He comes in a chauffeur driven car. Nothing ostentatious, a black car, it goes into the hospital, and drops him off just in front of the hospital building.

He gets off, with a briefcase in his right hand. For a split second you can see the newspaper he has been reading folded neatly on the seat he has vacated, before he pushes the door shut, a fluid movement, as he exits, and he walks up the shallow steps, one at a time. He is dressed conservatively, quietly elegant, and he wears a tie. No one else in the hospital wears a tie every day except him.
He goes past the security guard, with a nod, and walks toward the six elevators that stand, faintly humming. The security guard watches him walk away, his clothes are crisp, he looks fresh, and one knows instinctively that his hands will always be slightly cold.

In front of the elevators there is a huddled group of students who wait respectfully for him to enter the elevator first. He nods pleasantly as one of them manages a diffident ‘Good Morning’ and goes in.

The elevator stops at the proper floor, the operator knows which, and the gate is opened for him. He exits and walks off down the corridor.

He has done this almost everyday for the past twenty years.

He is very famous.
He has a large practice.
A very good clinical teacher, an excellent diagnostician, the students say to one another, and his infrequent classes are very well attended.

All the while he is walking to his floor, he never talks to anyone; it is one of his well known idiosyncrasies. He never returns a greeting at this time, only that faint impersonal smile, and a nod.

He is probably thinking about his cases, someone says. Or perhaps the paper he has been invited to present in London; he is a fellow of the Royal College, did you know?

But they are wrong. What he thinks about, everyday, as he walks into the hospital wards is not any of these things.

He is thinking that he cannot believe that he has managed to take them all in again. He cannot believe that no one can see that he doesn’t really know anything more about being a doctor than he did on his first day of medical school, apart from a lot of information. He cannot believe that in twenty years, no one has exposed him as a fraud, and that no one understands that he still doesn’t know what it is to feel like a doctor.