I Drove a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious on the way.
This individual has long been known as a bigger-than-life character. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to an extra drink. At family parties, he’s the one discussing the latest scandal to involve a regional politician, or amusing us with accounts of the shameless infidelity of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday for forty years.
We would often spend 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, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. Thus, he found himself back with us, trying to cope, but seeming progressively worse.
The Morning Rolled On
The hours went by, however, the stories were not coming in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but his appearance suggested otherwise. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
Therefore, before I could even don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice to drive him to the emergency room.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Worrying Turn
Upon our arrival, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. Fellow patients assisted us guide him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of institutional meals and air filled the air.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. There were heroic attempts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive depressing and institutional feel; tinsel hung from drip stands and portions of holiday pudding went cold on bedside tables.
Upbeat nursing staff, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were bustling about and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
When visiting hours were over, we headed home to lukewarm condiments and festive TV programming. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
The hour was already advanced, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?
Recovery and Retrospection
While our friend did get better in time, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and went on to get DVT. And, although that holiday is not my most cherished memory, 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, I am not in a position to judge, but the story’s yearly repetition certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
