Communicating with someone miles away during a lucid dream?

I'm not a superstitious person. I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in a God. I don't believe in an afterlife. If I can't see it, or science can't prove it, I don't buy it.

At the time, I was aware of the concept of lucid dreaming but had never experienced one.

This happened several years ago, so I don't remember the exact details of where I was sleeping, but I know that I was either at home or at my girlfriends house. I also remember that it was a Sunday night.

Professionally, I'm an occupational therapist at an in-patient, subacute rehabilitation center. Basically, this means that my patients stay at the rehab center for a couple weeks to a couple months before returning to the community.

In my dream, I'm at work.

More specifically, I'm entering the Physical Therapy gym.

The PT gym in my dream was an accurate depiction of the PT gym that I work in. In dreams, at least in my dreams, I will "know" that I'm at a certain location, but upon waking I will realize that the layout of the location wasn't true to life (i.e. in my dream, I'll just "know" that I'm at my apartment, but it will be a different building completely or major details will be different than reality). I hope that makes sense, because it was a large part of why this experience was so unsettling.

As I walk into the gym, I glance to my right and see one of my patients. We exchange hello's and I tell her I'll be with her in a moment. I walk to the left, toward the restroom.

When I enter the restroom, I look in the mirror and notice an unfamiliar tattoo on my chest. It occurs to me that this is strange because I don't have a tattoo on my chest (for whatever reason, during the dream, it did not occur to me that it was odd to be at work with no shirt on).

I guess I'm startled a bit, and glance up at my face... only I don't have a face... or a head, just a rounded knob that is my neck.

At this moment I realize that I'm dreaming. Thoughts flood my mind, but one sticks out. "What do they say you should do if you find yourself in a lucid dream? They say you should try to fly."

Unfortunately, I don't know how to fly. I begin drifting up slowly and backwards toward the corner of the bathroom. When I hit the corner of the wall and ceiling I experience a sudden overwhelming claustrophobic feeling, the lights in the bathroom switch off with a loud bang, and I wake up.

I feel very anxious and mildly overwhelmed by the dream, but I'm quickly able to collect my nerves and fall back asleep.

I go to work the next day, still feeling slightly uncomfortable.

When I run into the patient from the dream, she tells me about a funny dream she had the night before.

In her dream, I came to her room and told her to meet me in the gym. Apparently, this was real enough for her to get out of bed, and begin riding her wheelchair toward the PT gym. The nursing staff (who at night aren't the most professional people in the world), yell at her and tell her to go back to her room.

She did state that she had this dream and started toward the gym a little after 2am. Unfortunately, I did not check the time when I woke from my own dream.

I've written this off as an extremely odd coincidence, but it's the only thing that has ever made me question my own lack of "belief".