The Eleventh Ward

Epilogue

*6 months later*

My final ruling didn't go as planned. My shitty state lawyer that had been appointed to me failed to come into the ward and mention that new evidence had arisen that I didn't kill Lea. CCTV had caught her wandering around after I'd fallen asleep. She'd been attacked, robbed and stabbed and after accepting that no one was around to help her, she had no choice but to come back and die next to her best friend. I think she needed to spend a little time in the eleventh ward instead of me.

So anyway they apologised for keeping me in prison for 8 months and putting me in a mental ward and let me go free. My parents had moved away after the Lea thing happened, and there was no way I wanted them back. So I turned up at Erin's new apartment, told her what happened and moved in. Turns out the receptionist gig was at the skyscraper she once told me she lived in. Lacey got released a couple weeks after me and started trying to become a model. She moved in with her rich new boyfriend in the south of the city. After a change of medication Michael was also free to leave and decided he missed us too much not to rent the apartment underneath us. Calum was also let out in the end after the doctors accepted he was just going to behave like a teenage boy. He works at a bar serving drinks with his shirt off and fucking girls on his break. Through pure miracle, Luke was finally allowed out. He hadn't had an episode in years and when he took his first steps outside in the real world, I was there to meet him. He moved in with me and Erin and because our whole group was together in a building, Calum managed to convince Lacey to leave her rich boyfriend and move into the apartment above. He's still fucking girls on his break. A couple weeks after Luke was released, we got a call saying Gracie had managed to get onto the roof and jump. Most of us weren't shocked. The doctors had claimed she was finally getting better, but without her brother we all knew she wouldn't be able to handle it. We mourned the loss of Gracie as a group, just like we had when Erin left the ward.

The night after the funeral, we sat in Erin's apartment with a bottle of beer each, playing poker with jellybeans. And the remember whens started. "Remember when Brandi first turned up at our dinner table?" "Remember when Lacey and Calum used to sneak into the boys showers" "Remember when Michael thought his hair was falling out" And as all these storied flew round the circle, I sat and reminisced with the people I now called a family. I no longer had to worry if I was going to get locked up or live in the eleventh ward. I was happy and free, admittedly with a bunch of slightly crazy people, but everyone's a little bit crazy. Just some a more than others.