Night Surgeon

Ruìsāng’s hand trembled ever so slightly as he pushed open the door, the creak of the hinges echoing loudly. For weeks, he had relished the freedom, the absence of her drunken tirades and the weight of her constant disappointment. Yet, as he stepped through the doors, a hollow ache began to gnaw at his insides. The relief he had felt was now tinged with a biting guilt, a gnarling sense of betrayal that clawed at his conscience.

His mind knew the truth – she hadn’t been good to him, perhaps hadn’t even loved him in the way a mother should. But his heart, twisted up in a forced sense of loyalty, refused to let go of the bond that should have existed between them. He felt like a failure, a son who hadn’t even tried to find her, to save her from herself. Rational thoughts whispered that his life would be better without her, that he was free now. But freedom felt like a cold, empty space where warmth should have been.

Tears, unbidden, blurred his vision. Ruìsāng had always been strong, resilient, a fighter against life’s cruelties. But in this moment, he felt none of that. He was just a boy, lost and alone, mourning a relationship that had never truly been.

For nearly a decade since returning to his mother's custody, a hidden part of Ruìsāng had been harbouring the wish that she had never reclaimed him. A simmering anger towards the world stemmed from the injustice of it all; how could a woman like her simply take back a child, snatching away every glimmer of a different life he might have had? Back then, he was younger, his hands unscarred. He had clung to this chance out of necessity, working tirelessly to avoid the spectre of foster care returning to claim him.

His teenage years were a blur of beds, a desperate strategy to escape the suffocating atmosphere of his home, reeking of cheap alcohol and shattered dreams. He'd slip away from these beds before dawn, seeking refuge in the quiet of the early morning or the sanctuary of the library, just to keep pace with his studies. After school, he'd dutifully check on his mother, then lose himself in work, only to end his days in the company of strangers, allowing their hands to wander his skin as a trade-off to evade what waited for him at home.

Now, grappling with her death, Ruìsāng was tormented by a question: how much of this was his fault? Had he truly made any effort to help her? He'd convinced himself she was beyond help, but had he ever really tried — besides resenting her for her failures?



Startled by a voice, Ruìsāng spun around, his gaze meeting Viktor's, his eyes swimming with unshed tears, his brow creased. He nodded mutely, his red eyes cast downwards once more as he stepped up to the man. As he wiped his eye with the back of his hand, he felt the dampness but stubbornly denied the reality of it. He couldn’t be crying – he wouldn’t allow it.

“I—” he began, only for a sob to escape his lips, tears now freely streaming down his cheeks. A bitter, incredulous laugh punctuated the air as he shook his head in disbelief at his own feelings.

“I didn’t even like her, I don’t know why—” His words faltered, a desperate attempt to rationalise to Viktor, to himself, the searing pain, the profound emptiness, the crushing guilt. She had been a far cry from a good mother. So why?

And now, with her passing, any faint hope for reconciliation had slipped through his fingers like fine grains of sand, leaving him grappling with a loss he couldn't fully comprehend, mourning not a person, but a chance.

Perhaps it had been foolish, but somewhere deep inside, he had always harboured a fragile hope — one he'd never dared to acknowledge aloud — that one day she would embrace sobriety. He clung to the memory of his early years, hoping the kindness he remembered was not just an illusion seen through rose-tinted glasses, but a true part of a woman buried under layers of trauma and addiction.

He had silently yearned for her to realise, to accept the help she desperately needed, so she could transform into the mother he had always longed for. He imagined a world where he could lay down the crushing burden he had carried alone and share it, at last, with the one person who was meant to bear it for him from the start.

It might have been foolish.

But now, with all hope extinguished, he was faced with the bleak truth that this was all there would ever be. He had endured an abusive father. Then, the loneliness of foster care, watching other children find families while he remained unwanted and overlooked. He had survived her, and all he had been left with was a legacy of trauma, guilt, and an incapacitating sense of loss.

“It’s so— so stupid,” he murmured, a sniffle interrupting his words as he lifted his gaze to meet Viktor's. He shook his head, a futile attempt to dislodge the painful reality. If only denial could rewrite the past, could make sense of the senseless.

“I always thought it’d get better,” he confessed, revealing the most guarded secret of his heart. Why had he clung to her, in spite of everyone's warnings?

“I always believed that—” His voice cracked, tears streaming down his cheeks as he frantically tried to wipe them away. “That someday she’d look at me and... she’d want to change.” His bitter laughter morphed into a sob. “I’m so stupid.”

Viktor's uncertainty about how to handle the situation was evident, yet Ruìsāng found a strange comfort in it. It was a relief, in its own way, that he hadn’t unravelled at home or in the company of someone else. They would have been too kind, too gentle — and in his current state, Ruìsāng felt he would be overwhelmed by such well-intentioned compassion. He cherished their efforts to support him, truly he did, but the thought of facing their earnest attempts to console him was more than he felt capable of handling right now.

“Well, it’s gone now,” Ruìsāng said with a bitter chuckle, responding to Viktor’s comment about hope. The spark of hope he had nurtured for so long had been extinguished, leaving him to confront a newfound solitude. Sure, he wasn't alone yet — there was still the boy with golden eyes waiting for him back home — but Ruìsāng knew that wouldn't last forever. Soon enough, he would be returning to nothing but silence.

The irony of it wasn't lost on him. He had longed for silence in the past few months, only to now dread its impending, unrelenting presence.

“How… does she look?” he found himself asking Viktor, a hesitant inquiry. He wrestled with the decision of whether seeing her would be the right choice.

“Rough,” Viktor said, a summary of his mother's current state. Ruìsāng's gaze dropped at the sound of it. Memories of her, always worn and weary, flooded his thoughts. He could scarcely recall a time when she hadn’t embodied that description. Yet, in the faded photographs of his youth, she was a different person: a beautiful, vibrant woman with long, raven hair and eyes as deep and piercing as the night sky. Now, she was a mere shadow, a hollow echo of the woman in those pictures. To Ruìsāng, she had become less than a memory – an absence rather than a presence.

“I don’t—” Ruìsāng’s voice cracked. He stopped himself, teeth clenched. The urge to turn away, to erase her from his life, was overwhelming. He longed to expunge her from his memories, from the very walls of his home, from every facet of his existence. Yet, an invisible chain of loyalty bound him. It was a chain of his own making, held by his own hands.

“I feel like she’ll haunt me if I don’t say goodbye, at least,” he finally admitted, his voice a mix of resignation and dark humour. The thought wasn’t entirely a jest; part of him genuinely feared her lingering presence in his life, even beyond death.

Ruìsāng’s gaze dropped to his feet, a silent storm brewing within him as Viktor presented the choice. The weight of the decision pressed heavily upon him, allowing no time for contemplation or retreat. There was no room for delay; he must choose now.

Yet, in the depths of his conflicted heart, the answer was clear, albeit shrouded in reluctance. It had been an eternity since he last laid eyes on her, and the thought of seeing her now, in such a state, twisted his insides. But to forsake this final encounter would be to betray his own conscience. His culture dictated reverence in death, days spent in mourning with the departed. This, he could not do. But he could spare a moment, a fleeting tribute to the mother she never was, but could have been.

With a resolute step forward, Ruìsāng inhaled deeply, steeling himself. He bowed, not in the deep, reverent angle of ninety degrees, but in a modest inclination, a muted homage. Eyes closed, he whispered a farewell, “Yīlù hǎo zǒu,” — a journey’s end.

As his eyes reopened, confronting the quietude of his mother’s visage, a tumult of emotions churned within him. Her face, marred by years of abuse, now lay tranquil in death’s embrace. A subtle exhale escaped his lips, a silent release of pent-up emotions, as he stepped back, the act completed.

Gratitude, mingled with a complex tapestry of feelings, found expression as he turned to his mentor, “Thank you, Shīfu.”

Ruìsāng trailed behind his mentor to the familiar table. Settling into his usual chair, Ruìsāng watched as Viktor casually leaned against the table's edge. The thought crossed Ruìsāng's mind that he should perhaps gift Viktor a chair for his birthday.

Exhaling deeply, Ruìsāng felt the tension that had been coiled tight within him begin to unravel, inch by inch. It was as though a quiet panic had been lurking beneath the surface at the thought of losing her, but seeing her again had rekindled reality. She had never wanted to be saved. She had walked down this path herself.

Viktor’s question about pouring a drink broke the mood, prompting Ruìsāng to arch an eyebrow in a mix of irony and resignation. “Ah. Let’s celebrate the death of an alcoholic with a drink,” he remarked dryly, the words laced with a tinge of dark humour. A brief, sardonic laugh escaped him as he shook his head. “You know what — sounds perfect.” The suggestion, though seemingly incongruous, fit the moment.

As Ruìsāng contemplated, he resolved that tonight was for this – a pause, a breath, a moment. Tomorrow would be the time for action, for deciding how to navigate matters further.