🔗 Share this article I Drove a Close Friend of the Family to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey. Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life character. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to a further glass. During family gatherings, he’s the one discussing the most recent controversy to catch up with a regional politician, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players over the past 40 years. We would often spend the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. But, one Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, with a glass of whisky in hand, suitcase in the other, and fractured his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and instructed him to avoid flying. Thus, he found himself back with us, making the best of it, but seeming progressively worse. The Day Progressed The hours went by, however, the stories were not coming like they normally did. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, gingerly, 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 how long would that take on Christmas Day? A Rapid Decline By the time we got there, he’d gone from unwell to almost unconscious. People in the waiting room aided us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of institutional meals and air permeated the space. Different though, was the spirit. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on bedside tables. Upbeat nursing staff, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”. A Subdued Return Home After our time at the hospital concluded, we returned home to chilled holiday sides and holiday television. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as a local version of the board game. By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember experiencing a letdown – was Christmas effectively over for us? The Aftermath and the Story While our friend did get better in time, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and subsequently contracted DVT. And, although that holiday does not rank among my favorites, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”. How factual that statement is, or a little bit of dramatic licence, I couldn’t possibly comment, but its annual retelling has definitely been good for my self-esteem. And, as our friend always says: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.