Cook County Hospital



John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, formerly Cook County Hospital, is a hospital located in the Near West Side area of the city of Chicago.

In the series
In Grave Peril, the Hospital is where Harry Dresden and Michael Carpenter encounter the ghost of Agatha Hagglethorn. On the fourth floor lies the nursery and it is there that the ghost of Agatha Hagglethorn had used a sleep spell that flattened the entire ward of the Hospital. The spell (which is in the form of a Lullaby) almost kills the infants in the nursery, by inducing the infants into a deep sleep like coma, in which they slowly stop breathing. Later, Charity Carpenter is brought there after she was abducted by the Nightmare at Graceland for complications with her pregnancy. The baby is born and not doing well—something the Nightmare did to him. Harry tried to get stitches by Dr. Simmons from his battle with the Nightmare, but he had been healed by Lea and the Dr. scolds him. Det. John Stallings brought Harry the Book of Shadows, Leonid Kravos wizard-diary. As the endwssaq In an ironic twist of fate, Harry is put in the same room with Charity who starts in on him the moment he awakes.

In Dead Beat, Harry is saved from Corpsetaker, who invaded Harry's mind, and Li Xian, who wounded Harry, by Marcone and Gard. Marcone gives Harry the names of two EMTs who witnessed the murder of one of his people. Then they drop him off at CC Hospital to get treated and to hopefully interview the EMTs: Gary Simmons and Jason Lamar.

During the escalating magical storm caused by the disciples of Heinrich Kemmler, by stirring up the border between our world and the Nevernever through the use of necromancy.

After the battle on Demonreach in Small Favor, when Michael Carpenter joined Harry in the rescue of Ivy, he was gravely wounded. He was brought back to Chicago's Stoger Hospital, where he was extensively operated.

Series Description
Harry Dresden describes Cook County Hospital as a virtual city of its own inside Chicago as he is driving past it.

Harry describes the new Stroger Hospital building as sort of looking like a castle. "If you scrunched up your eyes a little, you could almost imagine its features as medieval ramparts and towers and crenallation, standing like some ancient mountain bastion, determined to defend the citizens of Chicago against the plagues and evils of the world."

Real Life Description
Cook County Hospital is a complex of varrying hospital facilities, including a main hospital building, and a University combined. It includes multiple buildings: some are varrying patient care buildings, some are teaching buildings, residences, and more. The original main hospital building was established in the mid-late 1800s and has recently been replaced by a new state of the art hospital and renamed John H. Stoger Hospital of Cook County, about ten years ago. It seems possible that residents might still call it Cook County Hospital, they have for nearly a century and a half.

The hospital complex is located in the Near-West-Side of the city. That means that it is the nearest part of the entire West-Side that stretches straight west of downtown—known as The Loop (which rests near Lake Michigan). The Loop is where the two zero points of the city's geography interesect which run North–South and East–West at State and Madison streets, respectively.