"I come here today to speak to you about America…" Below the President were five Secret Service agents standing in line, their sunglasses shielding their eyes so that those in the audience could not always tell where they were looking, and also because people without eyes are intimidating at a visceral level. Their hands were clasped in front, and radio earpieces kept them in contact with one another as they scanned the crowd. In the rear of the field house were others, this group scanning with binoculars, because they knew that the love in the building was not uniform, or even that there were some who sought to kill the things they loved. For that reason, the advance team had erected portable metal-detector arches at all the entrances. For that reason Belgian Malinois dogs had sniffed the building for explosives. For that reason they watched everything in the same way an infantryman in a combat zone was careful to examine every shadow.
"… and the strength of America lies not in Washington, but in Indiana, and New Mexico, and in every place Americans live and work, wherever it might be. We in Washington are not America. You are," the President's voice boomed through the PA system/—not a good system, the agents thought, but this event Jlad been laid on a little fast. "And we work for you. The audience cheered again anyway.
The TV cameras all fed into vans outside the building, and those had uplink dishes to relay the sound and pictures to satellites. The reporters were mainly in the back today, taking notes despite the fact that they had the full text, along with a written promise that the President really would deliver this one. "The President's speech today," all would say this evening, but it wasn't really the President's speech at all. They knew who'd written it. Gallic Weston had already talked to several of their number about it. They read the crowd, an easier task for them because they didn't have the klieg lights in their faces.
"… is not an opportunity, but a responsibility which we all share, because if America belongs to us all, so then the duty for running our country starts here, not in Washington." More applause.
"Good speech," Tom Donner observed to his commentator/analyst, John Plumber.
"Pretty good delivery, too. I talked to the superintendent of the Naval Academy. They say he was an excellent teacher once," Plumber replied.
"Good audience for him, mainly kids. And he's not talking major policy issues."
"Getting his feet wet," John agreed. "You have a team working the other segment for tonight, right?"
Donner checked his watch and nodded. "Should be there now."
"SO, DR. RYAN, how do you like being First Lady?" Krystin Matthews asked, with a warm smile.
"I'm still figuring it out." They were talking in Cathy's cubbyhole office overlooking central Baltimore. It had barely enough room for a desk and three chairs (a good one for the doctor, one for the patient, and the other for the spouse or mother of the patient), and with all the cameras and lights in the room, she felt trapped. "You know, I miss cooking for my family."
"You're a surgeon—and your husband expects you to cook, too?" the NEC co-anchor asked, in surprise bordering on outrage.
"I've always loved cooking. It's a good way for me to relax when I get home." Instead of watching TV, Professor Caroline Ryan didn't add. She was wearing a new starched lab coat. She'd had to take fifteen minutes with her hair and makeup, and she had patients waiting. "Besides, I'm pretty good at it."
An, well, that was different. A cloying smile: "What's the President's favorite meal?"
A smile returned. "That's easy. Steak, baked potato, fresh corn on the cob, and my spinach salad—and I know, the physician in me tells him that it's a little heavy on the cholesterol. Jack's pretty good with a grill. In fact, he's a pretty handy man to have around the house. He doesn't even mind cutting the grass."
"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.