The hardest part about secrets isn’t keeping them — it’s living with what comes after they’re finally told. In Holby, Matty Linklater has just learned the truth that changes everything: Dylan Keogh is his father. The revelation lands without fireworks or shouting matches, but the emotional aftershocks are immediate and far more complicated.

Dylan’s first instinct is to step back. He assumes Matty will want a different mentor, someone unburdened by personal history and emotional risk. It’s a typically guarded response — part professionalism, part fear. For years, Dylan has controlled the situation by keeping his distance. Now that the truth is out, control feels harder to maintain.

Matty’s reaction is quieter, and in some ways more disarming.

Instead of demanding space or answers, he pretends nothing has changed. He turns up to work, keeps his head down, and makes it clear he’s happy to continue training under Dylan. On the surface, it looks like maturity — even generosity. But it also feels like denial. As if acknowledging the truth out loud might make it heavier, more real, and harder to manage in the middle of an already unforgiving ED.

That tension shows itself in small, telling ways.

As the day goes on, Dylan becomes increasingly distant. He isn’t unkind, but he’s careful — too careful. Every instruction sounds more formal. Every interaction is edged with restraint. He’s trying to protect boundaries, to make sure no one can accuse him of favouritism, and perhaps to protect himself from emotions he doesn’t yet know how to handle.

Matty, meanwhile, starts to falter.

When the moment comes for Dylan to supervise a procedure, Matty balks. It’s not about competence — it’s about vulnerability. Being assessed by your mentor is one thing. Being assessed by your newly discovered father is something else entirely. The pressure doubles. Every mistake feels more personal. Every correction lands harder.

Suddenly, the professional dynamic they’ve relied on feels unstable.

What makes this storyline so compelling is that neither of them is doing anything “wrong.” Dylan is trying to be fair. Matty is trying to be normal. But normal doesn’t exist anymore — not in the way it used to. They’re both learning, in real time, that you can’t simply slot a life-changing truth into an old routine and expect it to fit.

There’s also an unspoken emotional gap between them.

Matty has spent years believing his biological father was nothing more than absence and disappointment. Now he’s standing in front of him, in scrubs, giving instructions, trying not to make things awkward. Dylan, on the other hand, is facing the weight of missed years, of a relationship that never had the chance to form naturally. Neither of them knows what the “right” next step looks like.

So the question isn’t just whether they can keep working together.

It’s whether they can learn to talk to each other — honestly, imperfectly, and without hiding behind procedure.

Holby’s ED doesn’t slow down for emotional reckonings. Patients still need treating. Decisions still need to be made. But for Dylan and Matty, every shift now carries something extra: the challenge of rebuilding a relationship that never existed, while trying not to let it break the one they already have.

Moving forward won’t be about pretending nothing happened.

It will be about deciding what kind of father and son they’re willing to become — and whether they’re brave enough to start that journey in the middle of the busiest ward in the hospital.