A missing piece

Went to an emergency medicine conference this evening. The speaker had been on staff for over 20 years at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, and showed pictures of the storm's effect and of the makeshift ERs they set up in lounges and then in tents. The hospital came through the storm relatively unscathed, but the state had been looking for an excuse to close it, and now they had one.

He lives in Maryland now. He described the closing of his old hospital as feeling like a piece of himself is missing.