At the end of
Grand Rounds, I ran up to speak to the emergency doctor who'd presented a case
of a family that had collapsed after an ordinary meal.
I
was an M.D. studying emergency medicine myself, but I'd never seen a case like
this, with two men vomiting and a woman unconscious, their faces cyanotic, or
blue from lack of oxygen—and when the police checked their apartment afterward,
it looked like the family had been deliberately poisoned.
I
asked the presenting doctor so many questions that he told me to read about the
case in a journal. It wasn't one he'd seen himself, but read about: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5129a2.htm
I
subconsciously mulled over that case for over a decade before writing
"Blue Christmas" .
Originally,
I wrote it as part of my medical thriller, Human Remains ,
set at a research lab. Then I realized it was a story complete unto itself and
slowly, painfully excised the story.
Luckily, "Blue Christmas" was published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and is one of my favourite stories starring Hope Sze, the resident doctor who solves murders.
The advantage of writing the novel was that I could see the people so clearly in my mind: the cheerful head of the lab, the dudes who'd rather drink and smoke but have to put in an appearance, the beautiful half-Asian and half-white research assistant dancing to "Uptown Funk," Dr. Wen who'd have his own lab if he'd stayed in China but is very proud of his article recently published in Cell about the Nogo-66 receptor, and the host who keeps name dropping the Banting and Best fellowship he'd won.
Two
graduate students told me that I depicted lab personalities very accurately. No
mean feat since I never did a Master's or Ph.D. myself. At least not yet …
For
now, I'm happy with an M.D. and with weaving as many stories as possible. Merry
Christmas in July!
Here's a bonus pic of me and my friend, Nathalie Gamache, gin-ecologist who made a custom gin for my novel, White Lightning .
Cheers,
Melissa
YI
5 comments:
Great post, Melissa. Your characters are intriguing!
What a great idea you got from that story about the family all getting sick. It's said write what you know, and you do!
Terrific blog post!
Big compliment, thanks, Lynn!
Thanks, Diana. The family recovered, thank goodness.
I do write what I know, but I also encourage people to write what they want so we end up with new worlds.
Melissa, thank you for joining us this weekend! I love the thumbnails of the characters. I've met the dudes who'd rather drink and smoke than show up although not in a lab. I think I was in one in high school science, that is if there is a lab in Biology.
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