I Took a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and he went from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey.
He has always been a man of a bigger-than-life personality. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to an extra drink. During family gatherings, he is the person gossiping about the most recent controversy to involve a local MP, or amusing us with accounts of the notorious womanizing of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday during the last four decades.
Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, before going our separate ways. But, one Christmas, some ten years back, 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 sustained broken ribs. Medical staff had treated him and instructed him to avoid flying. Thus, he found himself back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.
The Day Progressed
The hours went by, however, the humorous tales were absent as they usually were. He maintained that he felt alright but he didn’t look it. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
Therefore, before I could even don any celebratory headwear, we resolved to take him to A&E.
The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
When we finally reached the hospital, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. People in the waiting room aided us get him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of institutional meals and air was noticeable.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. One could see valiant efforts at holiday cheer in every direction, despite the underlying sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and portions of holiday pudding went cold on tables next to the beds.
Cheerful nurses, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that lovely local expression so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
When visiting hours were over, we headed home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. 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 it had begun to snow, and I remember feeling deflated – had we missed Christmas?
The Aftermath and the Story
Even though he ultimately healed, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and went on to get a serious circulatory condition. And, while that Christmas does not rank among my favorites, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
Whether that’s strictly true, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I am not in a position to judge, but hearing it told each year has definitely been good for my self-esteem. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
