Executive orders - Tom Clancy [238]
Let me take you back to the night your son was born, that awful night when the terrorists-
I haven't forgotten, Cathy said in a quieter voice.
Your husband has killed people. You're a doctor. How does that make you feel?
Jack and Robby-he's Admiral Jackson now-Robby and Sissy are our closest friends, Cathy explained. Anyway, they did what they had to do, or we would not have survived that night. I don't like violence. I'm a surgeon. Last week I had a trauma case, a man lost his eye as a result of a fistfight in a bar a few blocks from here. But what Jack did is different from what they did. My husband fought to protect me and Sally, and Little Jack, who wasn't even born yet.
You like being a doctor?
I love my work. I wouldn't leave it for anything.
But usually a First Lady-
I know what you want to say. I'm not a political wife. I practice medicine. I'm a research scientist, and I work in the best eye institute in the world. I have patients waiting for me now. They need me-and you know, I need them, too. My job is who I am. I'm also a wife and a mother, and I like nearly everything about my life.
Except this? Krystin asked, with a smile.
Cathy's blue eyes twinkled. I really don't have to answer that, do I? And Matthews knew she had the tagline for the interview.
What sort of man is your husband?
Well, I can't be totally objective, can I? I love him. He's risked his life for me and my children. Whenever I've needed him, he was there. And I do the same for him. That's what love and marriage mean. Jack is smart. He's honest. I guess he's something of a worrier. Sometimes he'll wake up in the middle of the night-at home, I mean-and spend half an hour looking out the windows at the water. I don't think he knows that I know that.
Does he still do that?
Not lately. He's pretty tired when he gets to bed. These are the worst hours he's ever worked.
His other government posts, at CIA, for example, there are reports that he-
Cathy stopped that one with a raised hand. I do not have a security clearance. I don't know, and probably I don't want to know. It's the same with me. I am not allowed to discuss confidential patient information with Jack, or anyone else outside the faculty here.
We'd like to see you with patients and- FLOTUS shook her head, stopping the question dead.
No, this is a hospital, not a TV studio. It's not so much my privacy as that of my patients. To them, I am not the First Lady. To them, I am Dr. Ryan. I'm not a celebrity. I'm a physician and a surgeon. To my students, I'm a professor and teacher.
And reportedly one of the best in the world at what you do, Matthews added, just to see the reaction.
A smile resulted. Yes, I've won the Lasker prize, and the respect of my colleagues is a gift that's worth more than money-but you know, that isn't it, either. Sometimes-not very often-but sometimes after a major procedure, I'm the one who takes the bandages off in a darkened room, and we turn the lights up slowly, and I see it. I can see it on the patient's face. I fixed the eyes, and they work again, and the look you see on his or her face-well, nobody's in medicine for the money, at least not here at Hopkins. We're here to make sick people well, and for me to preserve and restore sight, and the look you see when that job is done is like having God tap you on the shoulder and say, 'Nice job.' That's why I'll never, never leave medicine, Cathy Ryan said, almost lyrically, knowing that they'd use this on TV tonight, and hoping that maybe some bright young high-school kid would see her face and hear the words and decide to think about medicine. If she had to put up with this waste of her time, perhaps she could use it to serve her art.
It was a pretty good sequence, Krystin Matthews thought, but with only two minutes and thirty seconds of air time, they would not be able to use it. Better the part about how she hated