I found myself in a peculiar state of temporal disjunction this morning. Finished a double, one of those brutal seventy-two-hour shifts that feel like an accelerated course in human misery, and instead of collapsing into bed, I just stood there in the sterile light of my kitchen, a cup of lukewarm tea in my hand, staring at the crumbs on the counter. It was 3 AM, give or take, and my mind, bless its stubborn, overthinking heart, decided it was the perfect time for a deep dive into counterfactual history. Specifically, the culinary arts. Imagine. Dr. Eleanor Vance, the stoic pediatrician who's seen everything from colic to catastrophic congenital defects, suddenly picturing herself kneading dough. It's almost comical, isn't it? The sheer incongruity of it. I remember the exact moment, actually. The scent of yeast from a neighbor’s early morning baking wafted in through the window, and for a split second, I wasn't seventy-six, bone-weary and smelling faintly of disinfectant and despair. I was twenty-something, full of a naive, unexamined optimism, standing next to Robert in that bustling kitchen, flour dusting my eyelashes, the promise of warm bread and a shared dream thick in the air. We'd had it all planned, you know. A little bakery, "Vance's Vittles," or some equally saccharine name we’d probably have grown to despise. He, the artisan, I, the… well, the enthusiastic apprentice, I suppose. It wasn't just about the bread, though. It was the quiet hum of domesticity, the rhythmic certainty of a life built around simple, tangible creations. A stark contrast to the relentless chaos and profound grief I’ve known in the intervening decades, the parade of tiny, fragile lives that pass through my hands, each one a potential heartbreak. There’s a certain clinical detachment one develops in my line of work, a necessary emotional armor against the constant barrage of suffering. But sometimes, usually when I’m most exhausted, that armor feels less like protection and more like a permanent fixture, an ossified shell. I wonder if it would have been different. If the aroma of cinnamon and sugar would have kept the edges of my soul from fraying quite so much, if the predictable cycle of proofing and baking would have provided a sort of prophylactic against the pervasive sense of existential weariness. Robert, bless his memory, would have laughed at my self-analysis. "Ellie," he'd say, "you overthink everything. Just bake the bread." Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I should have just baked the damn bread. Instead, I saved lives. A noble pursuit, certainly. But sometimes, at 3 AM, I wonder what exactly I saved of my own.