St. Jerome's Hospital is a significant location in the game Silent Hill 4: The Room, situated in Ashfield. In the game, Eileen Galvin is taken to this hospital after being attacked by Walter Sullivan. St. Jerome's Otherworld is referred to as the "Hospital World".
According to the Red Diary, shortly after Walter's birth, he was discovered abandoned in Room 302. Frank Sunderland, the superintendent of the apartment building, called for an ambulance, and Walter was subsequently transferred to St. Jerome's Hospital. In one of Walter's Otherworlds, he appears to be using the hospital as a site for surgical procedures on corpses.
Hospital World[]
Henry Townshend ends up in this warped version of the hospital during his attempt to save Eileen. He wakes up in a strange room and is frightened by Walter, whom he witnesses operating on a feminine creature.
Further exploration eventually leads Henry to the 2nd floor of the hospital, where he is assaulted by possessed wheelchairs and must search through a series of bizarrely-themed rooms to find the key to Eileen's room, which a nurse accidentally lost. The locations of the bizarre rooms are randomly generated per game.
After waking Eileen up, she joins Henry, and they attempt to escape Walter's twisted realm.
Some of the strange rooms on the 2nd floor include:
- A room with a giant version of Eileen's head.
- A room with a very long umbilical cord hanging over incubators.
- A room with human skin attached to the wall.
- A room with a spiked ceiling that falls just short of Henry's head.
- A room with a key and cage that traps Henry inside.
- A room with an unknown draped figure hanging over a bed.
- A room with a sticky floor that slows Henry's movements.
- A room where it's raining on the inside.
- A room with chains suspending severed limbs.
- A room with a pleasant light coming out of the window and a lonely hospital bed.
- A room with a wheelchair with a silhouette seated on it (exiting the room and re-entering causes it to disappear).
- A room with a corpse that has a few Toadstools sprouting from the body.
Trivia[]
- Because of some links between Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 4: The Room, there is the possibility that St. Jerome's Hospital is where Mary Shepherd-Sunderland was treated. Rachel, Mary's nurse, is also mentioned in the game, along with Frank Sunderland, James Sunderland's father.
- The room with the "divine light" is a hint of the game's Good Endings, as it's similar to the room Eileen rests in after the player unlocks these endings.
- In specific branches of Christianity, Saint Jerome is recognized as a priest, theologian, and a doctor. However, quite ironically, Jerome is frequently symbolized by a human skull or an owl, both which are commonly associated with death or ill fortune.
- The room with the window with metal grating resembles rooms from Brookhaven Hospital, where gratings were used because it was a mental institution.