I Took a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious on the way.
Our family friend has always been a truly outsized personality. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to a further glass. At family parties, he’s the one chatting about the newest uproar to catch up with a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday over the past 40 years.
We would often spend the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. Yet, on a particular Christmas, some ten years back, when he was planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, suitcase in the other, and sustained broken ribs. He was treated at the hospital and advised against air travel. Thus, he found himself back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.
As Time Passed
The hours went by, however, the humorous tales were absent like they normally did. He maintained that he felt alright but his condition seemed to contradict this. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Thus, prior to me managing to put on a festive hat, my mum and I decided to drive him to the emergency room.
The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Worrying Turn
Upon our arrival, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the characteristic scent of hospital food and wind was noticeable.
Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at holiday cheer all around, even with the pervasive depressing and institutional feel; tinsel hung from drip stands and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on tables next to the beds.
Cheerful nurses, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were moving busily and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
Heading Home for Leftovers
After our time at the hospital concluded, we made our way home to chilled holiday sides and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.
It was already late, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?
Healing and Reflection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and later developed deep vein thrombosis. And, while that Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
How factual that statement is, or contains some artistic license, is not for me to definitively say, but its annual retelling has done no damage to my pride. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
