I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and he went from peaky to barely responsive on the way.
Our family friend has always been a truly outsized personality. Witty, unsentimental – and not one to say no to a further glass. During family gatherings, he’s the one chatting about the newest uproar to involve a regional politician, or amusing us with accounts of the outrageous philandering of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday during the last four decades.
We would often spend Christmas morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. Yet, on a particular Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, with a glass of whisky in hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and broke his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky.
The Day Progressed
The morning rolled on but the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He maintained that he felt alright but his condition seemed to contradict this. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
Thus, prior to me managing to don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice to take him to A&E.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Deteriorating Condition
Upon our arrival, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. Fellow patients assisted us get him to a ward, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind filled the air.
What was distinct, however, was the mood. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety in every direction, even with the pervasive depressing and institutional feel; tinsel hung from drip stands and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on nightstands.
Cheerful nurses, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were working diligently and using that great term of endearment so particular to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to cold bread sauce and holiday television. We watched something daft on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.
It was already late, and snowing, and I remember experiencing a letdown – had we missed Christmas?
The Aftermath and the Story
Although our friend eventually recovered, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and subsequently contracted a serious circulatory condition. And, although that holiday does not rank among my favorites, it has entered into our family history as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
How factual that statement is, or a little bit of dramatic licence, is not for me to definitively say, but the story’s yearly repetition 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”.
