I CAN'T SAVE YOU

A Black physician confronts racism, self-doubt, and inner demons.

In his soul-baring debut, Chin-Quee, an otolaryngologist who has consulted for the TV shows Grey’s Anatomy and The Resident, offers an intimate look at his transformation from a fearful child into a confident, competent physician in a demanding specialty. His parents, immigrants from the West Indies, were professionals: his mother, a psychologist; his father, a lawyer. His mother struggled with depression, and his father, addicted to gambling, was disbarred. Although young Tony wanted to keep the family’s turmoil secret, his pain erupted as panic attacks and anxiety. As he grew, Chin-Quee managed to hide his feelings “behind a high-wattage smile and a booming laugh,” but he wrestled with a familial legacy of mental illness and self-destructive behavior. “I knew that, just beneath my skin, my father lived inside me,” he writes. “He lived in my insecurities and my weaknesses. He lived in my fears.” Those insecurities were intensified by racist encounters as well as the physically and emotionally exhausting process of becoming a physician. “What the hell was I doing there other than playing dress‑up in doctor’s clothing?” he asked himself as a first-year intern. The author was beset by feelings of anger and defeat, “the undercurrents of the lessons I learned at home; constant reminders of the power I didn’t have whenever I stepped out into the world.” Most debilitating, he was harangued by an inner voice—a “bold and sadistic antagonist”—that ruthlessly berated him, and he became depressed, even suicidal. Chin-Quee capably recounts his hard road to personal and professional survival, negotiating the White-dominated world of medicine and comprehending the complexities of his own identity. He came to recognize the traits “that truly matter: the self-awareness and strength of character necessary to weather the devastating emotional trials that are sure to come; the humility and grace required to be an effective, collaborative, and avid lifelong learner.”

A candid, stirring chronicle of struggle and success.