After forty years in a hospital, your body keeps a record whether you want it to or not. Mine does. It speaks in my knees when I stand too long, in my back when I bend, in my feet with every slow step across the kitchen floor. The last fifteen years I worked nights at Mercy General—not out of preference, but necessity. The shift differential helped me keep my home and send my daughter, Natalie, through school. That was reason enough.