CONTENT NOTE
Sofi Woolwich’s ‘After Hours’ references surgical procedures and human remains.
You know you won’t sleep tonight. The realisation occurs to you plainly, a self-evident truth. Something about the feeling of the evening in your throat.
You and the Surgeon’s son chat for a bit like normal, but he’s drowsy, syllables are melting together, and you tease him for it, in a familiar sort of way. He’s just driven you both back to the city after dinner with his family, despite it already being so late, and taking so long, all because you’ve got an appointment in the morning. He is a good person. He’s always doing these kinds of things for you. Even though he’s a medical student and he surely doesn’t have the time.
He’s drifting off mid-sentence now, insisting you wake him if you can’t sleep, and you think how reckless and reassuring it is, the self-sacrificing way he loves you.
You lie there for a few hours, turning every now and then from your side to your back to your front, before it really registers. Suppress the thought, pin your eyes shut until they start to sting. Rub them absent-mindedly. Behind your pupils, the outline of Carolyn, the Surgeon’s wife, earlier that afternoon. Bony embrace, laboured movements. Her small cotton sundress, her spare, narrow frame. The exposure of kneecaps, lines of the sternum, wrists like a child’s. The profound fatigue of the position she has been relegated to, the effect on the appetite, the virtue of the wronged.
Your eyes burn. You can’t stop rubbing them. You sit upright, relent to the sensation. The ancient gaze of the house cat, curled up by the bedroom door, follows you as you tread across the carpet. In the mirror above the vanity, your eyes are anonymous marbles, bloodshot and swollen. Rummage in the drawer, grab the bottle, lift your head back, let the droplets fall. Blink at the foreign figure in the glass. Give her a stern look. Stop thinking about it already. None of your business.
Climb back into bed, lift the sheet over yourself, put the tiny plastic discs in your ears. Resolve to be coerced into sleep. Beside you, his leg nudges yours in half-conscious compassion. He is a good person. Someone who is enveloped by sleep with a kind of moral ease.
You squint as the device interface lights up, tap an icon, type some vague notion into the search engine, choose the first result: a hypnotist with a German accent drawling on about how you’re walking through a forest, and then you’re floating in a lagoon, taking meaningful, measured breaths, over and over, you are weightless, serene. But the image of Arthur and Ada, the Surgeon’s parents, rendered so old by dusk, slices through the illusion, their wrinkled faces papered with confusion.
Where’s the man of the house? Arthur is asking.
The dangerous pause, and then the sweeping hand of Carolyn’s dismission. Oh, He’s been in theatre all day. Long list. Late finish.
Ada’s furrowed brow. Very long list indeed.
You exit the video hastily, try an alternate method. ‘Four Hours of Mellow Orchestral Sounds for Deep Relaxation’. At the foot of the bed, the house cat has materialised. He’s completely still, observing you through the darkness with his hard, vacant stare. Scrunch your eyes up, will the music to sedate you. But just below the video, imprinted in your brain, is a thumbnail of a girl wearing one of those innocuous little smart rings, accented by a clickbait caption. A chorus of internet voices reverberates: I’ve really been prioritising my sleep recently. There’s just so much they have to say, so much they have to tell you. Wellness, self-care, self-insight. Attachment styles, power imbalances! Replicating parents’ mistakes! Monogamy, toxicity, trauma. Control, control, control.
You can think yourself above popular psychology and half-digested feminism all you like, but maybe you should buy a ring. Maybe it would make you into a more whole person, someone with a circadian rhythm and REM cycles, someone whose insomnia isn’t set off by the misfortunes of a family that isn’t even theirs.
The Surgeon’s son stirs beside you, as if privy to your thoughts. The contours of his features are alien in the moonlight. He looks like a stranger. He looks like the Surgeon.
He is a good person, mostly.
Suddenly you can see the Surgeon very clearly, like you’re hovering over the scene. He’s making an incision down the middle of your torso with his nimble little scalpel. You wonder if you’re finally dreaming. But you mustn’t be—you can feel his son shifting beside you. His son who would insist you’re a part of his family. Distant ache in your core. Those impossible questions: Would you mind if he became the Surgeon? If you became the Surgeon’s wife?
When you think about your life choices up to this point, you are met with a brilliant, sharp feeling, as though you have been drastically foolish and exceptionally clever all at once. Like you are capable of grand, unknowable things.
Or nothing, nothing at all.
And it’s coming back now, the shape of the evening, the supreme tension of high summer. Relentless, gaudy sky, a forced smile. Temperature clinging on into twilight. Dull comprehension of crisis.
Inland heat is different, restless; it has nowhere to go.
The big, white house. The polished concrete floors. The charcoal abstractions on the walls. Doctorly paraphernalia—scripts, vials, X-rays—littered about the place, as though He hadn’t left weeks before. Carolyn, portioning out elegant platefuls of food with an ashen profile. The Surgeon’s son-in-law sweating profusely, an excruciating dampness pooling at the back of his shirt like some kind of accident. The Surgeon’s granddaughter, screaming, overheated, absorbing on some level the strained secrecies of adults. The unspoken absurdity of sweltering this way, in this house.
His favourite, Ada had sighed, surveying the pistachios atop a complex salad. Such a shame He’s so hardworking!
So, birthday boy. Arthur speared some broccolini with his fork, winking at his grandson, sitting beside you. How is school going?
Tess, the Surgeon’s daughter, piped up. Killed anyone yet?
He didn’t miss a beat. All in good time, sister. Everyone snickered merrily, and you could tell he was pleased with himself, pleased to be the entertainer, to inherit that role. No, it’s good, Grandpa. We’ve just started working with the cadavers, actually.
Ada nodded authoritatively. Anatomy was always your Dad’s strong suit.
You coughed on your wine. This was widely ignored.
Carolyn got a peculiar glint in her eye, smiling wistfully at her son. I wonder if they’ll give you a skeleton when you finish.
Mum, don’t, you’ll make me sick, Tess winced, just as the Surgeon’s son, laughing, said, Pretty sure that’s illegal now, Mum.
A skeleton? You turned to the Surgeon’s son.
He shook his head, grinning morbidly. You don’t want to know.
You peered around the table as everyone exchanged glances. I think I do.
He licked his lips. They used to give skeletons to medical graduates up until the 80s. As gifts.
Like… real ones?
There was a collective chuckle at your expense. The toddler shot you a withering look that couldn’t be intentional.
Yeah, real ones. He made a loose, expansive gesture, towards the turquoise pool, the orchard, the path down to the sea. Dad’s got one in a box in the shed.
Your palms went cold, but your hairline was slick with perspiration. Does He know who it is?
This is the part you’re really going to hate. He seemed delighted to deliver the next instalment of the story, helping himself to the rack of lamb at the centre of the table, basking in the dramaturgy of it all. Most of the specimens were imported from India. In a sort of… unethical trade.
On the inside of your cheek, there was a raggedness where you’d bitten away at the membrane. You swallowed. There’s human remains in the shed, you said slowly. Just sitting there. You stole a glimpse at Carolyn. You’re not… going to give them back? Or give them a proper burial?
Everyone bristled. Someone snorted. Carolyn was very thin and pale in that moment. Her tone was steady, almost inaudible, when she spoke. I don’t see any reason to give them back. The circumstances weren’t ideal, but they’re ours. They belong to us. To Him, strictly speaking. It’s His decision, what to do with them. She faltered, then rose abruptly and started clearing the table.
Your left calf muscle was spasming. You held your breath and stretched your leg flat. The tissue writhed under the flesh, as if wanting to break out.
What a funny evening, Arthur remarked.
When will He be home, do you know? Ada was asking.
You probably shouldn’t wait around for Him, Tess insisted.
Could be hours, the Surgeon’s son added.
Nonsense! We haven’t come all the way out here not to see Him! We’ll stay until He gets back, Ada declared. It’s His birthday too, of course. Even if He doesn’t want to admit it!
The organ in your chest began to palpitate to a garish tempo.
He never arrived. And now you’re here, in your bedroom, caught in this elastic state. Grasp at your phone, at hasty distractions. Delete all your emails. Find a foreign website advertising a designer serum that doubles as synthetic melatonin for $3.95, add it to your cart, cancel your cart. Shouldn’t buy into child labour so blatantly. Jesus. What would you do if you had to leave him? Google how to join a commune. Are there still communes? Communes near me. Doesn’t sound promising. Or your concept of a commune wasn’t so solid to begin with. Consider getting into sex work. Don’t these new subscription models make it safer, more lucrative for the women? Might be the most pragmatic idea you’ve had all night.
Bury your head in the duvet. You’re transported back to the car on the drive home. His son, clutching the steering wheel too tight, picking at his cuticles. The empty highway, a vacuum of shadows and lane markers. The sensation of being outside of time.
How did she seem to you?
Sharp intake of air. Depressed.
Why hasn’t anyone told your Grandparents?
He just shrugged, stared ahead.
You couldn’t help it, you pushed. Do you know anything about the woman?
She doesn’t exist to me.
That feels misogynistic.
He made an incredulous noise. You’re heartless, sometimes.
Well, you’re too forgiving, you retorted.
He raked a hand through his hair, refusing to engage.
What? You couldn’t be certain exactly what point you were making, who deserved to be punished, who deserved to be spared, but you persisted, regardless. You can’t just erase a person like that!
He said your name as though it was a curse. She had an affair with a married man.
She didn’t do it on her own!
I know that! He shouted. I know that, okay? But… He’s my Dad.
A long moment passed. You felt tenderness towards him, and resentment, and shame. You didn’t know what to do with all of this, so you said, He’ll come back, you know.
I hope so, he exhaled. It’s what Mum wants. I feel so helpless when she gets like this.
Do I remind you of her?
What?
Do I remind you of her?
No. He touched your hand. No. I love you. I didn’t mean to yell.
You looked at the black screen in your lap, the cracked glass and the plastic film. For the rest of the journey, you scrolled through pages of long-form content with curious titles, watching mouths move without sound, text floating about, superimposed onto life. Relationship advice. Cheating. Boundaries, breakups. Coming into your sexuality. Bridal makeup. Cheating. First trimester vlog. Polyamory Q&A. Cheating. Limerence. Co-dependence. Cheating.
You think about it a lot. The mythology of independence. The actual interdependence of all things. The food chain, the social network, kinship ties. Murky lines. The essential, inevitable fact of trust, reliance, in spite of all these trite desertions, betrayals, irretrievable breakdowns.
You realise now, if you concentrate hard enough, you can make out the Surgeon through the black of your bedroom. He’s sitting in the armchair in the corner, legs crossed in that cerebral way, like a psychoanalyst. He’s got that drunken, sparkly look about him, pointing His scalpel at you, ready to prise you open. He’s a lot like His son, really. Crinkly eyes, sure hands, easy intellect. He’s coming towards you now, and it dawns on you in pieces—that’s a kitchen knife He’s wielding. You try to tell him He’s got the wrong tool, and where is the anaesthetic, but He’s not listening, He’s smirking, kneeling down over you, very close, drawing the tip of the blade along your abdomen, towards your pelvis. He makes the cut, and it glides through your skin like the caramel sponge His wife served up hours before, and your blood is sticky, and hot, and it just keeps bubbling up, and the house cat is standing over you, leering at you, lapping it up. And then His arm is inside of you, right up to His elbow, reaching for something within you, trying desperately to find it, but He can’t, He just can’t, and He’s looking at you like it’s your fault.