This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

I'm Debra Treesman, Fiction Editor at the New Yorker.

Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.

This month, in his second appearance on this program, we're going to hear Tobias Wolfe

read emergency by Dennis Johnson.

George's pills were making me feel like a giant helium-filled balloon, but I was wide awake.

Emergency was first published in the New Yorker in 1991.

Tobias Wolfe included it in his 1994 anthology, The Vintage Book of Contemporary Short Stories.

Wolfe is the author of among other books the memoir of this boy's life and the novel Old School.

He is also a writer of short stories, 10 of which have appeared in the New Yorker.

Welcome back, Toby.

It's good to be back, Debra.

Now, last year we taped a podcast on Stephanie Vaughn's story, Dog Heaven, and at that point

you said you also wanted to do this story by Dennis Johnson very much.

Why was it so hard to narrow down to one?

Well, actually, Debra, you know, I didn't narrow it down to one.

Did I narrow it down to two?

Exactly.

And you rationed me.

So I had to come back and do this one.

And I actually have some others I wanted to do.

There's a line of me waiting outside your door to read stories.

...