Five Ghosts of Mercy

In the fictional Republic of Karuna, a dead patient narrates from the afterlife as three rural doctors stand trial for prescription fraud that drained millions from the state's Compassionate Health Fund. The ghost speaks in second-person plural, addressing we the readers directly, recounting how our sympathy for the underpaid physicians gradually poisoned the narrative—until we realize the victim's own testimony has been manipulating us toward a verdict that will destroy not the doctors, but the entire public healthcare system. A Ferdinand von Schirach-style meditation on the tyranny of empathy.