Central Maine General Hospital

Central Maine General Hospital serves as the primary medical institution in the aftermath of two key violent episodes in Charlie Decker's life, bridging his assault on a teacher and his final confrontation with his father. The hospital is where Mr. Carlson, the chemistry and physics teacher, is taken after Charlie strikes him with a pipe wrench; an X-ray there reveals a hairline fracture above the frontal lobe, and surgeons remove four splinters of bone from his brain. Charlie later visits the bandage-wrapped, black-eyed Mr. Carlson at the hospital to deliver a scripted apology, accompanied by his father and his hysterical mother, though he receives no apology in return for being badgered in front of the class. The hospital also treats Charlie himself: after his father slashes his cheek open with a belt buckle during a garage fight, Charlie is driven to the emergency room in Brunswick, where a doctor places six stitches in his cheek. Charlie lies about the cause, claiming he tripped over stove wood and cut his face on a fireplace screen. Later, the hospital's name appears in an interoffice memorandum from Dr. Andersen at Woodlands, a private institution, regarding Ted Jones's flat-line catatonic state; the memo notes that Jones's uncle is footing the bill and that Dr. Andersen is reluctant to try electroshock therapy, preferring instead a drug schedule including synthetic mescaline and psilocybin. Central Maine General Hospital thus functions as a site of medical intervention for both perpetrator and victim, and its name recurs in the institutional paper trail that follows the hostage crisis, marking the transition from violent action to clinical aftermath.