A New Hampshire woman suffering from an asthma attack visited an urgent care only to get locked inside when staff closed shop for the night — and forgot she was still there.
Tia Chandler was waiting at ConvenientMD in Keene for a steroid shot to combat her asthma on Sept. 24 when clinic workers suddenly vanished.
“I pop my head out and said, ‘Hello? Hello?’ And, then I got a little nervous,” Chandler told WCVB.
“So, I ran to the front, thinking that there was just a skeleton crew on and that they were, you know, cleaning the office,” she recalled.
“And so, I went to the office. ‘Hello?’ And, looked around and there’s nobody there, and I kind of panicked a little and texted my husband, ‘They locked me in. Call 911.’ I’m, like, panicking.”
A desperate Chandler tried opening a door, which triggered the alarm.
She then phoned police for help, calling the entire ordeal bizarre and frightening.
“Very shocking. Just like, I can’t believe this just happened to me, because literally when I was thinking in my head, sitting there at 8:10, ‘They would never lock me in there. That’s crazy talk,” Chandler said.
“That only happens in movies or on a show, not in real life.”
The whole experience put a sour taste in her mouth — and she won’t be returning to the clinic anytime soon.
When asked by WCVB if she would ever go back, Chandler said “probably not.”
“And we’ve utilized them quite a bit in the past.”
ConvenientMD expressed remorse in a statement to the outlet: “We sincerely regret the incident that occurred on Thursday, Sept. 24, at our urgent care clinic in Keene involving one of our valued patients.
“Clearly, this should never have happened. … We have taken steps to ensure this won’t happen again and we remain committed to providing the Keene area with the high-quality care we have been providing for more than a decade,” the statement continued.
