Animal Hospital Events: Ambulance, Death Ritual & Rain

Hospital-Wide Events

The Ambulance Event

Starting at shift 4 and recurring every five shifts, Dr. Harlow announces an anomaly attack in town — six dead, the rest incoming. The reception monitor switches to the news, the music turns serious, and Dr. Harlow retreats into his office. Then six patients sprint through the doors and take any open room.

What makes it dangerous:

  • Some of the arrivals are anomalies — the check-in filter never ran on them.
  • Wave patients can arrive on fire or in critical condition, each with a countdown timer that kills them at zero.
  • The number of critical patients matches the player count 1:1.
  • Fires are fastest to clear with the extinguisher; bare hands work but burn time you do not have.

Ambulance waves are where runs die. Keep an extinguisher stocked from the Supplies Shop and split rooms between teammates before the wave lands.

Rain Shifts

Added in the Aug 8, 2026 update: when rain starts from shift 3 onward, a new species starts arriving with its own patterns. Fish patients debuted alongside this event.

Slime Shifts

From shift 10 onward a shift can open with “the air feels slimy…”: slime spawns across floors, walls and ceilings, a Hazmat crew checks in to clean, and Slimebert roams the wings eating anyone in his path (-20 sanity on grab, -3 per second while digested; patients faint, anomalies he hits become Mimics). After each Slime Shift, Sam offers three shifts of cleanup help for $250. More in the enemies guide.

Room Emergencies

Death Ritual

A room holding an admitted anomaly can be chosen for a ritual: the door sticks, the lights dim, and the patient levitates over the bed ringed by candles. You have 40 seconds:

  • Snuff candles by hand at 1-3 sanity each, or
  • Use eye drops, IV drops or coffee to snuff them free, or
  • Tase or shoot the patient to break the ritual instantly.

Hollow-faced anomalies are guaranteed to ritual during recovery — if you admitted one knowingly, stay in the room and pre-position coffee.

Fire in a Room

Any room can randomly ignite, patient or not. Standing close costs 1-3 sanity per second; a healthy patient walking into a burning room faints on contact (anomalies do not — but fire in an occupied room is not proof of an anomaly). Extinguisher first, hands as a last resort.

Fainted Patients

Patients faint from check-in stress, ambulance panic, fire, gunshots, tasing (waiting-area patients) or Slimebert. You get 60 seconds (40 if fire-caused) to carry them to their bed — and shooting or tasing an already-fainted patient kills them, which counts as a hospital death against your shift rating.

Monster Emerging and Suffocation

Admitted anomalies can escalate mid-treatment — a monster emerging from the bed, or tentacles (a room 8 specialty). Suffocating patients are another timed emergency documented on the wiki. The general rule holds: the earlier the check-in filter catches an anomaly, the fewer of these you juggle.

Event Triage Order

  1. Timed lives first: critical, on-fire and fainted patients die on countdown.
  2. Rituals second: 40 seconds is longer than it feels, and coffee snuffs candles free.
  3. Fires third if unoccupied — they obstruct, they do not kill on their own.
  4. Slime last: hazmat handles it, or Sam does for $250.
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