Episode 3 — The patient who left through the wall

Dateline: 22 January 1991, third-floor ward, St. Mary’s Hospital, 2200 Hayes Street, San Francisco, California

A hospital incident summary filed after a brief power interruption stated that a male patient listed as stable was absent from his room when lights returned at 1:47 a.m. Exterior doors had been secured for the night. Security searched the grounds and adjacent streets until 6 a.m. without locating him. The patient was later recorded as discharged against medical advice; the summary did not explain the method of exit.

The version repeated by night-shift contractors in San Francisco today places the event inside an unused server room on the same floor. They say a badge belonging to a temporary worker scanned a door the access system still classified as a solid wall, producing two exit records six seconds apart. The second record has no corresponding camera frame. The room continues to appear on maintenance maps as storage. Staff who mention the story note that the badge number was deactivated the following week and that no matching patient file remains in the archived January records.