Heritage Keepers

I was on my way from the office to the wards, which are at the opposite ends of the main corridor of the heritage building of the hospital. The corridor was full of people, either going places or waiting. A middle aged guy entered the corridor on my left, walked a couple of paces, turned his head on his left, and blew his nose in the corridor in the general direction of the outside world by pressing on one nostril at a time quite methodically. Then he kept walking in the direction of his destination, and wiped his fingers on three consecutive stone pillars to rid them of the mucus he had so methodically expelled from his nose. “Do you know you have dirtied the hospital building at four places?” I asked him conversationally. He turned toward me with an air of one ready for a fight. There must have been something in my face or appearance that told him I must be a senior doctor in the hospital or perhaps an administrator. “Four...” he said. “Could you not blow your nose outside? All you had to do was to lean out over the railing of the corridor” I said. “.....” “Then you wiped your fingers on three pillars. Do you know that you are spreading disease in a hospital that is meant for treating diseases?” I asked. That should have concerned him, because most probably he was there in connection with a patient related to him. “I have this cold” he said in the way of an explanation for his dirty behavior. “You have to carry this for that purpose” I said and took out a handkerchief from my pocket to show him. He looked at it. He seemed incredulous that anyone would carry a handkerchief in his pocket.