I Took a Close Friend of the Family to A&E – and he went from peaky to scarcely conscious on the way.
This individual has long been known as a bigger-than-life personality. Clever and unemotional – and never one to refuse to another brandy. Whenever our families celebrated, he would be the one chatting about the most recent controversy to catch up with a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club for forty years.
It was common for us to pass the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, before going our separate ways. Yet, on a particular Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was planning to join family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, holding a drink in one hand, suitcase in the other, and sustained broken ribs. He was treated at the hospital and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.
As Time Passed
The morning rolled on but the stories were not coming as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Therefore, before I could even don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice to take him to A&E.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
By the time we got there, he’d gone from unwell to almost unconscious. Other outpatients helped us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space.
Different though, was the spirit. People were making brave attempts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental clinical and somber atmosphere; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on nightstands.
Positive medical attendants, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were moving busily and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
When visiting hours were over, we returned home to chilled holiday sides and holiday television. We watched something daft on television, likely a mystery drama, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
It was already late, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?
The Aftermath and the Story
Although our friend eventually recovered, he had actually punctured a lung and later developed a serious circulatory condition. 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 involves a degree of exaggeration, I am not in a position to judge, but hearing it told each year has done no damage to my pride. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
