I Took a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive on the way.
This individual has long been known as a bigger-than-life figure. Witty, unsentimental – and not one to say no to another brandy. At family parties, he is the person chatting about the latest scandal to involve a regional politician, or entertaining us with stories of the shameless infidelity of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday over the past 40 years.
Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, about 10 years ago, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, whisky in one hand, his luggage in the other, and fractured his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.
The Morning Rolled On
The morning rolled on but the humorous tales were absent in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
So, before I’d so much as 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 Rapid Decline
Upon our arrival, he had moved from being unwell to almost unconscious. People in the waiting room aided us get him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of hospital food and wind was noticeable.
What was distinct, however, was the mood. There were heroic attempts at holiday cheer in every direction, even with the pervasive sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and portions of holiday pudding went cold on nightstands.
Cheerful nurses, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were moving busily and using that lovely local expression so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
After our time at the hospital concluded, we returned home to lukewarm condiments and festive TV programming. We saw a lighthearted program on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.
By then it was quite 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, although that holiday isn’t a personal favourite, it has gone down in family lore 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 hearing it told each year has done no damage to my pride. And, as our friend always says: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
