I Took a Close Friend of the Family to A&E – and his condition shifted from unwell to scarcely conscious on the way.
Our family friend has always been a truly outsized personality. Witty, unsentimental – and never one to refuse to a further glass. During family gatherings, he’s the one chatting about the latest scandal to catch up with a member of parliament, or amusing us with accounts of the shameless infidelity of various Sheffield Wednesday players for forty years.
It was common for us to pass the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. But, one Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, holding a drink in one hand, his luggage in the other, and sustained broken ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us, making the best of it, but seeming progressively worse.
The Day Progressed
The hours went by, however, the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but his condition seemed to contradict this. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
So, before I’d so much as put on a festive hat, my mother and I made the choice to take him to A&E.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
By the time we got there, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. Other outpatients helped us help him reach a treatment area, where the characteristic scent of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space.
Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, despite the underlying sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on bedside tables.
Cheerful nurses, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were working diligently and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
After our time at the hospital concluded, we returned home to cold bread sauce and holiday television. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember experiencing a letdown – was Christmas effectively over for us?
Healing and Reflection
While our friend did get better in time, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and went on to get deep vein thrombosis. And, even if that particular Christmas does not rank among my favorites, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
How factual that statement is, or contains some artistic license, is not for me to definitively say, but its annual retelling 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”.
