I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive on the way.
This individual has long been known as a truly outsized figure. Witty, unsentimental – and not one to say no to a further glass. During family gatherings, he would be the one discussing the latest scandal to involve a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of assorted players from the local club for forty years.
We would often spend Christmas morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, with a glass of whisky in hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and fractured his ribs. Medical staff had treated him and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, making the best of it, but appearing more and more unwell.
The Day Progressed
The hours went by, however, the humorous tales were absent as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but his condition seemed to contradict this. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.
Thus, prior to me managing to placed a party hat on my head, my mum and I decided 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
By the time we got there, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. Fellow patients assisted us guide him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of institutional meals and air was noticeable.
What was distinct, however, was the mood. People were making brave attempts at holiday cheer all around, despite the underlying sterile and miserable mood; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on bedside tables.
Upbeat nursing staff, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
After our time at the hospital concluded, we headed home to cold bread sauce 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 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 went on to get a serious circulatory condition. And, although that holiday is not my most cherished memory, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
How factual that statement is, or contains some artistic license, is not for me to definitively say, but hearing it told each year 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”.
