annashay 
This story is by Elise Luce and was part of our 2025 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.
Some people are buried long before they die. I knew I couldn’t dig anyone out—no matter how many reports I filed.
My first visit to City State Home: ninety-six acres of crumbling brick wrapped in barbed wire, more prison than care facility. Bleach and mildew stung my nose. I counted the locks before I counted the people. Two corridors emptied into a common area where eight residents slumped in wheelchairs or gurneys, Jeopardy! blaring from the corner. A staff member spooned pureed food into a woman’s mouth, his eyes on the Daily Double.
When I asked about Walter, he pointed. “That one doesn’t get visitors.”
Walter lay on a gurney, drool pooling at his chin, loose socks around twisted feet. A wooden train sat next to him—chipped red paint, one wheel missing.
“Hi, Walter. I’m your hospice social worker. I’m going to clean your face now.” I knelt beside him, dabbed his chin with tissue, and smoothed the blanket over his chest. His skin felt papery and cool. “I’m going to hold your hand now.” My voice sounded like a training video. His grip never tightened.
The phone stayed in my pocket—Adult Protective Services on speed dial. Food. Shelter. Staff. No reason to suspect abuse or neglect. Not yet. I’d learned to spot what would be investigated. Everything else, I swallowed.
Wanda, the charge nurse, waved me over and handed me a binder—ten pages at most.
“Why so thin?” I asked.
“They take old notes to storage.”
I found Walter’s Out-of-Hospital DNR and moved it to page one. I believed the right paper in the right place could keep someone safe.
“We need to tape a copy above his bed.”
Wanda frowned. “Why?”
“Effective CPR breaks ribs.”
“Policy is we call 911—always,” she said. “We save them.”
“This form says comfort measures only. State law.”
Her chin lifted. “Who enforces that?”
“Wanda, we do. He’ll suffer if they try to bring him back. That’s no way to die.”
She studied the DNR, then nodded—the kind of careful nod that keeps a job.
“He reminds me of my twin brother, Louis,” she said. “Louis died here too. Different building. Same rules.”
“Do you know anything about Walter?”
“No, but Ms. Kitty does. She volunteers on Wednesdays.”
***
On Wednesday, Ms. Kitty stood out—silver hair, starched blouse, pearls. She sat beside Walter, spoon-feeding him, humming Frank Sinatra. Walter’s clouded eyes stared ahead.
I introduced myself, then asked, “When did Walter come here?”
“Age six,” she said. “He stuttered.”
She handed me a photo. “This is my brother, Ben. He came here in 1952, a few weeks before Walter.”
“What happened to him?”
She passed me three Polaroids—deformed limbs, scarred wrists. “Mother wouldn’t speak his name. After she died in 1976, I moved him to a group home. Ben died in 2024. I cared for him nearly fifty years.”
I set the photos down.
“Ben found ways to tell me what they’d done. At eight, they made him work the farms—standard for children labeled idiots.”
“Idiots?”
“Ben was left-handed. They tied that hand behind his back.” She twisted her wrist inward. “Forced him to use the other. When he couldn’t write, that proved the diagnosis.”
She took Walter’s hand; his fingers bent. “Same thing happened to Walter, only worse. He used to love trains,” she said, wiping the toy boxcar clean. “But Walter fought back, bit, kicked—broke a nurse’s nose once. They bound him tighter. Socks around wrists and ankles, knotted to the bedframe. Bones grow wrong when you can’t move.”
I wanted to look away. I didn’t.
She traced an old scar on her thumb. “When I found them, Ben grunted and limped with a walker. But Walter couldn’t walk or talk.” Her eyes closed. “Same soap, after all these years—ammonia and lye.”
My pen rolled off the table. I left it.
She unfolded newspaper clippings. “I filed lawsuits, wrote letters, made calls. Records burned in the seventies. Convenient.” She pushed them toward me.
“But laws changed all this?”
“We just change the name of the cages.”
***
Wanda called ten days later. “I’d just walked in—they were already pounding his chest. The DNR was gone, Walter bleeding from his mouth. I heard ribs crack.”
Her voice caught. “I grabbed the form from the binder and told them to stop—he was hospice, comfort measures only. But I was too late. Walter died on the tile floor.”
Then: “We didn’t save him. We tortured him.”
A long pause. “Probably what happened to Louis too.”
***
I sat in my car, gripping the wheel. A Walmart commercial played on the radio. Nothing would ever change City State Home. Still, I filed the complaint—violation of his advance directive.
After two hours of forms, I hit send and left a message for the ombudsman. He never called back.
Three months later, the state replied: staff followed emergency protocol; no evidence of willful neglect. Case closed.
I stared at the screen. Six sentences. That’s what Walter’s death was worth.
***
At Walter’s service, Ms. Kitty waved me over. Wanda stood before seven residents, arranging cookies no one could eat. She stumbled through “may he find peace.” Judge Judy muted on TV.
“Pine box in the state cemetery,” Ms. Kitty said, clutching my wrist. “That’s all they told me.”
Wanda approached with an envelope. “My write-up. Insubordination. I gave notice this morning.” She handed it to Ms. Kitty. “Keep it for proof.”
From her bag, Ms. Kitty drew an accordion file—photos, letters, yellowed records. “All these years I fought alone,” she said, handing it to Wanda. “I was wrong about you. About what change looks like.”
“I know a reporter. She owes me,” Wanda said, holding the file close. “Thank you, Ms. Kitty.”
“No. Thank you, Wanda,” Ms. Kitty said.
She took our wrists. “Thought I’d die with this.” Her gaze moved between us. “You both gave me what I never had—witnesses.”
Her shoulders dropped—the first time I’d seen them anything but square. She reached into her purse and pulled out a worn photograph—three children in overalls, mud-streaked and smiling.
“This is Ben, Walter, and Kenny. 1952.”
Wanda and I studied the photo.
“Walter lived down the street. Our mothers were friends.” She tapped each face. “Ben was left-handed. Walter stuttered.” Her finger lingered over the smallest child. “Kenny refused dresses. Preferred a boy’s name.”
“I was five.”
She traced Kenny’s grin. “We were catching frogs that day. Ben slipped one into his pocket. At supper, it jumped out, and we laughed until our sides hurt.”
The smile faded. “A month later, we were here.”
I stared at the three kids huddled together, the little one mud-streaked and grinning—then at the woman across from me. Same eyes.
“I learned to behave,” she said. “Proper posture. Proper speech. The appropriate clothes. By ten, I was Kitty—pretty, polite, no longer a problem. Mother came back for me.” She set the photo down between us.
“They sterilized all three of us—cut us before we understood what they were taking. We called it eugenics. Made it law.” She nodded toward the file in Wanda’s hands. “Records don’t burn themselves.”
“I never saw Ben or Walter until after Mother died. They kept us separate. I got Ben out—had the legal right. But Walter became a ward of the state.”
Kitty scanned the room. “Seven of us still here, and they act like we never existed.”
Wanda followed her stare. “This god-awful place.”
“Honey, God didn’t do this—we awful people did,” Kitty said. “But it isn’t over. These places are all over America. We just changed the names—the locks stayed the same. Same people nobody wants.”
***
We walked outside to the parking lot. Inside, the ones we once called untrainable remained.
Kitty took my arm. “Will you get them out?”
I looked at Wanda with the folder. “There’s nowhere for them to go.”
Kitty’s grip slackened. “I saved Ben and abandoned Walter.”
“We all did what we could,” Wanda said.
No one spoke. We stood there until the sun dipped behind the building.
Wanda glanced back. “Louis deserved to have someone to speak in his name.”
Kitty touched Wanda’s shoulder. “We all do.” She looked at me. “Show everyone we existed before they erase us. Use our names—Kenny and Ben—and tell Walter’s story. We were five, six, and seven years old.”
She pressed the photograph into my hand.
“Now you carry them.”
***
In my car, the photo lay in my lap. Three children, arms wrapped around shoulders. Walter’s face stared up at me.
Drive away. Chart the report. Schedule the next visit.
But I turned off the engine and walked back.
I brushed dust from the cornerstone and snapped a picture.
STATE COLONY FOR IMBECILES AND THE FEEBLE-MINDED — EST. 1933
I can’t dig them out. But I’m showing everyone where the bodies are buried.
