In life and death, Carney Hospital has been a part of Tim Durkee’s world since he was a teenager.

In 1984, he said goodbye to his mother in a room there. Two years later, in 1986, at just 16 years old, emergency room doctors saved his life when he was in the worst stages of a drug overdose.

And for the past 28 years, he has been a maintenance worker in the imposing brick building at 2100 Dorchester Ave.

“This place has been my life,” said Durkee, a Dorchester native who now lives in Quincy.

This next goodbye may be the hardest – and one with the greatest impact.

In just a few short weeks, barring a miracle – or the hand of the justice system – Carney, who has been served Boston since 1863a lot of that time in Dorchesterwill be closing its doors for good.

Why?

Last week, Dallas-based Steward Health Care announced it would close Carney and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, within a month, claimed it did not receive qualified bids to buy the two facilities.

The company, which owes tens of millions of dollars in unpaid rent at its Massachusetts hospitals, filed for bankruptcy in May.

It has been trying to offload its properties in the Bay State and elsewhere ever since. In April, one of them, New England Sinai Hospital in Stoughton, was the first to close its doors.

So on a rainy Monday morning in late July, half a dozen elected officials, along with activists and union leaders, gathered on the hospital grounds.

There, they promised to do everything they could to keep Carney open, or at least ensure an orderly transition to something else.

It felt like an awakening.

“I know how important this hospital is,” U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-7th District, once a Carney patient, like generations of city residents before her, told the crowd.

Closing Carney would deal a “catastrophic blow” to the city’s largest and most diverse neighborhood, Pressley said.

On Monday, elected officials, including Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-8th District, said Steward did not adhere to statutory timelines for announcing his plans.

“The news of that closing was a real shock. A real kick in the gut to the borough of Dorchester. And to the nurses, the doctors,” said Lynch, whose district includes Carney. “There are 750 workers who are employed here … whose sole purpose is to take care of our families, those in need,” he said.

State laws and regulations need Any provider planning to close an essential service must notify the Department of Public Health at least 120 days in advance and then give formal notice 90 days before the planned closings, the State House News Service previously reported.

The company, in the lawsuit, is looking for a faster timeline to close the hospitals at the end of August.

Meanwhile, the Healey administration will spend $30 million to keep Steward’s five remaining hospitals operating as they transition to new ownership, according to court documents.

During an unrelated news conference Monday afternoon, Gov. Maura Healey said her office is focused on “protecting market stability.”

“We’re continuing to work to save five hospitals to make sure we’re doing everything we can for our communities,” she said.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who has repeatedly praised Steward’s CEO, Dr. Ralph de La Torre, for putting what he described as a high-flying lifestyle ahead of keeping the company afloat, chalked up Steward’s implosion to just one word: greed.

Company executives treated the hospitals as “their personal piggy banks,” Markey, who have called for reforms curb the influence of private equity ownership in health care, said.

Last week, the US Senate committee on which Markey sits voted to investigate Steward’s collapse. It also issued a summons to de la Torre and ordered him to appear before the panel in September, It was reported by the Associated Press.

Wu pledged that the city will do “everything (it) can to support the ongoing state and federal investigations into Steward, Ralph de la Torre and the parties responsible for this collapse.”

State Sen. Nick Collins, D-1st Suffolk, who represents Dorchester on Beacon Hill, said all options are on the table, including declaring a public health emergency, to keep the hospital operating.

The promises – and the soundbite – kept coming.

After a while, Stephen Wood, a nurse in Carney’s emergency room with 15 years under his belt, had enough.

He said he was tired of rhetoric and promises. He wanted action.

“We’re Carney. We’re going to stand together. We’re not here for rhetoric. We’re here for a plan,” he told the crowd.

His call was met with roars of approval from Steward employees and Dorchester residents who stood in the rain hoping for that miracle.

Right now, however, the only plan on the table is the foreclosure plan that Steward filed with a bankruptcy judge, Lynch said.

But if that happens, the result will be a “medical desert,” Wood warned, pointing to the diverse population the hospital serves. There is no easy or readily available option for care.

Carney simply does not serve Dorchester. Patients also come from nearby Mattapan and Roxbury. Many are Medicaid and Medicare patients. The hospital also serves a large number of people seeking treatment for mental health issues, Wood said.

“The hole it’s going to leave is unbelievable,” he said.

As Durkee sees it, Carney must be saved. There is no other choice. It means too much to society. It means too much to him.

And if the state and city can find money for other programs, they can find the money to keep Carney open.

“There’s always money,” he said.