Rash realised the end is getting nearer (Pictures: BBC)

Tonight’s first visit to Casualty was an absolute heartbreaker as Rash (Neet Mohan) was forced to confront the fact that his father’s dementia is even worse than he realised.

Flashback scenes of Ashok (Kriss Dosanjh) when he was a younger man driving his car with young Rash in the back seat showed the sweet bond that father and son had had when Rash was a child, but the sad reality was that these bitter-sweet moments were all in Ashok’s mind as in a confused state he drove a car the wrong way along a dual carriageway with catastrophic results, leaving a young woman from a car he crashed into possibly unable to walk again.

Sadly, though Ashok wasn’t very badly injured in the accident, when he got to hospital he didn’t recognise who Rash was and kept asking for his son.

It seemed that he’d had a stroke shortly before the accident, but the mystery to Rash was how he had managed to be driving a car. This was solved when his dad’s friend Nadeem (Emilio Doorgasingh) revealed that Ashok took his car. Previously Ashok’s former partner Mona (Shobu Kapoor) had warned Rash about Nadeem, and in the wake of the crash she had some bad news. Nadeem had taken money from Ashok and lost it in bad investments, meaning there was now no money to pay for the residential care that he obviously needs.

Neet Mohan recently talked to us about this storyline and revealed, ‘The researchers did a lot of work into parent/child relationships when someone is diagnosed with dementia, the different stages and periods one goes through of realisation, grief, loss, fear, so many extreme things that happen when someone is diagnosed with the illness.’

Ashok put his life in danger (Picture: BBC)

This episode really brought those issues to the forefront, with some beautifully written (by Becky Prestwich) and played moments between Rash and his dad as Ashok became more lucid towards the end of the episode and realised what was happening to him.

‘Remember for me. You’ll remember when I can’t,’ he urged his son. As Rash broke down in tears, Ashok’s words were incredibly poignant:

‘My little boy, I’ve got you now. Daddy’s here. Daddy will look after you.’

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No, you’re crying.

Meanwhile, Stevie (Elinor Lawless) was at a very low ebb, still getting bad reviews online, other staff members gossiping about her, not sleeping, and with the depressing knowledge that she wasn’t even second choice for the Jac Naylor award.

So when her young patient seemed to be under the thumb of a pushy mother Stevie was in no mood to hold back and told her exactly what she thought. It turned out to be a misunderstanding and Stevie eventually apologised, but after Marcus (Adam Sina) had had a word with the mother, suddenly she wanted to make a formal complaint against Stevie.

He’d also managed to drive a wedge between her and Faith (Kirsty Mitchell), with the result that Stevie was left feeling pretty much alone. Apart from Marcus, who told her that he was on her side. ‘That’s what friends are for,’ he told her, creepily – because he just about typifies the old saying ‘with friends like that, who needs enemies?’

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The end is getting nearer.