Sleeping sick woman wakes up in deserted medical clinic, Alabama video shows. ‘Hello?’
When Dianne King woke up after a nap in an Alabama medical clinic after 7 p.m. on Nov. 10, it was quiet.
Too quiet.
“Hello?” she called out. There was no answer.
After making a round through the sterile halls, it sunk in: She, a patient, was the only person in the building.
King recorded her eerie walk through the American Family Care clinic on Facebook, which got over 80,000 views as of Nov. 14. She had visited for treatment since she was sick and dozed off in a patient room. King got there around 4 p.m. and was taken back to be seen around 6 p.m., she said in her video. After the staff took some swabs, she fell asleep waiting and woke up around 7:55 p.m. to the clinic empty.
“Literally everyone left,” King said in her video, panning to the administrator’s desk and down the halls. A handful of lights were turned off in other patient rooms.
McClatchy News reached out to AFC Forestdale for comment on Nov. 14 and was awaiting a response. The clinic closes at 6 p.m., according to the AFC Forestdale website.
“You know the issue is I feel terrible, probably flu or strep easily treated, but what if it was something more like a cardiac issue and I was still lying there dead when they got back in the morning(?)” King said on her Facebook video.
Luckily the doors were open for King, and she let herself out into the parking lot, where her car was the only one left in the lot, video shows. After checking the doors, she goes back inside the clinic to give viewers another look, astonished.
King, who is a nurse herself, called the company the next morning and told AL.com that the regional manager apologized for the incident.
“She said they were looking into it and take it very seriously. … She apologized and said that’s not the American Family Care way,” she told the outlet. “I know things get hectic, things get busy, but you don’t just forget a whole patient.”
Forestdale is about 10 miles northwest of Birmingham.
This story was originally published November 14, 2022 at 1:32 PM with the headline "Sleeping sick woman wakes up in deserted medical clinic, Alabama video shows. ‘Hello?’."
