OLIVER WALLACE

Impassible.

On the bus, I eavesdrop. Last week, heading across town, I listened to a woman talking about an acquaintance who was having trouble with painkillers. (She mentioned morphine; I couldn't attempt to spell the rest of the mentioned pharmacopoeia.) This woman had a known audience of two. Everyone could have been listening; it was a big bus, one of those double caterpillars with the accordion area partitioning the halves. These two immediate listeners did not make eye contact. Nor did the woman talking. It was like she was speaking to the universe.

The woman blamed the hospital, which I could relate to. I had a close relative who just went into a hospital and was seemingly mistreated with a drug cocktail from a doctor neither he—nor the rest of my family—ever met. The doctor acted vexingly, inappropriately, and from afar. The doctor (presumably) assessed the situation based on my relative's age and symptoms. The result was careless and scary—and not in that order. Fortunately my relative, who is in his late 90's, seems fine.

How do individuals become parts of institutions that stop recognizing individuals? If industry relies on individuals, why isn't the individual an industry? Maybe it's the rain, or the way every form of communication I'm familiar with seems to be simultaneously reorganizing, or that I just watched Fahrenheit: 911 for the first time, but which direction should I look? I don't want to be some other plan. Who should I trust?

Back on the bus the woman's friends watched the world. I watched them. The woman continued. She explained how the painkiller problems began. Turns out her acquaintance jumped off a building and lived.