‘I said “hello”,’ says the voice, again. It belongs to a woman wearing a hospital gown and a pair of tired-looking fleece-lined slippers. Her mouse-brown hair is suspiciously flat on one side, as if she’s just got out of bed.

‘Where have you come from?’ I ask. We’ve got a wanderer, I suspect. I check her arm. ‘You didn’t have an ID band on, did you?’

‘Took it off,’ she says. ‘They make me itch.’

I can’t help smiling. She’s feisty, I’ll give her that. But we’re in a hospital the size of a small village, and I’ve got a lost soul to sort out.

‘So where did you come from – can you remember?’ I ask.

‘Not sure,’ she said, and gives a cackle of laughter. ‘These places all look the same. Don’t you agree?’

I look at the chairs, the neutral walls, and the posters urging us to wash our hands and use hand gel between patients and I think that I could be pretty much anywhere in any London hospital.

‘Yes, they are all much of a muchness, aren’t they?’

‘Are you a doctor?’ she asks.

‘Nurse.’ I frown and peer down the corridor, trying to see if I can spot anyone. Can’t leave her sitting alone when she’s clearly vulnerable, but at the same time, I’m going to get a bollocking if I go AWOL with these reports.

‘Nurse?’ She clicked her tongue. ‘Male nurses. Well I never.’ She looks pleased at this. I smile politely.

‘Excuse me,’ I say when I see a pink-clad Healthcare Assistant appear from inside some double doors. ‘I’ve got a patient here, and—’

‘She’s not one of ours, I don’t think,’ says the HCA.

‘She’s AWOL, I think.’

‘Wait there two secs,’ the HCA says, and disappears, returning a few seconds later with a hospital-issue wheelchair. ‘I bet we can relocate her.’

Before long, we’ve traced her back to the ward she’d come from. She’s not that old – pain can disorient you – and I watch as she’s installed safely back in her bed. She hadn’t gone far.

‘Turned left at the loos instead of right. Happens all the time,’ says the ward sister, wearily. ‘We’ve got massive signs, but nobody ever looks at them.’

I head back down the never-ending corridors, but the patient’s face stays with me for the rest of the shift, in that way people do, sometimes, even though we’re supposed to retain professional detachment at all times. I remember it being mentioned in one of the first classes we had – that we had to find our own way of distancing ourselves. It’s not that easy, though – especially when you see someone like her, wandering, alone – I don’t know why it got to me. Maybe just that moment of realising that the old cliché about life being short really is true?