What? I'm Not the Protagonist?

My father drove the night bus for twenty years. In the end, he died at the wheel, and the traffic police said he had been driving while exhausted. I took over his route. It only took a week to realize something was wrong. After two in the morning, the meter ran faster for passengers who boarded; their reflections didn’t appear in the rearview mirror; and on the first page of the crumpled Night Shift Notes my father left behind, there were ten iron rules. Rule Three: If a passenger sits in the back, you sit up front. Charge double, then drive to the nearest police station and stop. Rule Ten: Never pick up a girl in a school uniform on the last bus. On my third night on the job, a girl in a school uniform climbed into the back seat. She said, “Seventh People’s Hospital.” In the rearview mirror, I saw a line of writing on the back of her neck, visible only to me. It was my father’s name, followed by three words: I’m sorry. Only later did I learn my father hadn’t been driving while exhausted. He’d been assigned to that last bus. And I was the eighth.