Michael stared at the glowing letters on his screen, the eviction notice waiting for his signature like any other. Yet the image of a soaked child in a patched yellow coat, legs braced against the bus floor, would not leave him. In his mind, the Torres file stopped being a stack of balances and became the sound of rain on cheap windows, the weight of a mother’s secondhand coat hung to dry above a heater that might soon be cold.

He thought of how many times he’d told himself it wasn’t personal, that systems were bigger than one man. But systems didn’t wake up at 3 a.m. with someone’s name echoing in their heads. People did. His pen hovered, then dropped, unused, to the desk. Fingers shaking, he opened a new form—extension, review, temporary relief—fumbling through procedures he’d nearly forgotten. Somewhere across the city, a bus braked at the curb, and a girl in a yellow raincoat held on.