Hospitals traditionally form a joint body, and are all the more turned in on themselves as they valued since long and untill recently most invasive therapeutical gestures regarding patients’ bodies. We propose here a phenomenology of territorial grasping and space control (opening/closure) in places where the biological, professional and architectural bodies strongly interfer with each other on the imaginary level. Exploring some of the ambivalent connotations linked to knots, keys, doors, closing and locking practices leads to the anguish of death that professionals and new hospitals builders try to prevent.