The essays · 4 September 2026

On what the algorithm reduces and what medicine must expand.

Some years ago, I took care of a petite woman in her early seventies admitted to the intensive care unit after her surgery was unexpectedly complicated with severe bleeding and shock. Her family had brought a small brown teddy bear and set it on the bedside table beside the ventilator alarm.

The bear was old and worn in places but still sitting upright on the table. “It survived so many hugs and kisses from our son since he was three,” her husband told Marsha, an ICU nurse who was planning to retire at the end of the year. Their son was now forty-three and working overseas, trying to figure out what to do, whether to come or wait. His teddy bear was guarding his mother in the ICU, bringing his silence as a shield against the hum of the machines.

When you can no longer bring words into your mother’s ICU room, you bring your love by any means possible.

The electronic medical record did not have a field for the teddy bear. The score calculated to measure her severity of illness did not adjust for it. No algorithm in the room registered it as clinically relevant.

Yet, the teddy bear was the most important thing in that room.

The essay continues with three lines from Đorđe Balašević’s D-moll, written nearly forty years ago, nineteen degrees east and forty-five degrees north, and what each one asks of medicine now.

The song. D-moll, Đorđe Balašević. The book. Dubravka Ugrešić.

Published in Nonalgorithmic, 4 September 2026. Essays arrive by email each Friday at 7 AM. See also The Standing Order and Kidney Love.