Page 115 of Toy Boy

“I couldn’t wake him, Megan.”

“Have you called an ambulance?”

“Yes… Can you come over? Please? I don’t want to be alone…” She starts crying again, full-on, heartbreaking sobs. “I think he’s gone…”

“Okay, Tania, listen to me. Where are you?”

“My – my house. Thirty-nine Blossom Grove.”

“I’m on my way.”

I feel my own eyes fill with tears as I start the car and pull away. Tania’s house is just a stone’s throw from mine, it takes little over a minute or two to get there, I probably could’ve ran faster, to be honest.

I’m out of the car and racing up her front path before I’ve even taken another breath, my chest sore and tight with panic and fear, and thankfully she’s left the door open, for the paramedics, obviously. But they aren’t here yet, so I let myself in and head upstairs. And as soon as I set foot inside I can hear Tania’s sobs filling the empty, silent house, growing louder the closer I get. I’m almost too scared to open the bedroom door, but she needs my help. I have to be the strong one here.

“Oh, Megan, thank you! I didn’t know who else to call.”

She wipes her eyes, and I look at her, and I’m trying to give her some kind of reassuring smile but I don’t think I can reassure her about anything right now.

Scott Warren might be dead…

“I couldn’t wake him up,” she whispers, and I look down and see her hand in his, she doesn’t want to let him go. And my heart breaks. I had no idea she felt this way about him. No idea at all. “He only came home today. From the hospital. And I said it was too soon, but he didn’t want to stay there…” She lets that sentence tail off as she leans over to stroke Scott’s hair from his eyes. Closed eyes. He really does look as though he’s sleeping, but I don’t think he is. Not anymore.

“Can I just check…?”

Tania nods, she doesn’t need me to finish that sentence. And it’s with a rapidly growing numbness that I lean into Scott, and feel for a pulse, even though I know Tania will have already done this. But sometimes a pulse can feel as though it’s not there when it might just be extremely weak.

I can’t feel anything. And I’m surprised by how empty that makes me feel. How sad it makes me feel, because deep down Idostill love this man. He saved my life, I can’t forget that. I’ll never forget that. “I’m so sorry, Tania.”

I watch her face crumple as more tears start to stream down her cheeks, her hand gripping Scott’s even tighter.

“I think the paramedics are here. I’ll go and talk to them.”

I leave the room and lean back against the wall out in the hallway, taking a deep breath before I head downstairs. I have a quick word with the paramedics before they make their way up to the bedroom, and I follow them. I don’t want Tania to be alone, she needs someone with her. But watching her as the paramedics confirm what we both already knew, it tears me apart. Watching as they ask her to let go of him, and her reluctance to do so, it’s the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen, I truly had no idea she felt so deeply about Scott.

I take her out of the room while we wait for Scott’s GP to arrive to pronounce him dead, all these formalities we have to go through. They seem brutal; cruel, even, but they have to happen.

We go downstairs, to the kitchen, and I make tea, because that’s what we British do in a crisis. We make tea and we talk and we try to stay calm but it doesn’t always work out that way. Although, looking at Tania now, sitting at the table, her hands clasped together in front of her, her eyes staring down into her mug of tea, it seems like the shock is finally starting to sink in.

“He seemed fine, at the hospital. He seemed well. Well enough to be discharged, even though I felt uneasy about him leaving so soon.” She raises her gaze and her eyes meet mine. And I feel her sadness, it’s real and it’s deep, and it shakes me to my core. “It seems I was right, to be concerned.”

We hear voices out in the hall, the doctor’s arrived. We hear footsteps as he follows the paramedics upstairs, but we stay in the kitchen.

“At least he died peacefully,” Tania says quietly as she stares down into her mug of tea, watching as the steam rises up from the surface. “I should be grateful for that. Shouldn’t I?”

I don’t know what to say. This has shocked me as much as it has her, just, in a very different way. He didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves to be taken before their time.

Xander’s mum was taken before her time…

That wasn’t Scott’s fault.

Was it…?

A light tap on the door causes us both to look up as the doctor pokes his head around it. “Can I have a word?”

I stand up and usher him in. “Of course.”

“Knowing Scott’s history, knowing what happened to him recently, my guess is he probably died of a brain haemorrhage, as a result of his head injury. I think that’s what we may be looking at here.”

---