I Drove a Close Friend of the Family to A&E – and he went from unwell to scarcely conscious during the journey.
Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life personality. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and never one to refuse to another brandy. Whenever our families celebrated, he’s the one chatting about the latest scandal to befall a member of parliament, or amusing us with accounts of the outrageous philandering of various Sheffield Wednesday players during the last four decades.
It was common for us to pass Christmas morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. But, one 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, a suitcase gripped in the other, and broke his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.
The Day Progressed
The morning rolled on but the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He was convinced he was OK but he didn’t look it. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
Therefore, before I could even placed a party hat on my head, 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
When we finally reached the hospital, he had moved from being peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of institutional meals and air permeated the space.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. There were heroic attempts at holiday cheer everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive depressing and institutional feel; tinsel hung from drip stands and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on tables next to the beds.
Cheerful nurses, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were working diligently and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
Once the permitted time ended, we headed home to chilled holiday sides and Christmas telly. We watched something daft on television, likely a mystery drama, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.
It was already late, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday?
Healing and Reflection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and subsequently contracted deep vein thrombosis. And, while that Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
If that is completely accurate, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I am not in a position to judge, 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”.
