This is probably my favorite episode of Strong Medicine. It really shows off the relationship between Lu and Andy, and emphasizes Andy's desire to "protect her babies from bad things". We begin where we end- with an ill Andy, who is beginning her divorce proceedings. She insists this stress is causing her insistent cough and refuses to let Lu check her out. Lu poses as a new patient, telling Andy "if the mountain won't come to Muhammad, then Muhammad...yada yada yada!"

And speaking of Muhammad Ali, we have his daughter Laila Ali guest-starring as a female boxer who suffers a concussion in a practice fight. Like Lu, she doesn't like to play by the rules, refusing to quit the fight even when she is forced underground. We have Lana counseling several patients, and realizing she is destined for psychology as a major in her continuing quest for education. And there is Peter, going up and down a tree to see a highly pregnant activist seeking to save it. There are many competing storylines in this show, but the overall focus is that the characters need each other, and they have to protect each other. Andy's patient Blaine contracts leukemia from being breastfed as a child, and feels guilty for breastfeeding her own child- for "not protecting my baby from bad things."

Andy herself has not told her husband she is filing for divorce, much less her daughters. When her chest X-rays seem to show she has cancer, she can't deal with that. She has to keep their routine, because she, too, has to "protect her babies from bad things."

When she allows herself to rely on Lu, the latter finds she does not have cancer after all, but a rare infection stemming from a shower head. When Peter and the activist work together to save the tree, as Robert Jackson says, "one person- well maybe two- can make a difference." But tragedy strikes as well, when Lyla sets out on her own, never letting Lu help her. She is hit by an unknown assailant for throwing her own match, because, as Lu says- "no one listens to their doctor."

We end where we begin- with paperwork, and the end of Andy's marriage, in a lawyer's office. She is convalescing, still. And seeking to end "with all due haste" what took nineteen years to build...