An hour before surgery Dr Duncan ducked into the men’s bathroom. The women’s was another twenty-minute walk away and usually, on this side of the hospital, the bathroom was empty. But there was Ian, a surgical resident, posed against the grotty sinks. His phone lifted above his head, angled down, one hand moving beneath the blue of his scrubs. The moment he saw her, he stopped. A statue. But he did not withdraw his hand. The shape of his fingers flattened as he launched into an apology.

It’s just a photo, he spoke softly. It’s just a photo, honestly.

I shouldn’t have been in here, Dr Duncan replied. It’s fine.

Still he did not withdraw his hand. He put his phone beside the sink, screen down. Unhygienic, she thought, looking at the phone, imagining the dirty glass pressed to his ear. The bathroom’s details were otherwise familiar. She knew which cubicle had the cracked toilet seat, which tap ran viciously hot. Before he could say anything else she stepped back into the corridor.

Had things gone differently, Dr Duncan would have let Ian take the lead on the appendectomy. He’d have had the opportunity to gently push the tube, containing the light and camera, through the opened belly button and watch the inching of the large intestine as it appeared on the screen. Instead she would perform the first cut. Skin prised underneath the blade. The camera sunk in. She would have remarked, had Ian been holding the scalpel, that the large intestine was like a sea monster, mythical, moved along by its own pink pulse. She would have shaken her head and expressed her awe at the human body, asked him to consider that he might be the only person to ever see this part of the patient, that it was important not to let the significance of that intimacy pass you by. But Dr Duncan had changed her mind.

Ian paused, seemingly unfazed, beside the operating table. His hands in blue latex gloves. He did everything handsomely. He was gay, very gay, in his own words, and the other female residents flocked to him, knowing they wanted a piece of the ancient light that bounced off his body.

At Dr Duncan’s command, Ian dutifully took the disposal razor and tried to shave the top rows of the patient’s pubic hair. He struggled to find the right angle, twisting his elbows this way and that, dragging too lightly across the tough hairs, then too hard, threatening to nick the skin. One of the nurses flinched. When it was done, the low boil of a rash left behind, he did not look at Dr Duncan. He focused on the screen that showed the camera’s worming journey.

This would be the last operation of Dr Duncan’s shift. Later she would collect her son from the airport. He’d chosen a cheap flight, one that landed just before midnight. She had not seen him in a few months. Alex, who had grown up to be tall and broad, who was also handsome.

As the camera advanced through the bowel, she hummed quietly, a kind of theme tune. Alex had got into a decent university, if a little far away, and at eighteen was now old enough that they indulged in similar tastes; he claimed to like red wine, which he swished and swilled, named music she remembered from when she was his age. He’d told her, on his last visit, that he and his friends had drunk the bottle she’d sent to him out of stained mugs, knowing it might rile her. She resisted. Well, as long as you enjoyed it. Oh, we did, he said, insinuating what was just out of shot, the part of the picture she couldn’t see.

Through the belly button she filled the patient’s abdomen with gas, pushing out the walls of the large intestine, making it easier to navigate the sluggish turns. After that came the camera and the private, fleshy undertones, the surfaces slick and shining.

The appendix appeared. Half of it already distended, deep maroon, a twisted and flashing smile. Dr Duncan was satisfied. She had been right. The patient, who had arrived yesterday evening, complaining of pain in her right-hand side, no fever but an elevated white blood cell count, had been suffering from appendicitis. Now it had been caught before a perforation. She announced this to Ian, asked him to look at the appendix, veins drifting thin as hair, the bloated glow. He nodded over her shoulder. Briefly her elbow made contact with his chest.

The patient had tattoos. Not only down her arms but, as Dr Duncan looked back at her body from the screen, along the tops of her thighs. One was a quote in cursive that was too difficult to read upside down, then a giant flower, maybe a magnolia, that bloomed all the way to her knee. There was a smaller scene, birds across a sunset, a boat, the whole thing very elaborate.

Dr Duncan had her own tattoo. In black ink along her ribs, on the left-hand side. It was Alex’s full name, Alexander, done when he was already twelve years old. She’d practised writing it out beforehand, wanted it in lower case, lengthening the first ‘e’ so it would not be immediately recognisable as his, adding a flourish to the ‘r’. A literal impulse, she knew. Her body was already marked by his birth, the scar of the C-section faint but still visible across her stomach. It was around the time that the name she’d given him had begun to permanently change, his loud friends calling him Al, or, inexplicably, X. Her ex-husband, too, who had never said Alexander. Right from the beginning, he had always used Alex. These were the names her son chose to have on his homework, the signatures he gave on her birthday cards.

At the parlour, sitting on an old leather sofa, she’d been asked about placement. The tattoo artist listed body parts with bizarre distortions, inside finger, soft bit of forearm, lower-back dip, upper-back spine, pelvic gutter. Just somewhere it won’t be seen, she’d stated. He’d twisted then, pointed to his own ribcage. Yes, there.

Dr Duncan clamped and quickly clipped the appendix free. It was then scooped out in a small wire basket, which, despite the meticulously tried and tested design, always made Dr Duncan think of catching fish in a deep-fat fryer. At the incision’s entrance, she repositioned and slowly pulled the appendix through. The patient’s skin puckered, beastly, glorious, protesting with an organised spill of blood.

Hey presto, she said aloud.

Ian smiled too large behind his mask, she saw the lift of his eyes, thrilled by a catchphrase that barely belonged to her.

The whole idea, she added quickly, was of course to avoid perforation while it was still inside the body, thus the basket, thus the swift and gentle exit.

Thus, Ian echoed, hey presto.

Dr Duncan did not advance. She let the appendix hover over the patient’s body. In Ian’s tone she’d heard the arrogance of a private joke, where no joke had been shared. He stood, hands outstretched and empty. She took another few seconds. Brought the appendix close to her face. Saw again confirmation that her instincts were good, that she’d been right to operate. She pinched it and felt the leathery resistance of the infected end. The other half was still bright, spongy. Another couple of days though, even one more day, and it might have burst.