But the small courtyard garden on the lower level, off the pediatric ward, had been left untouched, and I was grateful for that beyond words.

The dogwood tree that Marcus had sat beneath with a storybook, the tree that had been heavy with spring blossom the day I found him, had grown tall and broad in the years since, its branches reaching wide and high toward the afternoon sky, and it threw a generous shade now over the whole quiet garden.

And beside it, mounted on a simple slate pedestal, there was a bronze plaque that had not been there before, elegant and understated, exactly as he would have wanted it.

It bore his name, and his years, and three plain words beneath them: Surgeon.