Above, Padma Singh, an emergency room medical assistant at Carney Hospital, held up signs during a rally outside the Dorchester Avenue facility on Monday. Cassidy McNeeley photo

You are expendable.

That’s the chilling message that’s being sent to the people of Dorchester and Mattapan and Boston at-large as the still-unresolved Steward Health Care bankruptcy crisis detonates in our backyard.

On Friday, the Governor Maura Healey’s first instincts seemed right-on: “This is not over.” By Monday, she was telling the press: “There’s nothing I can do.”

In doing so, the governor and her senior advisors have miscalculated badly. There are things she can do. That starts with rejecting Steward’s unacceptable proposal, encouraging potential bidders and operators to re-evaluate, and make it clear that Carney Hospital must remain open to serve vulnerable patients in Boston and surrounding communities.

It’s clear that the governor’s team, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh, have been active participants in steering the negotiations to find an exit for Steward and their pirate investors, to encourage other health care operators to make offers on Steward operations and properties, and to leverage state taxpayer dollars to incentivize continuity of care at select facilities while Steward seeks buyers. It is unconscionable, then, that this administration that has a duty to protect their own constituents — including some of the most vulnerable people in the state served by Carney— are settling for the outcome revealed to the public on Friday.

In a brief prepared by the Attorney General’s office responding to Steward’s request to— among other things— fast-track the closing of Carney and Nashoba, AG Campbell and her assistants note that deep-pocketed debtors— including Carney’s landlord, Medical Properties Trust— “are trying to block possible transactions to transition Steward’s Massachusetts Hospitals to new operators to extract concessions from the Steward estate and their mortgagee.”

Another legal brief filed on Tuesday by attorneys for the Massachusetts Nurses Association— which is a party to the bankruptcy proceedings— stipulates that both Carney and Nashoba did receive bids “from at least one potential purchaser.” The MNA brief also notes that “despite repeated requests,” neither the Steward debtors nor the Commonwealth — have shared details of potential bidders that could be in play for Carney or Nashoba. “If true, Massachusetts appears to be participating in picking winners and losers… in advance of the hearing seeking approval of the sales process,” the MNA surmises.

Make no mistake: This hospital, its employees, its patients, the community-at-large have been victimized by corporate villains using a Ponzi-like scheme that sold a community asset out from under us, plundered the proceeds, and who now want to double-down and sell the land to the highest bidder, shuttering a vital health care option that will impacts tens of thousands of people—including you and your family personally.

But Gov. Healey and her team— and Attorney General Campbell— have more cards to play and should not cave in. They should fight for us.

We hope they will hear and join the calls of other elected officials who represent this community and reject the current Steward proposal. They should demand that any proposed closure for any Massachusetts facility strictly adhere to state laws requiring a minimum three-month notice and full public hearings. They should open up the bid process to allow for full transparency and to encourage legitimate operators to make new, good-faith proposals to include Carney. And they should send a full-throated message to Steward and the bankruptcy court: Closure at Carney Hospital is off the table.

This is a six-alarm public health emergency. We expect all of our elected officials, the governor and AG included, to act accordingly and exhaust every tool at their disposal.