Medical tales presage promising writing career

Book review by Harriet Zaidman, Winnipeg Free Press
January 22, 2006

oronto physician Vincent Lam uses his own experiences to proffer 12 related short stories in his well-written debut, Bloodletting and Miracle Cures. He traces the careers of four doctors, from their days as aspiring medical students, through the rigours of medical college and into the real world, where their Hippocratic oaths are tested. Lam demonstrates a surgical use of wit to create realistic characters whose foibles are gradually exposed. His portrayals make for believable scenarios at the University of Toronto and beyond. He drops in and out of his characters' lives, enlarging on traits hinted at in earlier stories, reminiscent of the method employed by the former Selkirk physician Kevin Patterson in his 2003 short-story collection Country of Cold.

How to Get Into Medical School Part 1 will likely be the signature piece of Lam's collection. Ming and Fitzgerald are two keeners who pretend to each other that they are the only ones devoted to helping humanity. Of course, each has other objectives. Ming wants to satisfy her own ambitions and her parents. Fitz wants Ming. Ming finally declares her love for him, but insists on a clandestine romance because, she claims, her family expects her to marry a Chinese man. She assures Fitz she will tell her parents, but the right moment never comes. When her father listens in on their phone calls, Ming becomes the obedient daughter: "[T]hen she would say to Fitzgerald in a voice that was halfway between meek library mouse and breathless seducer, 'Thank you for helping me with my study problems,' and all three would hang up."

A cadaver named Murphy (Take All of Murphy) is the focus of the psychological and academic pressures that Ming and colleagues Sri and Chen experience in their first year of medical school. As the body is unwrapped and cut open to reveal its tissues and organs, the wraps come off the students' personalities. Ming's too-big white lab coat gets dirty, as she becomes all business, while Sri insists on respect for Murphy's tattoos.

The old world and the new juxtapose in A Long Migration. Chen, as the doctor-in-the-family, is designated to administer unknown herbal brews to his dying grandfather in Brisbane, Australia. His one year of modern medical training is to be put to use so relatives will know exactly when to fly in from around the world to visit his grandfather before he dies; not earlier, not later.

How far does a physician's responsibility to the patient and society extend? Lam deals with the complex issues of duty and conscience in Winston and Eli. In Afterwards, the circumstances of a husband and father's death in the emergency room cloud the shock of his loss. The absurdity and risks of childbirth will reverberate with today's parents in An Insistent Tide.

Patients often assume that doctors lead flawless lives. Lam presents the human side of Chen, who hopes his professional standing will trump fatigue in Before Light. Fitz's weaknesses and the decisions he makes turn him into a shadow of what he could have been in Night Flight, certainly the saddest of the stories. Fitz, now flying medical evacuations from exotic locations, continues his lifetime of lies so that he can rationalize his conduct.

Fitz and Chen meet again as victims of the 2003 SARS crisis in Contact Tracing, the only slightly unbelievable story, since it is hard to imagine patients who are that sick talking or laughing as much as they do, as they recall their shared history.

Lam's skilful writing style builds interest and tension while it addresses current issues and dilemmas in the medical world. His literary debut shows promise in anticipation of his first novel, which will be published in 2007.

Harriet Zaidman is a teacher-librarian in Winnipeg.

© Winnipeg Free Press 2006