I Drove a Close Friend of the Family to A&E – and his condition shifted from unwell to barely responsive on the way.
Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life character. Clever and unemotional – and never one to refuse to another brandy. During family gatherings, he would be the one discussing the latest scandal to befall a regional politician, or regaling us with tales of the outrageous philandering of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday for forty years.
Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. But, one Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and fractured his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and advised against air travel. Consequently, he ended up back with us, making the best of it, but appearing more and more unwell.
The Morning Rolled On
The hours went by, however, the anecdotes weren’t flowing as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but his condition seemed to contradict this. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Thus, prior to me managing to don any celebratory headwear, we resolved to take him to A&E.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?
A Worrying Turn
By the time we got there, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. People in the waiting room aided us get him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of institutional meals and air permeated the space.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on bedside tables.
Cheerful nurses, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be 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 returned home to lukewarm condiments and Christmas telly. We saw a lighthearted program on television, likely a mystery drama, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
It was already late, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – had we missed Christmas?
Healing and Reflection
While our friend did get better in time, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and went on to get deep vein thrombosis. And, while that Christmas does not rank among my favorites, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
How factual that statement is, 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”.
