I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey.
He has always been a man of a truly outsized character. Witty, unsentimental – and never one to refuse to an extra drink. Whenever our families celebrated, he is the person gossiping about the most recent controversy to catch up with a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club during the last four decades.
Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. Yet, on a particular Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, whisky in one hand, his luggage in the other, and broke his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky.
As Time Passed
The hours went by, however, the stories were not coming as they usually were. He was convinced he was OK but he didn’t look it. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.
Therefore, before I could even placed a party hat on my head, my mum and I decided to take him to A&E.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?
A Deteriorating Condition
When we finally reached the hospital, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the characteristic scent of hospital food and wind filled the air.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at holiday cheer everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive depressing and institutional feel; festive strands were attached to medical equipment 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 working diligently and using that lovely local expression so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
When visiting hours were over, we made our way home to chilled holiday sides and Christmas telly. We viewed something silly on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
By then it was quite late, and snow was falling, and I remember feeling deflated – did we lose the holiday?
Healing and Reflection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and subsequently contracted deep vein thrombosis. And, while that Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
How factual that statement is, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I am not in a position to judge, but hearing it told each year certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
