I Drove a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and he went from unwell to scarcely conscious on the way.
Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life character. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. During family gatherings, he’s the one gossiping about the most recent controversy to befall a local MP, or amusing us with accounts of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players for forty years.
We would often spend Christmas 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, holding a drink in one hand, suitcase in the other, and sustained broken ribs. The hospital had patched him up and advised against air travel. Consequently, he ended up back with us, trying to cope, but seeming progressively worse.
The Morning Rolled On
The hours went by, however, 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 found he could not; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
So, before I’d so much as placed a party hat on my head, we resolved to get him to the hospital.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
Upon our arrival, his state had progressed from poorly to hardly aware. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the distinctive odor of hospital food and wind was noticeable.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at Christmas spirit all around, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and portions of holiday pudding went cold on bedside tables.
Cheerful nurses, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were working diligently and using that lovely local expression so particular to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
When visiting hours were over, we returned home to cold bread sauce and holiday television. We viewed something silly on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
By then it was quite late, and snow was falling, and I remember experiencing a letdown – was Christmas effectively over for us?
Healing and Reflection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and went on to get a serious circulatory condition. 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”.
If that is completely accurate, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I couldn’t possibly comment, but hearing it told each year has done no damage to my pride. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
