Do you believe in angels? I do: DR MAX PEMBERTON explains why a homeless man and the goodness of one woman means that he does 

When I started work as a junior doctor, I used to peer out of the window before Christmas, praying for snow.

Childish, I realise, but hospitals tend to be bleak places and always look better with their sharp edges blurred and sparkling.

Then I started working in a project offering healthcare to homeless people. We covered some of the toughest parts of inner London, holding impromptu clinics in car parks or side streets.

Dr Max was volunteering with a homeless charity when he was convinced about the existence of angels

In the summer it was an adventure, roaming round in T-shirt and jeans with my stethoscope in a rucksack. But then winter came. I suddenly realised snow is lovely when you’ve got central heating, black-and-white films on TV and buttered toast. And those are in short supply when you’re homeless.

That particular winter brought exceptionally low temperatures. An air of panic gripped the team I worked with.

Army issue sleeping bags were frantically dished out. Nurses and social workers were in tears as they tried to track down patients to make sure they were safe.

I’d never grasped before that people could freeze to death on our streets. But from the fear in everyone’s eyes, I realised this was what we faced. I stopped dreaming of a white Christmas.

It was the coldest day of the year so far when I met Stewart. He came shivering into our offices, begging for help, and the secretary made him a cup of tea and sent him to sit in an interview room.

‘Poor little thing, he’ll catch his death out there. He looks so innocent, like an angel,’ she said. I told her I didn’t believe in angels, especially in this line of work, but I went along to see him.

Stewart was 22. He was thin, pale, with a haunted face and wispy, blond hair. He made only fleeting eye contact and rocked on his chair slightly when he spoke to me.

I suspected he had mild learning difficulties, and doubted he had the nous to survive on the streets for long. He didn’t have any family. His dad had been dragged off to jail after stabbing his mum to death when Stewart was eight.

Since then, he had spent most of his life in institutions and mixed with some very nasty people. When he was 16 he was sent to a young offenders unit after being involved in a robbery in which someone was shot.

He’d only recently been released and had been sleeping rough for the past month. But the cold was destroying him. He had a chest infection and his whole body shook when he coughed.

I knew that if I turned him away it could be a death sentence. It would take weeks to get him a permanent place in a hostel, but one of the nurses found an emergency shelter that had space.

An encounter with a young homeless man called Stewart, (pic posed by model) who told him of the kindness showed to him by a complete stranger which almost-certainly saved his life

I explained the directions and wrote them on a sheet of paper, telling him: ‘You’ll find a welcome there, but it’s just temporary. Come back tomorrow and I’ll start sorting out something long-term.’

He seemed uncertain, but set off into the biting wind. The following day, he didn’t come back.

For several days, with the weather growing ever worse, I waited for him to return. I telephoned the shelter, but they said he’d never arrived. Other shelters hadn’t seen or heard of him.

Eventually, one of the nurses said we should face the truth: he’d probably died, huddled in some doorway. I was devastated. I knew there was nothing else I could have done, but I felt crushed by guilt.

Then, a few days later, I returned to the office to be met by a row of beaming faces. Stewart had turned up.

‘What happened to you? We were all sick with worry,’ I began scolding him. But then he told me his story.

I’d never have believed this damaged and unloved former convict would help reaffirm my faith in humanity. But he did.

After our first meeting, he’d walked off to find the shelter. But what I’d failed to realise — and Stewart had been too ashamed to tell me — was that he couldn’t read.

The address and directions I’d written down, the road signs, meant nothing to him. Wandering in the dark, he soon became disorientated.

In his confusion, he dropped my sheet of directions, so no one else could help him. Well-meaning passers-by sent him the wrong way. Four hours later, he was totally lost, freezing cold and very scared.

It was then he met Mrs Clarence. She was walking past, weighed down with shopping bags, when this shabby, wild-eyed figure loomed out of the gloom and asked if she knew where the homeless shelter was.

How would you have reacted? I think many of us would have rushed past as quickly as we could, shrugging him off, fearing a mugger or a drunk.

But Mrs Clarence didn’t do that. She talked to him. She worked out that Stewart was miles from where he should be and in no fit state to get there.

So she did something extraordinary. She invited this clearly agitated, homeless stranger to stay at her house for the night.

Stewart told the story in an incredulous tone, a broad smile across his face, and I suspected this was the first time anyone had ever shown him true kindness.

He went home with Mrs Clarence and ate dinner with her and her husband. They didn’t ask questions about his past or why he was homeless: they just accepted him as a guest. He was so tired that he went to sleep straight after the meal. Next morning, Mrs Clarence cooked him eggs and explained that she’d made some phone calls to the congregation at her church.

Everyone wanted to help and the vicar said Stewart could sleep in the vestry until the bad weather passed. He could pay his way by doing odd jobs.

Mrs Clarence gave him one of her husband’s coats, a pair of gloves and a scarf, and drove him to the church. The person who arranged the flowers made him tea, while the vicar put up a camp bed.

No one hassled him, but a few days later — on her regular visit to see how he was — Mrs Clarence made a suggestion. Piecing together his story, she’d found the address of the project where I worked and told him he needed to come back so we’d know he was all right.

She gave him the bus fare, made sure he knew exactly where to go — and now here he was, talking to the doctor who had feared he was dead. I sat there, open-mouthed, awestruck by this tale of simple, unadorned goodness.

Stewart went back to the church that night and stayed for several weeks. The congregation pretty much adopted him, and the last I heard one of them was teaching him to read and they had got him a job helping on a fruit and veg stall.

There is a beautiful passage in the Book of Hebrews that says: ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so, some have entertained angels unawares.’

Stewart was no angel, I’m sure. But Mrs Clarence? She’d trusted in humanity and taken a chance when others would have turned away.

Perhaps what she did was naive — and if things had turned out differently, this could have been a story about how we shouldn’t trust strangers in case they beat us up or ransack our home.

But Mrs Clarence chose kindness, not fear. And she made me think that perhaps there are angels out there after all. 

Brave nurses who take no nonsense

There's a bit of a cliche that hospital are filled with jollity at this time of year.

You know, cheeky nurses with tinsel in their hair serving up turkey as they whistle Jingle Bells. Doctors wearing reindeer antlers. Surprise visits from Noel Edmonds.

Well, sorry to disappoint you, but most people — staff included — would rather be eating their mince pies at home, thank you very much. So the jollity can wear a little thin.

Nurses have a particularly tough time at this time of year dealing with aggressive drunks in A&E  

It’s particularly tough for the nurses in A&E. They have to deal with everything from old ladies with pneumonia to aggressive drunks who’ve fallen over and sprained their wrist.

Thankless work, in a uniquely frenetic and stressful environment. It takes a special kind of nurse to cope: caring, yes, but also incredibly tough.

Casualty nurses have seen everything and nothing fazes them. Remember the idea that the only thing to survive nuclear Armageddon would be cockroaches? My money’s actually on A&E nurses.

I remember once walking through A&E and finding myself cornered by a man built like a tank. He wasn’t happy. He’d got into a fight earlier that evening and suffered a head injury.

Now, because he was still very drunk and aggressive, he’d been left to calm down for a while. ‘I’ve been waiting hours,’ he shouted, pushing his face into mine. ‘I want someone to see me — now!’ I tried to placate him, but he got more and more threatening and grabbed me by the tie. I was petrified. Then one of the nurses appeared.

She was only 5ft, but entirely fearless. ‘What on earth is going on?’ she said, as though we were two boys squabbling in a playground.

She took the angry giant firmly by the hand: ‘How dare you behave like that to one of the doctors?’ she barked, and marched him off.

Twenty minutes later she returned and announced: ‘I think he’s calmed down enough for you to see him.’

The man was sitting sedately in a cubicle. ‘Sorry, doctor, didn’t mean to be rude,’ he said, staring at his shoes.

There couldn’t have been a more total transformation.

When I’d assessed him and was about to leave, he leaned forward. ‘Say thanks to that nurse for me, won’t you? She was cool.’

I couldn’t have agreed more.