In a recent interview published in The National Review of Medicine, Vincent Lam candidly admits that he always wanted to be a writer "since he was a kid," and that he became a doctor more to please his mother. Lam, a thirty-one-year old emergency room physician in a Toronto hospital, has certainly put his heretofore untapped creativity to good use in this complex and insightful first book of short stories, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures.
These twelve stories are linked by four recurring characters: Dr. Fitzgerald, Dr. Chen who marries Dr. Ming, and Dr. Sri. They are young ambitious Toronto medical students who graduate and practice medicine in their respective specialties, their hectic lives intertwined with each other, their families, and their various patients.
Although Lam, a Canadian of Chinese Vietnamese descent, claims in this same interview that the stories aren't autobiographical, they do reveal a lot about the underside of the medical profession and the human fallibility of its practitioners.
In "Contact Tracing" which is set at the time of the SARS outbreak in a Toronto hospital in March 2003, the young doctors, Fitzgerald and Chen, are patients. This reversal of fate causes Fitzgerald to reflect deeply about who he really is and what that "dark-cloaked word", doctor, really means. Chen, who married Fitzgerald's first love, Ming, an obstretical surgeon, is in the next isolation room. In these "fish bowls," they can communicate by telephone and discuss their own likely deaths with clinical coolness. Death is what is really the matter in Bloodletting and Lam tackles his theme with literary fortitude. And there are no miraculous cures, as the title suggests.
One of the most gripping stories, "Eli", exposes the dangers that doctors and staff face in the E.R.Dr. Fitzgerald treats a prisoner named Eli who is brought in by two police, "one short man, one tall woman." Tensions increases as Dr. Fitzgerald suspects the bloody gash on the prisoner's forehead may be due to police brutality. Eli, who is filthy and possibly mad, pushes Fitzgerald's buttons until he loses his professional cool. He reflects: "Benevolence and cruelty are separated only by a veneer of whim, which in medicine, we understand." Eli bites his hand and Dr. Fitzgerald has to receive treatment himself against HIV and other possible infections.
In "Before the Light", Dr. Chen keeps a diary or log before his night shife at the E.R. His anxiety is so high he can't rest and he drives recklessly to the hospital: "The full daytime lighting give it (the E.R. room) an out-of-earthly-time feeling, like in a convenience store before dawn." Dr. Chen feels more like a car salesman than a healer when he has to convince a patient who is having a heart attack to agree to the treatment.
Another outstanding story is "Winston." With the flair of a mystery writer, Lam keeps the reader guessing about the "truth" through the twists and turns of his plot. Winston is a twenty-two-year old man who is sure he has been poisoned by his upstairs neighbour Adrienne with whom he is infatuated. He goes to the clinic for an antidote. He is seen by Dr. Sri who doubts Winston's story and goes to Winston's apartment to make sure he doesn't commit suicide. Dr. Sri believes Winston is suffering from a psychotic break and consults with his superior, A Dr. Miniadis. In a satirical cameo, Dr. Miniadis wears her earphones and listens to opera throughout their consultation, and speaks gibberish. In these stories, female physicians, like Dr. Ming in "How to Get into Medical School, Part One" and "Part Two", are portrayed as even more hard-nosed than their male counterparts.
Bloodletting in medicine was a way to purify the body, to detoxify it. Lam is like one of the medical students in the dissecting room, in the gruesome "Take all of Murphy." With his pen rather than a scalpel, Lam has boldly pierced the outer skin of his professional experiences to reveal the diseased organs within. All the stories are carefully crafted, though a few have loose ends and some are overly intricate. Many of the descriptive passages though are as bold and artful as strokes of calligraphy.
Lam's acerbic vision and black humour recalls some of John Cheever's darkest stories. Relationships are strained by ambition, overwork, and love does not fare well. In Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, decent men and women are thrust into some indecent circumstances that test their humanity. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is an edgy and brainy debut collection.
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