I Drove a Close Friend of the Family to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky 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 an extra drink. At family parties, he’s the one gossiping about the most recent controversy to catch up with a member of parliament, or regaling us with tales of the outrageous philandering of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday 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, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, with a glass of whisky in 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
Time passed, yet the humorous tales were absent 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 found he could not; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Thus, prior to me managing to put on a festive hat, my mum and I decided to get him to the hospital.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
Upon our arrival, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Fellow patients assisted us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind filled the air.
Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety all around, despite the underlying depressing and institutional feel; decorations dangled from IV poles and portions of holiday pudding went cold on nightstands.
Upbeat nursing staff, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were bustling about and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
After our time at the hospital concluded, we headed home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, perhaps a detective story, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as a local version of the board game.
It was already late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember experiencing a letdown – did we lose the holiday?
Recovery and Retrospection
Although our friend eventually recovered, he had actually punctured a lung and went on to get deep vein thrombosis. And, while that Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has entered into our family history as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
If that is completely accurate, or contains some artistic license, I am not in a position to judge, but the story’s yearly repetition has definitely been good for my self-esteem. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
