In fiction at least, if not in Hollywood, desi doctors get to anchor ER teams. Take Bloodletting & Miracle Cures, the Giller Prize-winning story collection by young ER doc Vincent Lam, and his character Sri, M.D.:

Winner of Canada’s Giller Prize, Lam… an emergency room physician, looks beyond blood and guts… Fitz (short for Fitzgerald) has a not-so-secret drinking problem, the fallout from which that lands him an unexpected job; Ming, the main cast’s only woman, has a cold scientist’s outlook that both aids and hinders her; Sri’s heart breaks for anything that comes near his scalpel–be it a tattooed cadaver or a rambling psychotic; and dispassionate Chen struggles, like Sri, to balance compassion with his desire to succeed. [Link]

The NYT applauded:

… Lam’s work fits better among that of nonfiction writers like… Atul Gawande. He writes what is sometimes called “documentary fiction”… Some of the best stories in Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures read like journalistic dispatches from the medical front lines, with careful psychological characterization added…

The writing is often lovely — Fitzgerald, jilted by Ming, longs “to tip over the meniscus of anger that grew like water perched higher than the rim of a glass” — and generally understated… He is himself an emergency physician and thus brings to mind Somerset Maugham, William Carlos Williams and Chekhov — the first a former medical student and the others doctors for the whole of their literary careers. [Link]

You’ll find it conveniently located next to Lahiri and Nikita Lalwani on the fiction shelves. And you can read excerpts here.