I spent years working as a paramedic before a ruptured disk ended my career. I always loved night shift- the world is a much more manageable place when nobody’s awake. One of the areas that I had to cover was called The Estate in Litchfield. It’s a massive, state run property; over 70 buildings on 1600 acres in the woods in Connecticut.
It was opened after World War One as a place to humanely care for the developmentally impaired. In its heyday, it had upwards of 900 permanent residents, plus a handful of locals with special needs who came for day programs. It was a pretty self sufficient property- they grew their own produce in large gardens, they raised chickens for fresh eggs, and even made arts and crafts to sell to neighboring communities. These communities showed their support by buying scarecrows and any fresh produce and eggs not needed by the estate.
These people didn’t really have families- they were wards of the state. They lived in the property, and sometimes they died on the property. When that happened, they were buried there, too. Apparently it used to have quite a few dangerous residents; but that was a long time ago.
Over time, the practice of sending individuals with special needs to big facilities slowly ended in favor of smaller homes scattered throughout the state. It was thought that this gave the residents a better quality of life. By the time I came to work as a medic, the facility was a skeleton of its former self. Residents were moved out, cottages were shut down instead of being updated. As they were shut down, the roads to get to them were no longer cared for. Decades of fallen leaves, brush, and even whole trees eventually left many of these roads impassable. Old records were lost, and as a result, nobody even knows how many buildings are even on the property. The 11 cottages that were still open during my time were all at the bottom of the hill, near the entrance to the property. The only remaining residents were the most developmentally impaired. Most were bed bound, non-verbal individuals in their 60’s and 70’s.
Respiratory infections would spread within the cottages like wildfire- it seemed like the whole campus would have pneumonia from November to May. One particularly cold February night, I was called to bring one of them to the hospital. I was expecting the usual- someone with pneumonia, but not enough strength or mental capacity to effectively manage their own airway. To my surprise, I was met with a stare of childlike confusion, instead of a stare of blank, nothingness. “I can’t breathe- have you seen my mommy?” I comforted him as best I could, gave him some oxygen, and made for the ER. As we pulled off the property, his stare went blank and he went silent again. With it being so early in the morning, this didn’t strike me as particularly odd.
This would happen several more times that month- apparently I was getting a reputation among the higher functioning residents at the estate. I would walk in to find someone that I hadn’t met before calling me by name like they knew me. Every time, they would go silent on the drive to the hospital. Much to my frustration, I spent one morning bringing one of the residents back, and I was getting out way past the end of my shift. We pull onto the property, and his eyes come alive. He frantically pleads for me to not bring him back to house 23- they hurt him in house 23. I didn’t know how to answer these questions- I still don’t.
I come in for my shift later that night and pick up an old gentleman across town. After giving him an EKG, he asks how my night has been. “So far, better than last night- I’ve been going to The Estate way too much lately”. He laughs, before his eyes narrow “My son used to live there- Are they talking again?” He must have seen the look on my face. “I could never figure out how he did that. He never spoke a word when he was home. We’d get a phone call some days saying that he was asking for his mother the night before. Of course, when she heard that, she wanted to bring him home. We never got a peep out of him when we tried, though”.
Toward the end of the month, the boss called me in early for a snow storm- my job was to post at the estate for the night. Of course, it didn’t take long for a tree branch to bring down a power line. The staff at the estate asked if I could help them bring some of the residents to one of the cottages with a generator, number 6. I put one of the talkative ones in the car, and make our way across the campus. We may have underestimated the condition of the roads. As we make our way up the hill, he starts to scream and thrash, tearing at his clothing. Before I know it, he’s drawing blood, it quickly begins to soak through his hospital gown. Panicking from the commotion, my partner locks up the brakes, sliding through the sign for cottage 6, revealing “23” in flaking, faded paint on the wall behind it.
The amount of blood was startling. My partner climbed in the back and helped me restrain him, before we take off for the ER. When we make it onto the main road, he goes quiet, then limp. I started compressions just a few seconds later. At the hospital, the doc said that the cuts on his chest were shockingly deep, they looked almost like knife wounds. The medical examiner wasn’t interested in the case of a self-mutilated resident of the estate, which was heart breaking, but it meant that life went back to normal pretty quickly.
None of them spoke again after that. It was a quiet summer, pneumonia season was over. The boss gave me a promotion later that year, which meant that I had to move to day shift. The holidays came and went, and I moved on, hoping to never think about that night in The Estate again.
I was working late one night to fix a payroll error, my desk phone rang, but I let it go to voicemail. “Hey- I quit. I can’t take this anymore. Every time I try to take someone back to The Estate, they don’t speak until we’re almost there, then they frantically plead that I don’t let you take them back to Cabin 23.”