I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and he went from unwell to scarcely conscious during the journey.
He has always been a man of a larger than life figure. Witty, unsentimental – and never one to refuse to an extra drink. Whenever our families celebrated, he’s the one discussing the most recent controversy to catch up with a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players during the last four decades.
Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. Yet, on a particular Christmas, some ten years back, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, whisky in one hand, suitcase in the other, and fractured his ribs. He was treated at the hospital 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 Morning Rolled On
The morning rolled on but the anecdotes weren’t flowing like they normally did. He maintained that he felt alright but his condition seemed to contradict this. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Therefore, before I could even don any celebratory headwear, we resolved to get him to the hospital.
The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
Upon our arrival, he’d gone from unwell to almost unconscious. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of clinical cuisine and atmosphere filled the air.
What was distinct, however, was the mood. There were heroic attempts at holiday cheer in every direction, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on tables next to the beds.
Positive medical attendants, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were working diligently and using that charming colloquial address so particular to the area: “duck”.
Heading Home for Leftovers
After our time at the hospital concluded, we headed home to cold bread sauce and holiday television. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – had we missed Christmas?
The Aftermath and the Story
Although our friend eventually recovered, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and later developed deep vein thrombosis. And, while that Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has gone down in family lore 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”.
