Numerical Memory

I’ve looked at hundreds of case numbers on my contact tracing job over the last three or four weeks.  The names used to stand out, now it’s the numbers.  I write down the last four digits of a patient’s case file to keep things straight with my quality assurance checks.  When those numbers look familiar I can’t help but notice.  Yesterday a different number jumped out at me and wrestled me to the ground.  I entered data from the 4077th row of the spreadsheet and told three of my co-workers.  Two of them knew the significance of that number.