A nurse in the US walked into a dying cancer patient's room and in a twist of fate came face to face with her father who had gone missing from her life over 40 years back, it was reported here Saturday.

Wanda Rodriguez knew it was her father, Victor Peraza, the moment she saw him, Daily Mail reported.

'He looks right at me and I realise: He looks like me and I look like him.'

Rodriguez, who works an assistant head nurse at the Calvary Hospital, was talking to a doctor for the admission of a new terminal cancer patient. She froze when she heard the patient's name.

'I said to myself, `Oh my God!',' she told the New York Post.

Since her mother had told her that she looks like father, she decided to pay him a visit.

'I needed to go to his room. I had to see him. I was really shaking. I said, `Hi, how are you? Are you comfortable?'

She asked him whether he had any children.

The patient replied: 'Yes, I do, but my kids are grown. I have an older daughter Gina and a younger daughter Wanda.'

Rodriguez began to weep and rushed out of the room. 'I thought I was going to faint.'

She later walked back in and told him that she was his daughter.

'I know,' Peraza said.

Rodriguez's mother had married Peraza when they were high school sweethearts and then he moved out.