I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and he went from unwell to barely responsive during the journey.

This individual has long been known as a bigger-than-life personality. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to an extra drink. During family gatherings, he is the person gossiping about the newest uproar to catch up with a member of parliament, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday for forty years.

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, with a glass of whisky in hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and sustained broken ribs. Medical staff had treated him and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us, making the best of it, but looking increasingly peaky.

As Time Passed

Time passed, yet the humorous tales were absent as they usually were. He was convinced he was OK but his appearance suggested otherwise. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.

Therefore, before I could even placed a party hat on my head, we resolved to drive him to the emergency room.

The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?

A Rapid Decline

When we finally reached the hospital, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Other outpatients helped us get him to a ward, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind permeated the space.

The atmosphere, however, was unique. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety in every direction, despite the underlying sterile and miserable mood; tinsel hung from drip stands and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on bedside tables.

Cheerful nurses, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were working diligently and using that great term of endearment so unique to the area: “duck”.

Heading Home for Leftovers

After our time at the hospital concluded, we made our way home to chilled holiday sides and holiday television. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.

It was already late, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday?

The Aftermath and the Story

While our friend did get better in time, he had actually punctured a lung and later developed 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 the story’s yearly repetition has definitely been good for my self-esteem. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.