If I close my eyes it's not my problem

In the stale, flickering light of St. Oblivion’s Hospital for the Terminally Confused, a man sat slumped in a wheelchair, unnoticed and unclaimed. To the staff, he was less a person and more an obstruction. His chart hung like an accusation on the back of his chair, an indictment of a system too fragmented to care.

Emily, a nurse tethered by her duties to a Sisyphean cycle of meaningless tasks, glanced at the man and then away. His wheezing was insistent, like the whisper of a ghost demanding acknowledgment. But her own survival, her fragile grip on the chaotic machinery of the hospital, depended on ignoring such whispers. "Not mine," she muttered, a mantra that justified her neglect.

Carla, her colleague, drifted through the scene like a specter, her uniform slightly wrinkled, her breath faintly tinged with menthol. When she finally noticed the man, it was with the resigned disdain of someone tasked with cleaning a mess they didn’t create. “Still here?” she murmured, the words falling into the void between duty and avoidance.

And so, the man’s life faded without drama or urgency, his shallow breaths giving way to silence. No one marked the moment when he crossed from neglect to death, for in a place like St. Oblivion’s, such transitions were mundane.

The body was moved with all the reverence of misplaced paperwork to the morgue, where Chance, an intern desperate to prove his worth to a faceless hierarchy, was tasked with cataloging it. He approached the man’s remains with a mixture of dread and weary resignation, wondering if he, too, might one day be reduced to a forgotten pile of obligations.

It was then that the transformation occurred. The body, stripped of its name and dignity, began to dissolve, its form reshaping into something unrecognizable yet disturbingly familiar. When the process was complete, what remained was a shimmering heap of Foolacillin, a substance whose purpose was as ambiguous as its origins.

Chance stared at the pile, his first thought not wonder or fear, but bureaucracy. What form do I even use for this? he wondered, clutching his clipboard as if it might protect him from the absurdity of what he was witnessing.

The hospital administration, when informed, responded with its usual mix of indifference and opportunism. “Document it,” they said, as though writing it down might make it less absurd. “And notify the pharmaceutical companies.”

The sale to Pfizer was conducted with the quiet efficiency of a crime hidden under layers of administrative jargon. The contract referred to the body as a “biochemical anomaly,” a term that neatly erased its humanity. Chance, who had initially hesitated at the morality of the deal, found himself swept along by forces beyond his control. His objections, like his existence, were insignificant within the machinery of progress.

Pfizer’s scientists, upon acquiring the Foolacillin, set about analyzing it with the fervor of priests dissecting a relic. They found it both miraculous and incomprehensible, a substance that promised cures but delivered contradictions. Their marketing department, however, had no such doubts. Foolacillin was branded as “The Future of Medicine,” and its image, shimmering, unknowable, and vaguely ominous, was plastered across billboards and television screens.

For Chance, the $3 million payout was both a triumph and a burden. He paid off his debts, bought a sleek car, and yet found no comfort in his newfound wealth. The body, or what it had become, lingered in his thoughts, a silent reminder of his complicity in a world that valued miracles more than men.

Emily and Carla continued their work as though nothing had happened, their guilt buried beneath layers of routine. The hospital launched an internal review, its findings buried in the bureaucratic abyss where such things go to be forgotten.

As for the elderly man, he became a symbol, though of what, no one could quite agree. To the pharmaceutical industry, he was a breakthrough. To the hospital staff, he was a cautionary tale. To Chance, he was a haunting question: Had the man truly transformed, or had they simply found a way to sell his death?

The story ended where it began: in the fluorescent glare of a hospital where life and death were processed with equal indifference. Foolacillin continued to sell, its origins sanitized into a corporate success story. But in the corners of the hospital, in the whispers of the staff and the uneasy glances of the interns, the man lingered, a reminder of the absurdity of a world that reduces people to products and calls it progress.