Sydney is a ghost town when we drive in at 4 a.m., the streetlights still glowing, the streets wide and empty, and that vague pre-dawn light blinking out the stars.

Under the fluorescents, Grandad looks sallow, but Mum looks even worse. After four hours at the wheel, it’s not surprising. She stumbles over to speak to the man at the desk in Emergency. Grandad and I sit on the hard plastic chairs; Grandad sort of falls into his chair, since he can’t bend his right knee. The whole row shudders. We sit there a long time, the underwire of my bra digging into my rib cage.

Grandad gets the shits with me because I keep trying to hold his hand. I feel like a little kid, and I wish Grandad could be the Grandad he was ten years ago—strong and smart and taking care of things. Not vague and forgetful and randomly agitated. Not almost dead earlier in the evening.

A nurse asks Grandad if he knows where he is.

‘Hospital,’ he says, like she’s an imbecile. I almost expect him to add duh.

‘Which hospital?’ she asks.

Grandad is annoyed. ‘How am I supposed to know? I don’t live here!’

‘When is the last time you saw a doctor?’ she asks.

‘Oh, six months ago,’ he says. ‘I see Garry Henderson.’

Mum’s eyes flash. She shakes her head. Garry Henderson retired years ago. Grandad has a tendency to make up the answers when he doesn’t remember something, or draw up an old memory and make it recent. He says things with such conviction that even if I know they’re untrue, I sometimes doubt my own memory.

He doesn’t get a bed till eight in the morning. Grouchy with sleep deprivation, Mum grumbles about the health care system the entire time. I am at a point where I am so tired that everything seems surreal. If someone told me that I had slipped from the real world into a dream reality, I would believe them. I once read that sleep deprivation is the best form of torture. I think being forced to watch The Bold and the Beautiful nonstop for days would be worse, but that’s just me.

Grandad repeatedly asks me why we’re at the hospital. He has never been a fan of hospitals. He refused to go after he ran his car into the front of the newsagent’s; Mr Fields checked him out instead. When Mum brought him to the memory clinic in Sydney a few months back, she told him that she was the one getting her brain checked, that she needed him for moral support. It was the only way to get him there. He gets stubborn if he thinks you’re railroading him into something.

‘I don’t need to be here,’ he insists. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You had a fit, Grandad,’ I repeat.

‘That’s right,’ he says, every time. ‘That’s right.’

Once he’s settled in the ward, Mum and I drive to the shopping centre nearby. At this hour of the morning, it’s quiet. Too quiet. I feel silly walking around in my dress during the day, and Grandad can’t wear a suit in a hospital bed.

We settle on trackies and plain T-shirts and a set of striped pyjamas for Grandad. I pick a pair of cheap jeans and a hoodie virtually identical to the other hundred I own, and some spare underwear. Surprise, surprise, Mum settles on a plaid shirt and a pair of bootcut jeans. We manage not to talk about anything other than a) who on earth purchases denim-look leggings, and what would possess them to do so, and b) underpaid kids in third-world countries sewing our clothes in unsafe factories. Somehow, these are more cheerful alternatives to the things closer to home.

Shortly after we get back to the hospital, a nurse tells us that they’re going to take Grandad in for an EEG.

‘What does EEG stand for?’ I ask the nurse.

‘Electroencephalogram,’ he says.

Whatever that means, it sounds scientific enough to be reassuring. I echo it back to myself over and over again: he’s having an electroencephalogram. Like that’s exactly what he needs.

Mum and I head down to the cafeteria for a late breakfast while Grandad is taken off for his EEG.

Mum orders eggs on toast for the pair of us. The eggs aren’t bad, but she reckons they’re awful. She attacks hers with the salt and stares into the scramble as if trying to read it like tea leaves.

I clear my throat noisily.

‘Mum. I was thinking, since we’re in Sydney, and I know’—do I call him Jack? Dad? My father? He who must not be named?—‘uh, that, ah, my father is in Sydney, and I don’t know when we’ll be here next, it might be, it might be a good chance to have a chat. To…find out about my medical history on that side of the family.’

This seems like a practical line of reasoning, something I would be concerned about if I were an adult who wanted to prolong my life expectancy. Of course, I’m not the slightest bit concerned about that. What I want to ask is, Why didn’t you want to know me? I’d want to know me, if I were my parent. I want to ask Did you ever even think about me? Consider sending a birthday card? Did you ever love me, like parents are supposed to?

I can’t tell Mum what I really want to ask, because Mum is unsentimental. She won’t understand. And, for her sake, I don’t want to sound so desperate for familial love. I’m trying to keep pretending that it doesn’t bother me, that it’s never bothered me, that this is just a perfectly ordinary amount of curiosity about the person responsible for half my chromosomes but in whom I otherwise have very little interest.

‘If you want,’ says Mum, finally. ‘But you should go on your own. I don’t have anything to say to him. It’s all in the past. I’ll come if you need me, but really it’s about you.’

I want to do the right thing. That’s pretty much all I ever want to do. Say what people want to hear, do what people want me to do. It’s hard for me to tell, sometimes, and I don’t want to upset Mum by wanting to see my dad. But this is something I need to do for myself. She doesn’t seem hurt by it, but she never seems hurt by anything. Mum is unshakeable. I wish I could discuss it all with her, but she’s not one for a Deep and Meaningful, or monologues about love. For her, family just is.

Mum pushes the last of her eggs around the plastic plate, a pained look on her face. ‘I know I’m not…maternal. I hate to be a disappointment of a mother. I don’t know…I didn’t have much of a role model. being raised by a single dad. I mean, Grandad’s different now. Doesn’t have nightmares much anymore, forgets about them if he does. He was a strong bloke but there were times when he was crippled by panic attacks, reliving stuff from the war. He wasn’t abusive or anything to me. A good man. Just not really there for you, emotionally. Bit distant. I haven’t really got any excuse for being the same with you.’ She shrugs. ‘Just don’t know how to be. Mainly tried not to mess you up, you know. Like to think I’ve succeeded so far.’

‘Of course you’ve succeeded, Mum.’ This is the most Deep and Meaningful she’s been in a long time. Maybe because of Grandad’s fit. Maybe she does get it, thinks the same way I do. Maybe we just have a communication problem. ‘You’re a great mum.’

She nods sharply.

‘Uh, you know, I wanted to say, I didn’t mean to be weird about Nick,’ I say. ‘It was just…surprising. You’re allowed to have a boyfriend. Not that it’s up to me…You’re an adult. Obviously. It’s just…I don’t know. I was worried it would change things. But you…deserve to be happy.’

Mum nods again, despite the fact that what I just said bordered on being unintelligible.

‘I have no tolerance for platitudes, Kirby, but thank you. It’ll become normal. Just give it time. Don’t worry. There won’t be a new baby Arrow stealing your thunder. Other than Nathan’s kid.’

‘We could have Nick and his mum over for Christmas?’ I suggest.

Mum goes back to her eggs. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she says to her plate, in a tone that indicates the end of the conversation.

When we get back from the cafeteria, Grandad is wearing a Holter monitor so they can track his heart activity over twenty-four hours. A nurse presses little electrodes onto his chest. Wires connect the electrodes to a device the size of a phone from the nineties.

An hour later he is in a state.

‘What’s this?’ he asks, fingering the cords linking him to the monitoring device. ‘Why am I wearing this?’

‘It’s checking out your heart, Grandad. You can take it off later.’

‘My heart’s fine.’

‘They’re just checking, Grandad.’

He frowns.

‘They’re going to keep you in overnight again, Dad,’ says Mum. ‘So they can monitor you, take some bloods, run some other tests. Over in no time. We’ll stay at a motel nearby tonight, all right?’

It’s hard to tell how much he takes in.

‘Why don’t we call Uncle Harry?’ I ask. ‘Stay with them?’

Mum is still not on the best terms with Harry, after he nicked off years ago and left her with all the responsibility. She gives me a look. I look right back at her.

She sighs. ‘I’ll call, see if they want to visit your grandfather. But I don’t want to put them out by staying with them.’ I don’t think she wants to have to deal with them, or accept any help from the family.

I go out to the hallway and compose an email to my father on my phone. There was a phone number on the letter he sent, but I’m not sure I’m prepared for the potential awkwardness of that conversation. What if he says I had no idea you’d have such a pitchy voice like me! It must be genetic! or what if I say Not that hard, is it, making a phone call…Funny you couldn’t do it for the better part of two decades? There’s something about my father that makes me want to be sarcastic, even though our entire communication to date has consisted of only two letters.

I let him know I’m in town, and ask if it would be possible to meet tomorrow morning. I press send without re-reading. No chance to stop myself sending it.

Half an hour later my phone vibrates with a response.