I Drove a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and he went from peaky to scarcely conscious on the way.
This individual has long been known as a larger than life figure. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to a further glass. At family parties, he’s the one gossiping about the newest uproar to befall a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity of various Sheffield Wednesday players over the past 40 years.
We would often spend the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. Yet, on a particular Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, holding a drink in one hand, suitcase in the other, and sustained broken ribs. Medical staff had treated him 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 anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He maintained that he felt alright but his appearance suggested otherwise. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Therefore, before I could even placed a party hat on my head, my mother and I made the choice to get him to the hospital.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?
A Deteriorating Condition
Upon our arrival, his state had progressed from peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of institutional meals and air permeated the space.
What was distinct, however, was the mood. People were making brave attempts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and portions of holiday pudding went cold on tables next to the beds.
Cheerful nurses, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a local version of the board game.
It was already late, and snowing, and I remember feeling deflated – was Christmas effectively over for us?
Recovery and Retrospection
While our friend did get better in time, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and subsequently contracted deep vein thrombosis. And, even if that particular Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has gone down in family lore 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”.
