Reading Response #3

As I continue reading Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam, I am becoming even more engrossed in his vivid and engaging short stories. The seventh in the set, entitled Eli, heavily explores the theme of deception. At the same time, Lam has also incorporated elements that show the risks doctors face every day while trying to save others. Eli centers around Dr. Fitzgerald as he treats a patient (Eli) who has been brought in by police officers. Though the officers claim Eli simply fell while in custody, the patient argues that it was the police themselves who brutalized him. Regardless, Fitz reluctantly treats Eli. Through this, Lam again demonstrates the conflict of interest doctors face with patients, and how they judge them. In conjunction with the unjust police officers, Fitzgerald is not morally opposed to brutalizing Eli himself, and even goes as far as stapling his wound shut, acknowledging that, “we use the pain of this spot [the forehead] to wake the comatose” (178). Lam has questioned the ethics of doctors. Though they are under oath to treat all patients equally, it is being implied that no physicians do. Again, Lam is forcing the reader to question their own morals, and insinuates the question, ‘Does Eli deserve such treatment?’ This mistreatment also includes the deceit theme, as mentioned above. Fitzgerald, as a doctor, is being deceitful. Though the job of doctors is to heal, Fitz is hurting. The same idea is mirrored when Eli bites Fitz. Immediately, Fitzgerald’s thoughts are of disease, of what could be festering in Eli’s saliva. “Saliva, clear and innocent, but sometimes it carries infections and curses like the words it lubricates” (181). It is here that Lam presents one of the most profound lines of the novel: “Blood bears the curse of human malice. This life fluid may conceal destruction, the way words and thoughts can kill unseen. Within blood the idea of death can flow” (179) Both of these human fluids, blood and salvia, act as innovative metaphors for one of man’s most common traits - duplicity.

Afterwards exhibits the complex idea that even in death, human beings are still able to hurt another. Continuing the theme of deception, this short story tells the tale of a woman whose husband died from a heart attack at an undercover brothel. Only after the man’s death does his wife figure out the circumstances of his passing. Mrs. Wilhelm is heartbroken and enraged to discover that her loved one had been lying to her. The pain of this mistrust stings more than the pain of Mr. Wilhelm’s death, and the shame associated with it will tear away at the family. This creates guilty thoughts for Mrs. Wilhelm. She would wish her husband alive, not to have him back, but to berate him about his adultery. Instead, she takes out her anger on the hooker, Cynthia, and other clients. Ironically, however, while Mrs. Wilhelm is forced to live on in humiliation, Lam shows the contrasting idea that her husband died in ecstasy. It is through this comparison that the reader can fully comprehend Lam’s intention with this piece; for the dead, it’s over, but it is the living that are subjected to continued pain of the heart.

The next story, An Insistent Tide, gives insight into the often taken-for-granted act of childbirth. Lam presents the seemingly simplistic and common act of labour as complicated, challenging, and realistic, contrary to the conceptions of society. Janice’s husband Oliver gets to experience how ‘ignorance is bliss.’ Lam continually places phone calls from Oliver through the passage, where he asks about unimportant things like video cameras, and if he should pick up Janice’s baby books at the house (when he arrives in Toronto, by car, from New York). Oliver has no comprehension of the magnitude of Janice’s prospective caesarian section, and therefore, is joyously content to putter onward to Toronto. Janice on the other hand, is facing some of the most blood-curdling challenges of her life. Janice balances between her real life, and a dream state, where a tide is slowly swallowing her whole. The tide reflects Janice’s contractions, the female’s natural and normal prelude to birth, however in this crucial case they could bring on the death of both mother and child. In the dream world, the drowning of Janice, and in the real world, the suffocation of her baby. Faced with the prospect of losing her child, Janice makes the brave, or somewhat rash, decision to have the caesarian done with no anesthetic. Just as Janice realizes “the waves are going to crash over me, drown me. Why can’t I move?” (232) she is saved by Dr. Ming when the procedure ends, and she “turned, and glimpsed the exultant blood-smeared child” (233). The reader is left with great relief knowing that both Janice and her baby survived. Still, the reader is also haunted by Lam’s gory and evocative description of child birth.

The other interesting point about An Insistent Tide is that it brings Ming back into focus. For some time now, she has been ignored in the novel. Though this story does not give much insight into her character, we see her working well with patients (contrary to her previous tart portrayal), and learn that she is now an obstetrician. This gives me the idea that the last three stories will provide closure on the connected lives of Ming, Fitzgerald and Chen.