Torontoist Reads - Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam

Torontoist isn’t sure where Vincent Lam finds the time to write. The 31-year old author just recently published his first book of short stories, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, he’s got a novel and a non-fiction book about pandemic influenza coming out next year. Oh, he’s also an emergency room physician at Toronto East General.

Well, whatever he’s secret, we’re glad that Lam is writing. His short stories are inspired by his experiences in medicine; whether it’s the stress of medical school interviews, a student’s first dissection or the unique stresses of being on the night-owl shift at a downtown hospital.

In “Night Flight” Lam tells the story of Fitzgerald, a doctor flying to the Carribean to evacuate a very sick patient and the surrealness of flying to a foreign country for the single purpose of transporting one patient back home. “Contact Tracing” is a story inspired by the SARS epidemic, an event that threatened the lives of doctors and nurses more than any other segment of this city’s population. My personal favourite is “Winston,” a story with one of the most insightful portrayals of mental illness in recent memory.

It’s pretty clear that Lam’s writing wouldn’t exist without the information gleaned from years of medical practice. There’s enough gory details here to satisfy medical junkies, those who religiously watch all of those operation shows on TLC. But his writing, pardon the pun, isn’t clinical. Doctors hopefully don’t lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day it’s the patient, another person with their own complicated set of neuroses and emotions that truly matters. He takes this philosophy to heart in his writing and gives us a book of mature, well-crafted stories.