025: Residency Stories

a dispatch from a front line health care worker + favorite books about medical science

This week, surviving by books is literal. Our guest writer, Dr. John Williams, is a third year surgical resident at a metro-Philadelphia hospital who earned his Doctor of Medicine degree at Icahn School of Medicine (formerly Mount Sinai) in New York City and his undergraduate degree from the U.S. Naval Academy. His story “Crash On” is one of a series of linked short stories inspired by his medical training. Taken together, the stories have an immediacy and economy of style that balance technical, even graphic, details with flashes of vulnerability and compassion, as well as hubris and exhilaration. Williams is a life-long, avid, book-reader who somehow managed to major in English Literature while fulfilling the requirements for his Bachelor of Science degree at Navy. He just also happens to be my son. —CC