"Take All of Murphy" by Vincent Lam
"Above the left nipple were four tattooed hearts in purple, the shape of the designs twisted by the skin’s movement through its years."
It wasn’t on purpose, but April took on a medical theme. I began the month by reading Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, a 2006 short story collection about med students in Toronto. Like many, I watched The Pitt, the medical drama spanning a single shift in a Pittsburgh emergency room. And I finally made it to my “annual” physical. I recommend all three: reading Bloodletting, watching The Pitt, getting your physical—a blood-abundant mortality combo platter.
In “Take All of Murphy,” a team of medical students dissects a cadaver. We encounter Sri, Ming, and Chen before their first incision, deliberating over who should begin. Sri does, and the description of that first cut is equal parts horrifying and riveting: “Flesh gripped the blade, and through the handle Sri felt its texture—thick and chalky. Steel scraping on sternum. Sri thought of a beach—of writing with a stick in hard sand thrown halfway up from the tide, with the water not far away.”
As the dissection proceeds, we learn more about each of the would-be doctors and about the cadaver himself—who he was, that is, or might have been. His lungs are “fringed with the gritty black of tobacco”; his tattoos suggest he might have been a pilot. The students argue over whether to cut through their cadaver’s ornate crucifix tattoo, and already we know which character will want to cut around, and who wants to slice right through.
Usually it’s through the senses that fiction comes alive: images, of course, but also scent and sound—enough sensory detail for the reader to complete the picture. “Take All of Murphy” reminds me how effectively this is accomplished with the bodily, the physical, the visceral. Lam is a physician himself. He doesn’t just say what happened but puts it into terms we not only understand, but can’t easily forget: “On the day the ribs were cut to get at the organs, the room shrieked with hand-held rotary saws. Bone dust—it was in your hair, on your lips afterwards. ‘Smells like barbecue,’ shouted Ming.”
But Lam’s story isn’t only about the gruesome reality of the body. At times our med students are as cryptic as their cadaver. The dissection is educational, but it doesn’t teach them everything. It can’t. What makes a body a person? There are some things we know about being human—where organs typically are, what medical textbooks might teach you—and other things we just don’t.
I will probably never not find it troubling to be a walking organ sack, gooey and vulnerable. It seems like a bad design, that a body needs a professional to translate it via blood draws, stethoscopes, scans. So often, my mind is wrong about what’s going on inside of me. My body acts against my wishes, even though I live with it—it’s technically me. Even more troubling is that the professionals don’t always get it right. Where The Pitt is too-hot doctors who always have the answers (not a complaint!), “Take All of Murphy” is more tentative—more uncertain. That uncertainty is uncomfortable, of course, but it’s also honest. It’s a story I feel in my bones, and in my literal, mysterious heart.
Read “Take All of Murphy” courtesy of Vincent Lam’s website, or in the 2006 collection, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures.
This month I read two memorable collections: Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures (2006) and Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker (2004). “Hanwell in Hell” by Zadie Smith was recommended to me (thanks Erich!) and did not disappoint: incredible last line, incredible everything. Other excellent stories available online: “The State” by Tommy Orange and “A Star in the Book of Liars” by Justin Taylor.
A few quick announcements: I was scheduled to speak at the North Berkeley public library this Wednesday, May 14, but will instead be serving on a jury in downtown Los Angeles. (We’ll reschedule.) I do plan to be in Pittsburgh on May 31, and Baltimore on June 1, though! UPDATE as of 5/12: Case was resolved and I’m coming after all!
In September, I’ll be the author-in-residence at the Nor Cal Writer’s Retreat: “a peaceful and relaxing five days and four nights of writing, workshopping, yoga, and community” in Carmel Valley, California. If that sounds enticing, you can learn more and submit an application at the NCWR website. Applications are due by June 3.
Last but in no way the least!! My friends Meng, Shruti, and Susanna and I are starting a teaching collective called The Dream Side. Together, we’ll be offering writing courses and retreats, both online and off. Our first will take place this summer in San Francisco, on the weekend of August 9 and 10. We’re calling it “Rewilding Craft: A Generative Writing Retreat.” It will be a weekend for fiction writers of all levels. If you’d like to stay in touch about future classes, including a year-long online novel generator, you can sign up for our newsletter, which we’ll send once a season.
Praise be a human who uses an analog planner—I have used the same monthly planner since college—and the columns of the steno pad.
I would love to Rewild! I crammed Tin House and NorCal Writers into Q1 (hence my fangirling for Weds) and am c r a w l i n g through revisions Q2…will I still have a brain in Q3??
Sad to hear about jury but glad for the update! (N Berk has not announced yet😂) Also excited re: The Dream Side. Also also, what notebooks do you use? Love the short stories list you share on many levels.