Addison had started volunteering at Sunshine Children’s Home on a whim.

It had been one of those particularly brutal weeks at the hospital—three pediatric surgeries that hadn’t gone the way anyone hoped, a teenager who’d coded twice during what should have been routine appendix removal, and the kind of administrative meetings that made her question why she’d gone into medicine in the first place.

She’d driven past the children’s home on her way back from a particularly difficult day and made an impulsive decision to stop. Something about the Victorian house with its bright yellow paint and hopeful name had called to her need to do something that felt purely good.

That was six months ago. Now, Saturday mornings at Sunshine had become as essential to her routine as surgical rounds.

“Dr. Addison!” The chorus of voices that greeted her as she walked through the front door never failed to lift her spirits. Kids ranging from toddlers to teenagers, each carrying their own story of loss or abandonment, but somehow managing to fill the old house with laughter and energy.

Today she found herself helping with the usual Saturday morning chaos—mediating a dispute between two eight-year-olds over whose turn it was with the art supplies, reading picture books to the toddlers who gathered around her like she was their personal story time coordinator, and checking on Tommy’s scraped knee from yesterday’s playground adventure.

In the kitchen, she helped Mrs. Patterson, the home director, prepare lunch for twenty-three children—a logistical operation that would have impressed the most organized surgical team. Cutting sandwiches, portioning out chips, making sure everyone’s dietary restrictions were accounted for.

“I don’t know what we’d do without you,” Mrs. Patterson said, watching Addison effortlessly handle the lunch distribution while simultaneously braiding hair for one of the younger girls and listening to a teenager’s concerns about an upcoming school presentation.

This was why she came. Not just for the medical emergencies where her training was useful, though those happened too. It was the ordinary moments—helping with homework, teaching proper handwashing technique, being a consistent adult presence in lives that had seen too much inconsistency.