I Took a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and he went from peaky to barely responsive during the journey.
He has always been a man of a truly outsized character. Witty, unsentimental – and not one to say no to an extra drink. At family parties, he is the person chatting about the newest uproar to befall a member of parliament, or amusing us with accounts of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players during the last four decades.
Frequently, we would share Christmas morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. But, one Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was planning to join family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, holding a drink in one hand, his luggage in the other, and fractured his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky.
The Day Progressed
Time passed, yet the humorous tales were absent like they normally did. He maintained that he felt alright 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 did not manage.
So, before I’d so much as put on a festive hat, my mother and I made the choice to get him to the hospital.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?
A Deteriorating Condition
When we finally reached the hospital, his state had progressed from unwell to almost unconscious. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind filled the air.
What was distinct, however, was the mood. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental sterile and miserable mood; tinsel hung from drip stands and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on nightstands.
Upbeat nursing staff, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were moving busily and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
When visiting hours were over, we returned home to lukewarm condiments and festive TV programming. We saw a lighthearted program on television, perhaps a detective story, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
It was already late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember feeling deflated – had we missed Christmas?
Recovery and Retrospection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and went on to get 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”.
If that is completely accurate, or contains some artistic license, I couldn’t possibly comment, 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”.
