I Drove a Close Friend of the Family to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious on the way.
This individual has long been known as a larger than life figure. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and never one to refuse to a further glass. During family gatherings, he would be the one discussing the latest scandal to involve a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club over the past 40 years.
We would often spend the holiday morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. But, one Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and fractured his ribs. Medical staff had treated him and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, making the best of it, but seeming progressively worse.
The Day Progressed
Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but his appearance suggested otherwise. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Therefore, before I could even put on a festive hat, my mum and I decided to drive him to the emergency room.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
Upon our arrival, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. Fellow patients assisted us get him to a ward, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind permeated the space.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. There were heroic attempts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive depressing and institutional feel; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on nightstands.
Positive medical attendants, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that lovely local expression so particular to the area: “duck”.
Heading Home for Leftovers
After our time at the hospital concluded, we made our way home to lukewarm condiments 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.
By then it was quite 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 deep vein thrombosis. And, even if that particular Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has entered into our family history as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
Whether that’s strictly true, or a little bit of dramatic licence, I couldn’t possibly comment, but the story’s yearly repetition certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.