Page 92 of Toy Boy

“Do you remember Gina Johansson?”

He remembers her. His expression changed the second I said her name, and now he’s on the back foot, right where I want him to be.

“I – yes. Yes, I remember her.”

“My mother. She was my mother, andyoutook her from me.”

He shakes his head, but his whole demeanour has altered, he has no power now. “I didn’t…” He’s confused, but that isn’t a surprise. “Whoareyou?”

“I’ve just told you. Gina Johansson was my mother. And I never got to say goodbye to her, because of you. Because of your unproven, experimental surgery that should never have been performed. You killed her. Her blood is on your hands, and I will never forgive you for what you did.”

He straightens up a little, he’s finding his fight again, but I’m prepared for whatever he’s about to throw back at me. I’m ready.

“The surgery had been approved, and I’m not denying it was experimental, it was the first time I’d performed it under those circumstances, yes, but your mother – she knew the risks. She had every aspect of that surgery explained to her, many times, and she was given plenty of opportunities to back out. She wasn’t rushed into making a decision, either way, I promise you that. She knew what she was doing, I can promise you that, too. She knew every scenario, best and worst cases. Every risk, Xander, she knew them all.”

“I know. She called me, she told me everything. But I also know how desperate she was, she was dying! She knew she was dying, she knew there was nothing more that could be done for her, we all did, and it was fucking painful. But she’d accepted it.I’daccepted it. And then you appeared, and you messed with her head. You gave her impossible hope, and that was just fucking cruel.”

“There was a chance the surgery could’ve worked…”

“A chance. A small one. Tiny. Barely there. But you – according to my mom, you made it sound like it was the silver bullet she’d been dreaming of.”

“I can assure you, I didn’t sugar-coat anything… And I’m sorry, for what happened, I really am, but nobody was to blame.”

“Legally, maybe not. But I will forever hold you responsible.” I shrug, and I can tell he’s becoming uncomfortable again, because he has no idea what my endgame is, and to be honest, I’m not sure I do, either. Not anymore. So much has changed since I got here… no.Everything’schanged. “In my eyes, you killed her.”

He shakes his head and backs off a little, which is understandable. But I’m not here to hurt him. Not like that, anyway. “I lived with the guilt for a long time. “ His voice is quiet, and I have no doubt that, right now, he’s telling the truth. I believe hedidfeel guilty, eventually, but it changes nothing. His guilt won’t bring my mother back. “Were you there? At the hospital? I don’t remember seeing you…”

“I was in Australia, getting ready to travel to Denmark, to be with my mom. I knew she didn’t have long left, and I wanted to be with her, at the end, but you – you took that chance to say goodbye away from me the second you put the idea in her head that she should be nothing more than a guinea pig for something designed to do little more than stroke your over-inflated ego.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“I know everything about you. And I know that you strong-armed my mother into accepting that surgery, when she should’ve waited for me to get there. Why the rush, huh? Didn’t she tell you she had family on their way to be with her? Or were you scared she’d die before you had the chance to…”

“She didn’t need anyone else’s consent. She was perfectly capable of making the decision on her own.”

“I told her to say no. I asked her to refuse the surgery, at least until I got there, and she promised me that she’d do that. That she’d wait, so we could talk about it properly, together, and I thought she’d listened to me. We were talking – what? Seventy-two hours at the most, couldn’t you have held out that little bit longer?”

“She wanted to go ahead with the surgery as soon as possible.”

“Shedid? Or was that you?”

“Xander, I can assure you…”

“My mom lied to me because she knew I didn’t want her to do anything that meant I could lose her before I’d had time to say goodbye. But if she’d thought there was a chance her life could be extended…” I drop my head and take a deep breath, just talking about this is hard. So fucking hard. “She was desperate.” I look up, my eyes boring into his. “And you knew that.”

“That surgery could’ve saved her.”

“But it didn’t. And you knew there was very little chance that it would.”

He shakes his head and turns it away from me. “I could’ve saved her.”

It’s almost as if he’s saying that to himself, he isn’t directing it at me.

“I think you knew, deep down, that there was every chance my mom was going to die on the operating table.”

He shakes his head again, and when he faces me I can tell that he feels bad. He does, I can see it. I think the guilt he feels is real, but like I said, that doesn’t change anything. What he did was wrong. It was wrong.

“You preyed on a vulnerable, dying woman, you made her promises you could never keep…”

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