Interface by Neal Stephenson, J. Frederick George Page B

and had gotten a brutal refresher co urse during high school, when her mother had fallen ill and died of leukemia. She stood up straight, squared her shoulders, blinked her eyes. "I want to know everything," she said. "This Chinese wat er torture stuff is going to kill me."
    "Very well," Sipes said, and reached for his key chain. The ele vator fell.
    All that Mary Catherine was doing, really, was coming to the ho spital to visit a sick relative. The chairman of the neurology de partment did not have to guide her personally through the ho spital. She was getting this treatment, she knew, because she was the Governor's daughter. I t was one of those weird things that happened to you all the tim e when you were the daughter of William A. Cozzano. The im portant thing was not to get used to this kind of treatment, not to expect it. To remember that it could be taken away at any time.
    If she could make it all the way through her father's political career without ever forgetting this, she'd be okay.
    Dad had a private room, on a quiet floor full of private rooms, with an Illinois State Patrolman stationed outside it.
    "Frank," Mel said, "how's the knee?"
    "Hey, Mel," the trooper said, reached around his body, and shoved the door open.
    "Change into civvies, will ya?" Mel said.
    When Sipes led Mel and Mary Catherine inside, Dad was asleep. He looked normal, if somewhat deflated. Sipes had already warned them that the left side of his face was paralyzed, but it did not show any visible sagging, yet.
    "Oh, Dad," she said quietly, and her face scrunched up and tears started pouring down her face. Mel turned toward her, as if he'd been expecting this, and opened his arms wide. He was two inches shorter than Mary Catherine. She put her face down into the epaulet of his trench coat and cried.   Sipes stood uncertainly, awkwardly, checking his wristwatch once or twice.
    She let it go on for a couple of minutes. Then she made it stop. "So much for getting that out of the way," she said, trying to make it into a joke. Mel was gentlemanly enough to grin and chuckle halfheartedly. Sipes kept his face turned away from her.
    Mary Catherine was one of those people that everyone naturally liked. People who knew her in med school had tended to assume that she would go into a more touchy-feely speciality like family practice or pediatrics.   She had surprised them all by picking neurology instead. Mary Catherine liked to surprise people, it was another habit she had picked up congenitally.
    Neurology was a funny speciality. Unlike neurosurgery, which was all drills and saws and bloody knives, neurology was pure detective work. Neurologists learned to observe funny little tics in patients' behavior - things that laymen might never notice - and mentally trace the faulty connections back to the brain. They were good at figuring out what was wrong with people. But usually it was little more than a theoretical exercise, because there was no cure for most neurological problems. Consequently, neurologists tended to be cynical, sardonic, remote, with a penchant for dark humor. Sipes was a classic example, except that he appeared to have n o sense of humor at all.
    Mary Catherine was trying to make a personal crusade of bringing more humanity to the profession. But standing by her stricken fa ther's bedside crying her eyes out was not what she'd had in mind. "Why is he so out of it?" Mel said.
    ''Stroke is a major shock to the system. His body isn't used to th is. Plus, we put him on a number of medications that, taken tog ether, slow him down, make him drowsy. It's good for him to sl eep right now."
    "Mary Catherine told me that guys of his age, in good shape, shouldn't have strokes." "That's correct," Sipes said. "So why did he have one?"
    "Usually stroke happens when you are old and the arteries to yo ur brain are narrowed by deposits. This patient's arteries are in go od shape. But a big blood clot got loose in his system." "Damn," Mary Catherine said,