AYER — After months of drawn-out debate, protests and calls for further intervention into the Steward Health Care bankruptcy crisis, Nashoba Valley Medical Center’s staff solemnly walked out the front door together right at 7 a.m. Saturday when the hospital officially closed down.

Dozens of doctors, nurses and hospital staff walked out the door in a line, each holding a sign depicting how long they have been working at the hospital. Some had been there for as little as six months, while others had been there for decades. Now, all of them have lost their jobs after Steward Health Care and the state failed to navigate a solution to keep all eight of the bankrupt company’s hospitals open.

Standing outside the front door, Marianne Lindgren held a sign indicating she had been working at the hospital in Ayer for 48 years, most of which she said were spent on the night shift in the acute care unit. Lindgren said she was told she was the longest-tenured employee losing her job at NVMC and Carney Hospital, another Steward facility in Dorchester that closed at the same time Saturday.

“It will hit me later,” said Lindgren. “I am still hoping. I took care of people here all this time, and now it isn’t here for me. I get all my medical care here, too. … This is the scariest part, that the [emergency room] won’t still be there.”

Audra Sprague, an NVMC nurse for 17 years, said outside the hospital Saturday after it officially closed she “couldn’t believe it actually happened.”

“It’s so wrong. Like I’ve said a million times, it is going to cost lives. I don’t know what has to happen for them to realize it,” said Sprague.

She has been interviewing for other jobs, but in the moment, she said she and others might take a little bit of time to breathe after this drawn-out crisis.

“Some people have already accepted new positions, but I don’t think a ton have,” said Sprague.

Should a new development take place, and NVMC is able to reopen in the future, Sprague said she thinks a lot of the staff would gladly return.

“They live around here. It is their community hospital. Everybody is going to have to commute a lot longer,” said Sprague. “And then to make it worse, they closed this ER so now the others are overwhelmed, and now we have to go work in one of those other ERs.”

In a statement Friday evening a little more than 12 hours before the closure, Massachusetts Nurses Association President Katie Murphy said the MNA “stands by its position that there is no medical or moral justification for the closure of this hospital.”

“The state’s failure to save this hospital represents an abandonment of the hundreds of thousands of residents whose health and safety depends on having access to the care and services Nashoba Valley Medical Center has provided for more than sixty years,” Murphy said. “We continue to call upon the state, along with other stakeholders to take whatever steps are necessary to identify and provide support for a new operator to maintain Nashoba as a full-service hospital as soon as possible. We know there have been parties interested in bidding on both Carney and Nashoba Valley Medical Center and even though the doors have closed for now, our goal is to see a rebirth of this facility to provide the care this community expects and deserves.”

In her own statement Friday night, state Rep. Margaret Scarsdale said the closure of NVMC “is not the end of our fight” to save it.

“I encourage any operator that is interested to submit a bid or reach out to my office. State leaders recognize the need for essential healthcare in this region, and we are working as expeditiously as possible to support a new operator and reopen Nashoba Valley Medical Center. This work will remain on-going beyond today,” said Scarsdale. “It has always been the goal of my office to avoid a shutdown all together. But we are here today because Steward was a pariah to its last breath, negotiating in bad faith, hellbent on sucking any remaining cents out of its Massachusetts hospitals. Our ability to establish a new operator for the Nashoba Valley Medical Center will be made far easier by their absence.”

In a phone call after the closure Saturday morning, state Sen. Jaime Eldridge called the hospital closure “a very sad day for Nashoba Valley.”

“I am still shaking my head when I think about how this happened. I still think this could have been prevented,” said Eldridge. “Of course the greed and financial decisions by Steward led to this very sad day for the region, and I just really think about the hundreds of thousands of residents in Nashoba Valley who do not have a hospital five, 10 or 15 minutes away from them now, and the fire and EMS personnel who are now going to have to travel longer distances to transport people having medical emergencies.”

Eldridge said he had heard talk of an urgent care taking the place of NVMC, but he opposes that idea because there are already plenty of urgent cares in the area, and they would not satisfy the same need as a full hospital.

Though the closure of the hospital was a significant moment with obvious public interest, employees with Steward’s security team told members of the press to leave the property even with less than half an hour before the hospital’s official closure, and while many other people were already waiting just outside the front door. They did not stop the press from being on the property after the clock struck 7 a.m. and staff began leaving the building. When asked, the security team employees said they would remain employed at the hospital even after it closed, though it is unclear for how long. Members of the press were not told to leave during a much larger demonstration at the hospital earlier in the week.