As a nurse we always got used to hearing stories of grey ladies roaming the floors of hospital corridors. Usually these ‘ghosts’ were attributed to a sad old matron from yesteryear. However, one night shift when I was working in the oldest wing of the Middlesex Hospital in London in the neurosurgical unit I actually saw not one, but two grey ladies, standing by a patients’ bed at the far end of the Unit. We were very short staffed that night and I had had some major concerns on how we would manage to keep efficient observation of the 70 patients in the Unit.

I was not afraid of them, because I felt that these two ladies were helping me and trying to tell me something. I hurried to the end of the ward and checked the patient where I saw them, carefully. From doing this I discovered that his intravenous drip had fallen out of his arm and was causing serious blood loss. This man had been admitted after a car accident and had been given a total blood transfusion so to have experienced heavy blood loss would have been catastrophic. There is no doubt in my mind that these two particular matrons saved this man’s life.