I don’t know why I keep saying ‘we’. It isn’t as if I’ll be performing these amazing, death-defying surgical feats. I’ll be snipping a stitch or two, if I’m lucky.

‘If I mess this up,’ he says, ‘they’ll tell me I can never perform this kind of operation again.’

‘What?!’

‘Welcome to the hospital.’

For a moment when I look at him the windows open. Light shines into my eyes and I see the struggles, the victories, the weight of being a surgeon performing the most difficult operations in the world. I touch his feelings and, strangely, they feel just like mine. In the hierarchy of medicine, I’m nothing and he’s everything, and yet here we are.

I swallow and look away. You’re nothing, I remind myself. You are a lowly intern who has only just mastered the art of cannulation. You can’t make a difference, and your opinion doesn’t matter.

‘Actually …’ I start speaking then stop, feeling a bit embarrassed.

He looks over at me. ‘Yes?’

‘What’s a ventriculoscope?’ I ask, annoyingly feeling myself start to blush.

He smiles. ‘Usually we use it trying to resect a colloid cyst,’ he explains. ‘They live in the anterior part of the third ventricle, block off the foramen of Monro and cause hydrocephalus.’

I nod, pretending to understand.

‘Well, this tumour, unusually, is in almost the same place as that. It’s better to go in and have a look with the scope and try to remove it that way. If we can’t, we can convert to an open craniotomy later.’

‘Gee, sounds … hard,’ I say, having nothing more meaningful to add.

He laughs. ‘It is. The major risk with either approach is, like we said at the meeting, damaging the fornix. That could render the patient with terrible short-term memory impairment.’

‘That’s why the other surgeon said he’d be a goldfish.’

Dr Prince half smiles, half grimaces. ‘We need to think of better comparisons. But, yes, the risk of the goldfish outcome is higher with an open approach, so it’s better to have a look first with the ventriculoscope.’

‘I sort of get it,’ I say.

‘Come into theatre this afternoon and you can see it all first hand,’ he says lightly. ‘It’d be good to have you there.’

‘It’s not like I can make a difference,’ I protest, rolling my eyes. ‘No one cares if I care. I’m just a shitty intern.’

‘I was an intern once too,’ he points out. ‘Come along.’

Even though I’d meant it when I said that no one cared if I cared, as I stand in the operating theatre later that day watching the surgeons use the scope to look into Mr Wilde’s brain, I can’t help but feel as if caring does matter. I see the red mass of the tumour and even to me its ugliness is confronting.