I Drove a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey.
This individual has long been known as a truly outsized figure. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and never one to refuse to an extra drink. At family parties, he is the person discussing the most recent controversy to befall a local MP, or amusing us with accounts of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players during the last four decades.
Frequently, we would share Christmas morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. Yet, on a particular Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, holding a drink in one hand, his luggage in the other, and broke his ribs. He was treated at the hospital 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 stories were not coming in their typical fashion. He was convinced he was OK but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, carefully, 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 get him to the hospital.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
By the time we got there, his state had progressed from peaky to barely responsive. Fellow patients assisted us get him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of institutional meals and air was noticeable.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at festive gaiety all around, notwithstanding the fundamental sterile and miserable mood; tinsel hung from drip stands and portions of holiday pudding went cold on tables next to the beds.
Upbeat nursing staff, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were working diligently and using that charming colloquial address so unique to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
After our time at the hospital concluded, we made our way home to cold bread sauce and holiday television. We watched something daft on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as a local version of the board game.
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 a serious circulatory condition. And, while that Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
If that is completely accurate, or involves a degree of exaggeration, is not for me to definitively say, but its annual retelling certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. And, as our friend always says: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
