“I’ve been around a lot of fathers, and I can tell, too,” Emily said.

Lou wouldn’t have been surprised if her smile had healed Schultz’s nasty gash then and there, in addition to curing any illness that might have been lurking inside him.

Looking utterly perfect in her sky blue scrubs, she walked back to the doctor’s lounge, shoulder to shoulder with her father.

“Well, that was fun,” she said when he had settled her in on the sofa, around a cup of hot chocolate from the Keurig machine.

“You think you might like to be a doctor?” Lou asked, remembering that he could have answered that question in the affirmative when he was four.

“I suppose anything’s possible. You and Mom are certainly good role models.”

“She’s a terrific shrink.”

“It’s hard for you, isn’t it.”

“What’s hard?” Lou asked, knowing perfectly well what she was talking about.

“The divorce.”

“It wasn’t what I wanted, if that’s what you mean.”

“People get remarried to their exes. It happens on TV all the time.”

“Em, Mom is remarried. You got that, bucko? Add me to the mix, and you get a sitcom that would compete with Modern Family.”

Emily chewed on her lip and picked at a fingernail. “I’m glad you won out and brought me in with you today,” she said finally.

“I didn’t win anything. It’s Take Your Kid to Work Day, and you’re my kid. You always were, and you always will be.”

Lou crossed to the door and glanced over at the two new arrivals in the waiting room—a Latina woman and the extremely ancient man he assumed was her father. The fellow’s color was poor, and he was working for each breath.

“Check an oh-two sat on him, Roz,” he said to the nurse, “and have Gordon start going over him right away.”

“Thanks. I’m glad you feel that way,” Emily was saying. “What would you say if I told you I was losing interest in school?”

Lou narrowly missed spraying out his coffee. “You’re, like, tops in your class. You get all A’s.”

“I’m looking out the window and daydreaming a lot. That can’t be anyone’s idea of an education.”

“You don’t go to school to get an education.”

Emily immediately perked up. “What do you mean?”

“Call it Welcome’s Law. You go to school for the degree. Anything you learn while you’re there is gravy.

Her eyes were sparkling now. “Go on.”

“Every single day that you manage to stay in school translates into ten thousand people in the world that you won’t have to take BS from in your life. The more degrees you have, the fewer little, small-minded people there will be who have big power over you. I stayed in school long enough to get an M.D. degree. Now, nobody can boss me around.”

“What about Dr. Filstrup at the Physician Wellness Office?”

Lou groaned. In terms of insight and verbal sparring, Emily was her mother’s daughter.

So much for Welcome’s Law.