The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [186]
"Have I met that one?" Jack couldnt remember.
"No. He went to school out west, UCLA." She turned the page in the current New England Journal of Medicine, then decided to dog-ear it. It was an interesting piece on a new discovery in anesthesia, something worth remembering. Shed talk about it at lunch with one of the professors. It was her custom to lunch with her colleagues in different fields, to keep current on what was going on in medicine. The next big breakthrough, she thought, would be in neurology. One of her Hopkins colleagues had discovered a drug that seemed to make damaged nerve cells regrow. If it panned out, that was a Nobel Prize. It would be the ninth hanging on the trophy wall of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her work with surgical lasers had won her a Lasker Public Service Award—the highest such award in American medicine—but it hadnt been fundamental enough for a trip to Stockholm. That was fine with her. Ophthalmology wasnt that sort of field, but fixing peoples sight was pretty damned rewarding. Maybe the one good thing about Jacks elevation and her attendant status as First Lady was that shed have a real shot at the Directorship of the Wilmer Institute if and when Bernie Katz ever decided to hang it up. Shed still be able to practice medicine—that was something she never wanted to give up—and also be able to oversee research in her field, decide who got the grants, where the really important exploratory work was, and that, she thought, was something she might be good at. So, maybe this President stuff wasnt a total loss.
Her only real beef was that people expected her to dress like a supermodel, and while she had always dressed well, being a clotheshorse had never appealed to her. It was enough, she figured, to wear nice formal gowns at all the damned formal affairs she had to attend (and not get charged for it, since the gowns were all donated by the makers). As it was, Womens Wear Daily didnt like her normal choice of clothing, as though her white lab coat was a fashion statement—no, it was her uniform, like the Marines who stood at the doors to the White House, and one she wore with considerable pride. Not many women, or men, could claim to be at the very pinnacle of their profession. But she could. As it was, this had turned into a nice evening. She didnt even mind Jacks addiction to The History Channel, even when he grumbled at some minor mistake in one of their shows. Assuming, she chuckled to herself, that he was right, and the show was wrong … Her wineglass was empty, and since she didnt have any procedures scheduled for the next day, she waved to the usher for a refill. Life could have been worse. Besides, theyd had their big scare with those damned terrorists, and with good luck and that wonderful FBI agent Andrea Price had married, theyd survived, and she didnt expect anything like that to happen again. Her own Secret Service detail was her defense against that. Her own Principal Agent, Roy Altman, inspired the same sort of confidence at his job that she did at hers, Cathy judged.
"Here you go, Dr. Ryan," the usher said, delivering the refilled glass.
"Thank you, George. How are the kids?"
"My oldest just got accepted to Notre Dame," he answered proudly.
"Thats wonderful. Whats she going to major in?"
"Premed."
Cathy looked up from her journal. "Great. If theres any way I can help her, you let me know, okay?"
"Yes, maam, I sure will." And the nice thing, George thought, was that she wasnt kidding. The Ryans were very popular with the staff, despite their awkwardness with all the fussing. There was one other family the Ryans looked after, the widow and kids of some Air Force sergeant whose connection with the Ryans nobody seemed to understand. And Cathy had personally taken care of two kids of staff members whod had eye problems.
"Whats tomorrow look like, Jack?"
"Speech to the VFW convention in Atlantic City. I chopper there and back after lunch. Not a bad speech Callie wrote for me."
"Shes a little weird."
"Shes different," the President agreed, "but