Yeah, we only have fragments, so constructing a reliable and comprehensible timeline is still next in impossible.I'm taking that dialogue as being dream sequence stuff, like when you dream you can jump and suddenly your taking strides athat are kilometers long, or you turn a corner and are on the next street, which in real life is in a different city. We already know that dream Summer doesn't talk with Nika honestly - the immersion gets broken when Nika realises things don't make sense.
If the cabin is 6 hours away, either Noji commutes for 6 hours to work at the hospital while they're in school, or Noji doesn't work at the hospital at that time, or the cabin is not in actual walking distance - it's just the way the dream worked, or they lived halfway between the cabin and Wollust. I don't remeber there being a sense of Noji having a different job before working at the hospital though, and it's a position requiring training. Noji talks about wishing she'd tried to start her own practice, but feels it's too late now - so I assume she got the job with the hospital as a career.
Also, the violent incident took Nika to the hospital - Nami mentions he's been there before. It's be strange not to take him to a closer hospital.
The timelines of when these things happen will help us make sense of it - we're still making guesses.
Outside of the dream sequence, we can be sure that: 1. Nika saw Summer for the second-to-last time at a Cabin in the woods. 2. Nami reported them missing to Officer Laverne. 3. Officer Laverne likely went to the Cabin to collect them. 4. The Cabin is six hours drive from where they all live now. 4. Nika intimates that it's five years since the Cabin incident/Summer's disappearance. These are things all confirmed outside of dream sequences.
We know Nojiko used to have a boss at her hospital called Scarlet and that Nojiko hasn't enjoyed her work since Scarlet left (with Scarlet likely being the Scarlet also in WIAB). We know that Nojiko was the doctor who saved Nick's leg from amputation. We don't know the timelines for either of these things yet. Do they go back five or more years?
I do know that Nika's room from when he first met Summer is NOT the room he occupies from Ch 1 to Ch 5. They are structurally different. I am assuming Ocean did this deliberately.
PS - we don't yet know if the violent incident is linked to the cabin incident/summer's disappearance. They could be entirely unrelated events years apart.