The hospital where I was born is going out of business. After 102 years of birthing babies at Oak Street, Bethesda Hospital is calling it quits. The closing of Bethesda Oak, I'm told, is purely a business decision. Admissions are down.
Beds go empty.
Time to close. Last day is March 31, 2000. Say goodbye to the neighborhood, the patients, the doctors and nurses, the orderlies, the cooks and all the other hospital employees, all 620 of them. And have a nice day, courtesy of the impersonal world of mismanaged health care. Bethesda's closing leaves me feeling old and young, angry and sad, all at the same time.