather than in a puddle on the sidewalk.
this is only a small part of the page, and it mostly serves as a transition, but i found it really interesting. it seems entirely unnecessary if you are more of a plot-driven writer, and i wanted to take a little bit of time to talk about the motivations for the decision.

another decision that took a considerable amount of energy i didn't really account for was the rain. i didn't originally intend to have it raining when i first planned the ending -- right around the last evaluation scene, i started formalizing a more solid beat structure for the ending's pacing in my head, along with visuals. when i was doing this planning, my first instinct was to have it sunny, instead emphasizing kim's sadness despite the bright day outside.
i try to challenge initial assumptions about settings just to make sure there's nothing more interesting that can be done, and for this particular scene, as soon as i challenged the default weather in my head, i knew i wanted the ending to be rainy. the rain would complement the tone and thematic purpose of the ending, would add depth by making the world seem a little more alive outside of the ward whether kim was present for that or not, would emphasize the detachment from the rest of the world in the ward, and would draw parallels to the particularly grey palette in kim's evaluation scenes. the welcome sign would instead emphasize the uncomfortable detachment from the story's subject matter and kim's inner life, and you can really see it emphasized in some of the final product.
sunny weather would have held its own tone, with a particularly creepy, cheery apathy for kim's suffering as the world keeps spinning, so it mostly came down to personal taste.
as a little side note, kim's grandmother said that she was doing to drive slow on the phone because it was raining. i'm hoping some readers will pick this up as more reread the whole story from front to back.

i know that the last line of a story is particularly focused on as poignant and relevant, and this makes them very challenging to me. ultimately, i decided she would reference this line from dr. fink on page 62:

the way i'm saying "i decided" may be confusing, but the last line of the comic was decided a bit before this point, and i knew that what dr. fink says here was going to be referenced later. a lot of the decisions i made during this process were partially planned, and partially done off the cuff, but the last thing she says was planned pretty far in advance.

one element that wasn't planned was ripping the borders; this was a decision i made while drawing the comic, largely because i noticed that the wristband and the borders COULD be the same width, and my brain just kind of "clicked" a visual parallel that would work into place...
the rain becoming pure white, along with other bright elements in the composition like the welcome sign, flowers, and window pane glare, was therefore also off the cuff, as it depended on the fade to white with no borders.

some more drastic changes to this ending sequence were that the panel looking out at the emergency room across the lots was added in the middle of sketching for pacing -- i had considered it before, but was trying to cut it out for time purposes. there was too much action jammed together for a sequence i wanted to feel much slower, so i ended up just putting the time into drawing it anyway.
the other main change is that, prior to drawing this page, she was supposed to catch the wristband, and try to throw it to the ground, and find herself emotionally unable to let go, ultimately slipping it into her back pocket with the paperwork. the page was already pretty bulky, and the ripping border was compelling enough, so i made the decision to remove this sequence. part of the motivation was that i felt bad about letting her litter, lol.
the stretching sequence was also added without being planned to help ease the reader into a sense of resolution, and make kim noticing the bracelet still on her wrist more believable.

as for the wristband itself... a couple of details i took care to put in were kim attempting to rip it off with her claws, which are still dull from being clipped even after leaving the ward, and having her rip the band to essentially remove her name tag from the rest of the bracelet, both as symbolic visual gestures.
hospital bands even not from wards are very hardy and almost impossible to remove without a pair of scissors (although i've managed to squeeze my fist through a loose one)... that part just felt like "realism" or ethos in my head.

another small aside is that the poster on the wall in the waiting room is based on the mental health pain scale, and the notice on the door is a reminder to visitors that they are not allowed to see patients in the ward outside of specified hours for the safety of everyone involved. the notice wasn't there before, but i imagined that it was a relatively recent development spurred by other goings on in the ward.

anyway, i'm not sure what else to say about this page. maybe more about this comic later, but even then, nothing really planned.
i'm going to be trying to compile and speed up all of the streams i did working on this page from start to finish to make a speedpaint showing the process. because these comics take so long, i imagine that very few actually get to see the process from beginning to end, so i thought it would be interesting.
because of the attachment that a lot of viewers have gained over kim, i think that the ambiguous ending is a little more distressing than i wanted it to be, so i'll be adding a cameo of her at some point in the future to at least acknowledge that she gets a bit older. it's always odd to try to reassure an audience that a suicidal character will be okay, because you just kind of live with the urges. even if she gets to her 20s, it only makes her more likely to succeed on a subsequent attempt. i think it's fair to at least show that she did not Immediately Die after the comic was over (although the fact that she had mandated outpatient and her family would likely be keeping an eye on her was also supposed to communicate this). i'm mainly uncomfortable with deciding a sort of epilogue future for her, because i don't want to communicate that it gets better or that it gets worse. neither one has felt accurate to my own experience, and both sentiments feel patronizing, especially to a depressed teen.