I noticed them on a Tuesday.
The first one was outside the hospital entrance at 7:12 a.m., a man in a dark jacket reading a newspaper with the particular stillness of someone who was not actually reading a newspaper. I catalogued him the way I catalogued everything on entry, peripheral, automatic, filed under *note and monitor* rather than *act immediately*. He was there when I arrived. He was there when I left twelve hours later. He was not a patient’s family member. He was not a hospital security contractor. I knew our contractors by face.
The second one I found on Wednesday, parked outside Ethan’s school in a grey sedan that had also been there Tuesday and that I had noted and not yet elevated to pattern. By Wednesday it was a pattern.
I am a trauma surgeon. I notice everything. I no
