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“It’s that or the eggs, kiddo. You have to get more protein than just the peanut butter. Doctor’s orders.”

A flat “fine,” and the sulking begins. But so does the relief when she chugs the shake.

I know she likes them. I have no clue why she pretends otherwise.

The doctors want animal protein in her, but the doctors are not the ones sitting across from her at seven in the morning. A deal that closes beats a perfect deal that doesn’t. Any man in my business learns that early or learns nothing.

Then it’s onto Thursday’s business. She lines her pills up on the napkin herself, counts them, names them, and takes them with orange juice while I watch every swallow. Methotrexate is the long road out of her disease, and the road is two years of Thursdays at this table. She hasn’t missed one. Neither have I.

Her hair is coming back in auburn. Her mother’s color. I’ve decided not to hold that against it.

“Will you be home for dinner?” she asks.

“Late tonight. I have a lecture.”

“You always go to lectures.” She considers this, then waves her banana at me in absolution. “Learn a lot.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I kiss the top of her head, where the new hair is soft, and I go to work.

Doyle is waiting at the office when I arrive. He runs intake at the terminal, and he’s good at it, and this morning he sits in front of my desk with his knees together and his coffee untouched, because being summoned here does something to a man’s thirst. Can’t imagine why.

“You’re not in trouble,” I tell him, and watch it fail to help. “I’m changing procedure. Every container on every lane gets a second count. Independent teams, my people, rotating so nobody counts the same lane twice in a month. Seals photographed at origin and at the yard. Any manifest that doesn’t reconcile to the dollar comes to Nick the same day. No exceptions, no grace period, no phone call to warn anyone downstream.”

Doyle’s throat moves. “Every lane. That’s a lot of overtime, Mr. Sartorre.”

“It is.”

“Some of the partners will ask why.”

“Tell them it’s insurance. Costs went up. Pick whichever answer bores you most and give it to everyone the same way.”

He wants to know what I’m looking for. I can see the want sitting on him, and I can see him deciding, wisely, to leave it unsaid. Good man.

I don’t have to threaten Doyle. Doyle’s imagination is on my payroll along with the rest of him, and his imagination does better work than I would.

“Effective when?” he asks.

“It was effective when you sat down.”

He leaves faster than he came in, coffee abandoned, sweat at the collar, and I check my watch and find the morning running on schedule. Good. I have a lecture at ten, and I don’t intend to miss the keynote.

The conference badge says GUEST and the registration desk knows me, because my foundation writes a check to this thing every year. People here assume I’m pharmaceutical or grief. I let them pick whichever helps them talk to me less.

I attend everything on acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Symposia, poster sessions, webinars at strange hours from research groups in Seoul and Rotterdam. I’ve read every protocol my daughter is on and most of the ones she isn’t. I can recite her counts from the last four years. And I know what all of it makes me, which is an educated man in the wrong seat.

There’s a difference between knowing the numbers and knowing what to do when the numbers turn. The difference has a license and a decade of training, and no amount of my money buys the shortcut. I know because I’ve tried to find it.

So I come to these things, and I take notes, and somewhere in a hotel in my own city, the people who hold the actual knowledge stand up one by one and show me what they have.

At ten, the ballroom fills for the keynote. Maintenance-phase outcomes. I’ve read the speaker’s papers, both the famous one on adherence and the better one nobody cites enough. Her program photo shows a competent-looking stranger. It turns out I should sue the program creator for defamation on her behalf, because the woman who walks to the podium is something else entirely.

Early thirties, white, medium-blond hair with some length to it, but it’s pinned up neatly. I’m in the front row, so I get a good look at her eyes. Warm, brown, like dark caramel. Nude heels with a low profile. The dark green suit makes her eyes and hair stand out considerably, and it hugs her generous curves just right.

Am I jealous of a suit? Yeah, maybe.

Dr. Veda Raines is nervous. I see it before she reaches the microphone, and I doubt half the room catches it. She sets her water down and grips the podium with both hands until her knuckles pale. First sentence, a little tight. Second sentence, steadier.

Then she puts up a slide about kitchen tables, and the nerves burn off.