Derry Home Hospital
Derry Home Hospital is the central medical institution in Derry, Maine, a place where the town's violent history and the supernatural terror of It repeatedly intersect with the lives of the Losers' Club. It is a site of emergency treatment, recovery, and death, reflecting the physical and psychological toll the entity exacts on the community.
Location and Description
The hospital is situated on the banks of the Penobscot River, behind which the river flows toward its meeting with the Kenduskeag. In 1958, it was a white wood-frame building with two wings and three stories. By 1985, it had been dwarfed by a sprawling complex of perhaps a dozen buildings, including radiation labs, a therapy center, and six hundred rooms, making it almost as large as the Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. The original wooden building was retained but converted entirely to administrative use. The hospital's emergency room is frequently referred to by characters as "the Mergency Room."
Key Medical Events
Eddie Kaspbrak is taken to Derry Home Hospital after Henry Bowers breaks his arm on July 20, 1958. While there, he has a confrontation with his mother, Sonia Kaspbrak, who tries to forbid his friends from visiting. Eddie later uses the hospital stay to assert his independence, telling his mother that Mr. Keene revealed his asthma medicine is a placebo. The Losers' Club visits him and signs his cast, an act that Eddie recognizes as a kind of contract binding them together. Eddie's arm is set by Dr. Handor, who describes the break as a simple greenstick fracture.
Mike Hanlon is rushed to Derry Home Hospital after Henry Bowers stabs him in the library on the night of May 30, 1985. He is in grave condition, having lost a dangerous amount of blood from a severed femoral artery. He manages to apply a tourniquet before losing consciousness. While hospitalized, he is visited by Bill Denbrough, who tells him about Audra's catatonia. Mike later offers Bill the use of his house to care for Audra. During his recovery, Mike is attacked by Mark Lamonica, a nurse who has been influenced by It and attempts to inject him with a lethal syringe. Mike fights him off by smashing a water glass in his face.
Audra Denbrough is also a patient at Derry Home Hospital after being rescued from the lair of It. She is catatonic, unresponsive, and requires soft foods and liquids. Bill is told she will be discharged and transferred to the Bangor Mental Health Institute, but he instead takes her to Mike's house.
Other Notable Events
After George Denbrough's murder in October 1957, his mother, Sharon Denbrough, is sedated in the hospital's emergency room. The hospital is also the workplace of Al Marsh, Beverly's father, who works as a janitor there. The elderly Albert Carson, the former head librarian, dies of throat cancer at Derry Home Hospital. The hospital is also where the body of Dorsey Corcoran, the four-year-old beaten to death by his stepfather, is brought and where he dies without recovering consciousness.
