I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey.
Our family friend has always been a larger than life character. Witty, unsentimental – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. Whenever our families celebrated, he would be the one discussing the newest uproar to befall a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players over the past 40 years.
We would often spend Christmas morning 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 tumbled down the staircase, with a glass of whisky in hand, suitcase in the other, and fractured his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us, making the best of it, but seeming progressively worse.
As Time Passed
The morning rolled on but the stories were not coming in their typical fashion. He was convinced he was OK but his condition seemed to contradict this. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.
Thus, prior to me managing to put on a festive hat, my mother and I made the choice to take him to A&E.
The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
By the time we got there, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us get him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of hospital food and wind filled the air.
Different though, was the spirit. There were heroic attempts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, despite the underlying clinical and somber atmosphere; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on nightstands.
Upbeat nursing staff, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so unique 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 viewed something silly on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as a local version of the board game.
The hour was already advanced, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?
Recovery and Retrospection
Although our friend eventually recovered, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and later developed DVT. And, although that holiday isn’t a personal favourite, it has entered into our family history as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
Whether that’s strictly true, or a little bit of dramatic licence, is not for me to definitively say, but its annual retelling has done no damage to my pride. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.