Support for the Nocturnist comes from the California Medical Association.

At the Nocturnist, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with health care privacy laws.

Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality.

All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer.

You're listening to The Nocturnous Conversations. I'm Emily Silverman.

Physician memoirs are a lot of fun to read, but every once in a while, a voice comes along that puts a completely different spin on the genre.

Anthony Chinquy is one of those voices, as I was very happy to discover in reading his 2023 memoir,

I Can't Save You.

The book, which I would describe as playful, irreverent, and brutally honest, is a coming-of-age story which chronicles the ups and downs of Tony's residency in E&T, as well as his inner journey, coming to grips with his family legacy.

Tony was educated at Harvard and Emory,

but ultimately made the decision to leave clinical medicine

and pursue his dreams as an artist.

An award-winning storyteller with The Moth,

he's been on the writing staff of Fox's The Resident

and ABC's Grey's Anatomy, which you'll hear much more about in the

interview that follows. But first, let's hear an excerpt from Tony's book, I Can't Save You. Here's

Tony. At 1143 a.m., that little black Motorola box of horrors chirped at me for the first time.

I may or may not have spontaneously peed a couple of drops before I got it together.

No big deal, right?

Happens to everybody.

I picked up the phone and dialed the emergency room.

The conversation panned out just like a scene from your average 90s-era fish-out-of-water comedy,

...