MELBOURNE, Fla. -- A local man said his father's stay in a Brevard County hospital was "mental torture." The 95-year-old man was left in a room with a dead body for nearly six hours.

The man's son called Eyewitness News and, Tuesday, Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne admitted it made a mistake.

The family of the patient said the 95-year-old, critically-ill man was left in a shared room with a dead roommate for hours. Hospital staffers knew the man had died and they said Tuesday it never should have happened.

"You can't get around the fact that two feet away is this man who just died from his illness and there you are, laying in bed critically ill," said Don Hallowes, the patient's wife.

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Don said his father spent one day last week at Holmes Regional Medical Center after his roommate died around 1:00pm.

"This is like five minutes to one, five after one. Two, three, four, several times my husband would say, "Is he still there?" said Christiane Hallowes, the patient's wife.

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Walton Hallowes' wife was in the room for the ordeal. A thin curtain separated the 95-year-old from his deceased roommate.

"The death of another so close, reminding you of your own mortality, reminding of what could be there waiting for you, to me it was mental torture," Don said.

The family said hospital staff did nothing to remedy the situation during the five and a half hour wait.

"They could have removed my husband from that room, even in the corridor. They could have pushed him, rolled him, anything," Christiane said.

"I called the administrator who said, 'We have protocols to follow, there's nothing we can do,'" Don explained.

"We definitely regret the situation. It is not the policy that we have in place. It's not our standard," said hospital spokesperson Laura Manning.

Manning said staff did not follow protocol and that deceased patients should always be separated from the living immediately.

"And, in this case, we had a breakdown, and we are evaluating that to make sure it does not happen again," Manning said.

The hospital said they communicated with the family, who just hopes the same doesn't happen to another patient.

"What upsets me is that, what happened to my father, what happened to my mother, and then to think that this is going to happen to other people," Don said.

Manning did not elaborate on the circumstances surrounding the case, but did promise that they would do everything they could to prevent it from happening again.

Holmes Regional Medical Center holds 514 patients and has more than 500 physicians on staff. The hospital has cancer, heart and emergency room trauma, along with women's and children's programs.