NHS MOMENTS

cant tell his age because of how his hair has come out in clumps and his walk that's a straight-legged limp.  he's fiddling with a phone like a younger man but his eyes are watery will illness. his skin is indoor blue-white and his belly bulges randomly like overstuffed pockets or hernias.  
he comes rolling down the hospital corridor with that awful limp rocking him side to side swinging his bad leg out wide pulling a trolley too big for the narrow space.
the guy he's with, cant tell his age either but he has to be older.  he's balding in a more conventional pattern with a greasy wispy top tuft bending to the corridor drafts.  a thick handlebar moustache hides a mouth that never smiles.  
they take the corner in each others way in a moody silence.  the loose padlock on the empty box on the trolley is hanging free and bouncing back and forth in metallic rhythm.
i hand urgent drugs in a box dense with stickers, a before nine delivery i'd been lumbered with because today's DHL driver is new and didn't care.
the sick guy with the watery eyes signs for it in a laborious tiny cramped scribble.  it is illegible.  i ask him to print too it takes longer but looks just the same.
the moustache guy stands silently big hands by his knees clutching at nothing.  
the bleep of a hospital pager prompts a flow of swearing from sick eyes.  he drops it in the silver box bleeping still and limps on hitting laundry trolleys and fire extinguishers and everything else he can.
i watch them go.  their pace is slow.  bleep still bleeping.
they stop and talk to a teenage cleaner with a short mohican who leans on a mop handle with no head.  
sick eyes and the cleaner have their phones out, jabbing with thumbs.  moustache stand there silently.
i turn my back and head outside.  i have time for a smoke in the bus shelter with the dizzy and the elderly by A&E before the meeting in the admin tower about my sick time.  
my work phones rings.  it is my union rep.  he cant make the meeting and that really doesn't matter at all.