The strangers gaze

These days Tom only looked at himself in the mirror for reasons of practicality, he'd long since left his vanity behind him parked alongside his youth on a long forgotten side road. If he ever found either again they'd be buried under a mountain of unpaid parking tickets. Now he merely checked for signs of dried food on his chin, or for one of those tiny black hairs sprouting from his nose that came with no sense of why they'd arrived like a most unwelcome guest in the night. Whilst Tom had packed vanity off to foreign shores with a one way ticket and no money for a return trip, he wasn't above feeling embarrassment even in his old age. His reflection caught his gaze for a moment or two more than it should as if both men were looking for a sign of familiarity in each other but felt more like total strangers whose paths had never crossed. One of them, Tom wasn't sure which, gazed upwards as if trying to remember something of critical value, like maybe where they'd met before? Yet still neither man spoke or acknowledged the others existence. Their eyes met once more and held each other's gaze for several seconds. Finally their lips moved at the same time but only the voice of one man could be heard, most likely his, highly unlikely to be the other man's given the situation they were both presented with at that very moment in time. “You look like death warmed up.” A look of sadness greeted him by way of reply. The two broke off eye contact and Tom turned his back on the other man he no longer recognised if he ever really knew him at all. What is it about hospital mirrors that make everyone look ill he wondered? Was it the lighting? Of course some of the people looking at them were ill, many gravely ill, that's why they were in hospital in the first place. Yet it made prisoners of the healthy too, drained years from their lives and colour from their cheeks. Even the fittest and healthiest people ended up looking like they'd been on a week long bender.