I Drove a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from unwell to scarcely conscious on the way.
He has always been a man of a truly outsized personality. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and hardly ever declining to an extra drink. During family gatherings, he would be the one chatting about the newest uproar to catch up with a member of parliament, or amusing us with accounts of the notorious womanizing of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday for forty years.
It was common for us to pass the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, before going our separate ways. Yet, on a particular Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he fell down the stairs, holding a drink in one hand, his luggage in the other, and fractured his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and advised against air travel. Thus, he found himself back with us, doing his best to manage, but appearing more and more unwell.
The Morning Rolled On
Time passed, yet the humorous tales were absent in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, carefully, 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 drive him to the emergency room.
The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?
A Worrying Turn
When we finally reached the hospital, he had moved from being unwell to almost unconscious. Other outpatients helped us get him to a ward, where the generic smell of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space.
Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety in every direction, notwithstanding the fundamental clinical and somber atmosphere; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on nightstands.
Positive medical attendants, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were bustling about and using that lovely local expression so unique to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
After our time at the hospital concluded, we returned home to cold bread sauce and Christmas telly. We viewed something silly on television, perhaps a detective story, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.
It was already late, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?
The Aftermath and the Story
While our friend did get better in time, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and later developed deep vein thrombosis. And, while that Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, 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. And, as our friend always says: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
