“If they are taking [the threat] seriously, it’s scary that they didn’t evacuate everyone or tell people inside what’s going on,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher, who was on her lunch break when the police arrived, added, “I had to call my floor to explain why I wouldn’t be going back to work.”

But Pasquarello said that CPD believed evacuating all of Holyoke Center was unnecessary and would have caused needless disruption.

“We just wanted to play it safe and evacuate near where the package was,” Pasquarello said.

Rosenthal said patients and doctors on the third floor—which houses the UHS internal medicine unit—were disrupted by the evacuation. He said UHS was typically busy because of the influx of summer school students.

“Primary care was quite disrupted,” Rosenthal said. “But we have to do what the police tell us to do.”

UHS physician James G. Cacciola said elderly patients in particular were likely inconvenienced by the bomb scare.

“We have a significant number of older patients that we try to fit in now because students aren’t here,” Cacciola said. “This is generally a less busy time, but the patients who do come in may be needier.”

Rosenthal and Cacciola both said most doctors remained at work until all available scheduled patients for the day were seen. Other patients returned home and chose to reschedule their appointments.

Arlene Lane, who works at UHS, said patients were not overlooked during the evacuation.

“We would never, ever leave a patient in an evacuated building. Patients come first,” Lane said.

—Staff writer Alan J. Tabak can be reached at tabak@fas.harvard.edu.