Objectives:
The aim of this article is to ponder on the meaning of the word ‘care’ and the role relations play in care. The article is a result of the author’s experience gathered while working at a health care centre.

Methods:
The method used is the participant observation.

Results:
Attempts at accompanying the patients and dialogues with them are presented in order to illustrate the statement that relation is an essential element of care, with the patient being its subject (not object).

Conclusions:
Paying attention to relations should be an imperative for the people who take care of others. Care is the answer to the disease, which the suffering patients interpret as violence directed towards themselves. Medical gesture contains justified violence which is used in fighting against the disease. The relation with the patient may also become “infected” with violence. The ethics of presence: sensibility towards different forms of expressing the other person’s intimacy and keeping discretion at the same time show the way to protect the patients from the unnecessary, additional violence in care. Being present and listening to the patients, which constitute basic aspects of accompanying, enable the patients to feel hospitality in the relation, which from their point of view is, indeed, very much needed while experiencing the grave situations of suffering (and death).