A Killer Flight With No Way Out

When Dr. Hope Sze flies to Los Angeles to reunite with her soul mate, she expects Botoxed blondes with Brazilian wax jobs, not terror at 35,000 feet in the air.

Yet on their way home, with 1000 miles to go and nowhere to land, she and Dr. John Tucker must strive to save one man’s life.

Hope and Tucker have no surgical equipment. No surgeon on board. And, as first year family medicine residents, almost no experience.

But right this second, they’ll try anything.

Especially Hope, because minutes before, she might have accidentally helped to kill the man spasming at her feet.

Dr. Valerie Chia strides into St. Joseph's emergency room expecting the usual Montreal Monday morning chaos. Nothing she and the other day doctor can't handle, with the help of the nurses and a little coffee.

Until the other day doctor doesn't show up. And one of the overnight patients crashes. And the shiny new resident doctor, Hope Sze, tries to save the patient’s airway, but just might end up killing the woman instead.

Debut episode (half-hour pilot script) of a medical radio drama featuring Dr. Hope Sze, by Melissa Yi, a.k.a. Melissa Yuan-Innes, the emergency physician and award-winning author.

Max's To-Do List
1. Get born. Check.
2. Discover a magic hat. Check.
3. Defeat bullies who snatch the magic hat. Uh-oh...

A heart-warming picture book about a boy who takes on the bullies--and wins!

Winner of the Best Children's Literature award, sponsored by the Cornwall Public Library and the Cornwall and Region Writer’s Society.

One missing uncle. One missing child. And a river that could kill them both.

Drugs. Alcohol. Violence. Chaos.

All in a night’s work for Dr. Hope Sze, aspiring Montreal emergency physician—until someone tries to strangle her with her own stethoscope.

Then Hope’s lover disappears.

A second woman barely escapes throttling before her beloved vanishes too.

Hope slogs through the pneumonia and hemorrhoid patients cramming the ER while a psychopath stalks the empty, post-midnight hallways of St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Waiting. Waiting patiently.

Until everything explodes.

"Wonderful."--Greg Smith, M.D.
"Valuable."--The Ultimate Reading List for Nurses
Now an audio book on Audible or at Gumroad.

If you yearn to hold your baby,

If your love still burns,

If your heart is broken,

Or if you want to comfort to someone walking this road,

This book is for you.

"Your Baby Is Safe" was written for anybody who has loved and lost a little one at any age.

Camping can kill you.

'Tis the season for eggnog and envy.

The hours are inhumane.
Thoracic surgeon: "Never stand when you can sit. Never sit when you can lie down. Never lie down when you can sleep."

Orthopedic surgery resident: "We do 72 hours on call on the weekends...but if you just accept that you'll have no life for five years, it's not so bad."

Fellow medical student: "You have to decide when you're too tired to eat, or too hungry to sleep."

The people are insane.
Fellow medical student: "Yes, Dr. Job's the surgeon who asked the nurse for a sterile towel. She handed it to him. He thanked her, tossed the towel over the resident's face, and punched him through the drape, so that his fist would stay sterile. Then Dr. Job kept on operating." Pause. "But the he's always been very nice to me."

But you literally hold someone's life in your hands.

And the one thing that nobody told me before I plunged hands-first into my first surgical rotation, the thing I had to discover for myself, was that, compared to anything else in medicine:

Every blood-spattered second of surgery
is
so
much
fun.

Ah, the innocence of medical school. This is a story from my third year of clinical clerkship, when I started rotating through the hospital wards, starting with internal medicine. I was matched to the gastrointestinal team, so I can recite the bacterial causes of bloody diarrhea to this day.

One patient taught me about ulcerative colitis...and a few other things.

You can also find this essay in my book, The Most Unfeeling Doctor in the World and Other True Tales from the Emergency Room.

When Dr. Hope Sze trades the crime-ridden city of Montreal for a fishing trip with her dad, she expects misty lakes and crimson maple leaves. In other words, a perfect family fun day. Then Hope’s mother—never the sharpest scalpel in the neighbourhood—drags along crazy uncle Leonard, transforming Black Donald Lake into a very dark place.