Ok so I'm 30, internal medicine, working nights at a hospital just outside Portland. Can't sleep and I've been sitting on this for over three years now so here goes. November 2022. Slow shift, I was eating peanut butter crackers from the vending machine at the nurses station because I forgot to pack anything again. Someone left house hunters on in the break room and you could hear it all the way down the hall, which normally drives me insane but that night it was almost comforting. I don't know why I remember that. We get a patient around midnight, female, mid-40s, brought in by EMS from a parking lot near the Fred Meyer on 82nd. No ID, no phone, no belongings. Vitals stable, labs unremarkable. She wasn't altered, no signs of intoxication, no acute psych presentation. Just very calm and very quiet, which honestly was more unsettling than if she'd been agitated. People who get picked up alone in a parking lot with nothing on them are usually not that composed. I went in to do the admit around 12:40. She was sitting upright watching the IV drip. I introduce myself and she immediately says "you switched already?" I told her no, I'd been on since 7. She tilted her head and said I had different shoes before. Patients confabulate, it happens, I moved on. Started going through the intake questions. Name didn't match anything in the system. Address was vague, like she was coming up with it on the spot. None of this is that unusual honestly, we get patients with no records more than people realize. Then she asked me what time it was. 12:43. She smiled a little and said "so it didn't reset yet." I asked her what that meant. She shrugged, looked toward the door, and said "it will. You'll come back in a minute and ask me all this again. You always do." I finished the intake and left. Charted for maybe five minutes and then realized I forgot to ask about allergies, which is embarrassing but it was a long night. Went back in. And I got this immediate, intense deja vu. She was in the exact same position. Same posture, same everything. She looked at me without any surprise and just said "see?" I looked at the wall clock. 12:43. I know how this sounds. I stood there for a few seconds and then asked her what I was about to say. She said "you're going to ask about allergies, and I'll say penicillin, but that's not actually true. I just say that because you need something to write down." That's exactly what I was there for. I asked. She said penicillin. I wrote it down and left. The hallway clock read 12:48 so time was apparently moving normally out there. I went to the break room and sat with another pack of crackers watching house hunters for about ten minutes because I genuinely did not know what to do with what just happened. Thought about telling the charge nurse but what would I even say, the patient in 4 is psychic and the clock is broken? Went back later, she was asleep. She self-discharged before my next shift. Chart noted no known allergies. No psych consult, no flags, nothing. Like it was a completely unremarkable visit. I don't know. I was tired, it was the middle of a stretch of nights, maybe the clock was just malfunctioning and she was good at reading people. That's probably it. But I started taking photos of the hallway clock during my shifts after that, just a habit now. My camera roll is just hundreds of pictures of a clock. Anyway. Sorry this got long. I just needed to finally write it down somewhere that isn't my notes app.