I Drove a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from unwell to barely responsive on the way.
He has always been a man of a larger than life personality. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to an extra drink. At family parties, he’s the one chatting about the most recent controversy to befall a member of parliament, or entertaining us with stories of the outrageous philandering of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday during the last four decades.
Frequently, we would share the holiday morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. But, one Christmas, some ten years back, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, with a glass of whisky in hand, his luggage in the other, and fractured his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and advised against air travel. Thus, he found himself back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.
As Time Passed
The hours went by, however, the humorous tales were absent like they normally did. He insisted he was fine but his condition seemed to contradict this. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
Thus, prior to me managing to put on a festive hat, my mum and I decided to drive him to the emergency room.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Deteriorating Condition
By the time we got there, his state had progressed from poorly to hardly aware. Other outpatients helped us get him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of hospital food and wind filled the air.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at holiday cheer everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental clinical and somber atmosphere; decorations dangled from IV poles and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on nightstands.
Cheerful nurses, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were moving busily and using that lovely local expression so particular to the area: “duck”.
Heading Home for Leftovers
Once the permitted time ended, we made our way home to cold bread sauce 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.
By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday?
The Aftermath and the Story
Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and went on to get a serious circulatory condition. And, while that Christmas is not my most cherished memory, 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 its annual retelling certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
