Hospital regulations require a wheelchair for patients who are being discharged.

As it so happened, a student nurse found one elderly gentleman - already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet - who insisted he didn't need her help to leave the hospital. 

After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly let her wheel him to the elevator. 

On the way down, she asked if his wife was meeting him. 

"I don't know," he said. "She's still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown."