"How many twos do you have?" I said jokingly.

This wasn't one of those competitive games of Switch we played on holiday.

Today, we were playing on a narrow section of a hospital bed that had just enough space to fit the cards.

We had been moved to the 'Observation room' which was another way of saying that the hospital wasn't sure what to do yet.

That morning, I had called my dad to check-in with him on his thoughts on an accounting report I had created.

I had assumed he would be all fired up and ready for a showdown. My spreadsheet vs his.

Alas - the tone was different.

"I'm in A&E".

It took me a couple of seconds to realise what he'd said.

As I drove down the M77, my thoughts began to drift.

When I was in primary 6, I had been selected by the head teacher, Mrs Nicholson, to do an English workshop with her husband.

There were about 8 of us in the class and our task was to read a book over the course of 2 weeks and come back with talking points to share.

Essentially, it was a book club.

Skip forward to the night before our next meeting and in my jotter was a task to do:

READ THE GOLDEN COMPASS

I hadn't read a single page.

I don't remember what happened next but I remember my dad lying on the living room floor poring through this book.

He read the whole thing in a couple of hours and gave me the talking points I needed to get me through.

My car approached 80 mph and another memory flashed into my mind.

I was sitting at the dining room table with a big dollop of toothpaste on my cheek in an attempt to get rid of my acne.

Meanwhile, my dad was trying to teach me algebra; it obviously hadn't sunk in and he sat there and waited for me as I rushed to the bathroom to scrub off the toothpaste when it began to burn my skin. I got a B in Maths, enough to get into Strathclyde Business School.

I looked at my google maps and could see a speed camera. This triggered another reminder. A warning this time. The speed cameras measured your average speed across milestones. I slowed down to 50, remembering the formula we had gone through all those years ago.

My eyes began to swell.

I thought about what life would be like without him. How would I manage? I wondered when my grandpa died and realised he was about the age my dad was now.

Tears began streaming down my face.

It had been years since the last time I allowed myself to let out tears and here I was, a grown man aged 34, driving to A&E to see his dad and this is when it comes out.

There is something about being in a hospital gown that gives you a sense of vulnerability.

In this case, he was wearing the gown.

And when I entered the room, he was surprised that I had come down to see him so quickly.

We waited in that room for hours as different medical milestones came and went. Different tests happening around us.

A woman named Lynda with a Yorkshire accent, a head nurse for the floor, popped her head in from time to time to check in.

I played a four of clubs and this allowed me to play again. I played another club and I was out. Another win.

Between check-ins and Switch games, he brought up business.

"I had a look at the draft you sent over. I don't think you need to change what's already working".

I had spent the past week getting this document to make sense to me and now he was telling me to discard it.

I could feel myself getting defensive.

I knew I wanted to hold off on this topic since when it came up, it typically involved conflict between us.

But business was his favourite topic. Same for me. We couldn't help ourselves.

"Have you actually read it?" - my response came out stronger than I planned and I became aware of the environment we were in again.

I thought: maybe we should talk about this later, but he was ready.

"You don't need to do this".

Lynda came back into the room and started complaining about the ECG machine. The junior nurses hadn't been discharging it after use and it had been making this constant bleeping sound.

There wasn't another opportunity to talk business that day as hospital staff buzzed in and out the room. I knew it wasn't the time.

I knew that I couldn't really do anything practical. I couldn't do anything that the doctors or nurses were doing. All I could do was wait. And that was enough.

A couple of days later, I called my dad to talk about the report I had put together and accepted his position.

"Maybe we can just keep it how it is."

Thank you for reading,
Grant Finlay