Once Human: How to escape Dayton Hospital

A trippy trip to the hospital.

Once Human wheelchair
Screenshot by Dot Esports

Even if you’re dead set on sticking to the main objectives in Once Human, a voice pleading for help will drag you off course whether you like it or not, spiraling you into a totally different direction.

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While progressing through the abandoned schools, deserted factories, and empty suburban houses of Once Human‘s post-apocalyptic world, you find plenty of distractions and lantern zombies to kill. Then there’s Dayton Hospital.

While checking out the area around Dayton Hospital, you get a call from Luis, a guy stuck inside a container, badly injured and missing his partner Kayla. What seems like a straightforward fetch quest turns into a nightmare when you enter the hospital and end up trapped in some kind of acid trip. In this guide, I’ll show you how to solve the Nurse’s riddle and escape Dayton Hospital in Once Human.

How to start Paul’s medicine side quest in Once Human

Your journey into madness begins when you bump into Paul in the Dayton Hospital area in Once Human. He sends you off on a mission to find Kayla, who’s taken a trip to the hospital in search of some medicine for him.

After grabbing the meds in the Hospital nearby, you are whisked away to another dimension (because why not?) and confronted by a ghastly wheelchair. You follow it like the naive protagonist you are, and soon enough, you find yourself in a room where the Nurse’s Station keeps repeating the same message on a loop. Sanity levels are dropping.

How to solve the Nurse’s riddle in Dayton Hospital in Once Human

Once Human Nurse in Dayton Hospital
Let me out! Screenshot by Dot Esports

To solve the Dayton Hospital puzzle in Once Human, take a look at the black calendar on the wall and check the date. If the date is not September 15, 2023, keep going through the walls of the hospital to timewarp to your discharge date.

As you enter the room, an intercom announcement will let you know that a patient in Ward 703 is set to be discharged on September 15, 2023. This is your ticket out of here. The calendar on the wall, however, is stuck on some other random date. Your mission is to change the calendar to September 15, 2023.

The room has two doors, each with a magical ability to manipulate time.

  • Door 1 (next to the calendar): Every time you pass through this door, the date goes back by one day.
  • Door 2 (next to the desk): This one’s a bit more dramatic. It moves the calendar forward by one month.
Once Human calendar Dayton Hospital
Wrong day. Screenshot by Dot Esports

To change the date to September 15 and escape Dayton Hospital in Once Human, follow these steps:

  1. Go through the door next to the desk enough times to advance the month to September. You need to do this about eight times if you’re starting in January.
  2. Once you’ve hit September, use the door next to the calendar to fine-tune the days until you land on the 15th. If you overshoot, it’s fixable.

With the calendar set to September 15, 2023, strut over to the phone at the information counter and press F to call the nurse. This will magically open the door to your right, where you can finally interact with that infernal wheelchair to wrap up this segment of the quest.

Author
Image of Cande Maldonado
Cande Maldonado
Though Cande started her journey in the video game industry as a localization specialist six years ago, she soon realized that her true calling was to annoy NPCS and smash virtual pottery. Under Nintendo and Square Enix's chokehold, she will willingly pour hours upon hours into reaching 100% completion in the longest roleplaying games ever made. But hey, who needs fresh air and sunlight when you can just live in Ivalice?