There I was, with the smell of industrial sized healing tea and a slight whiff of coffee, strolling up and down the ward looking for decaying flowers to dispose or fresh ones to put in a vase, or in fact any minor task to do to keep me occupied. An elderly lady, just like the rest, managed to catch my eye. Was it the fact she had an empty mug or the fact that no-one was sitting in the visitor’s seat? I approached the bed and asked if she had finished with her mug. The reply was typical of an old woman: abrupt and to the point; “I’m going home today.” I said that was good news for her and that it would be good for her to get back to normal. She engaged further into conversation with me and invited me to sit in her empty visitor chair. As abrupt as she was to begin, mid-conversation she confided that she did not want to go home. Her daughter was miles away, husband deceased, no close friends and the prospect of taking down the Christmas decorations in February did not appeal. We talked about her life, what she had done and how her days had become mundane. The Christmas decorations were a reminder of other Christmases with her family and friends. She pleaded with me to take down the decorations; “It would be far more useful than taking my mug away.” She progressed to break down and say that she actually did not want to go home; she does not have anyone to talk to, not even a cat to share her woes with. She has no visitors, just her and that empty chair. It amazed me, yet I was quite disturbed, that this lady wished to stay in an environment of intimate strangers, disinfectant and industrial tea. It was her loneliness that made me sit up and think; the things I took for granted, what I had actually got and more importantly how much I wanted to care about people. I realised that there is far more to medicine than just curing peoples’ pathologies, the illness for this lady was not her chest infection but her recovery from the chest infection and the loneliness she was to face again.