I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious on the way.
Our family friend has always been a truly outsized personality. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and not one to say no to a further glass. During family gatherings, he’s the one gossiping about the most recent controversy to involve a member of parliament, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday for forty years.
Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, before going our separate ways. However, one holiday season, roughly a decade past, when he was planning to join family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, with a glass of whisky in hand, his luggage in the other, and fractured his ribs. Medical staff had treated him and instructed him to avoid flying. Thus, he found himself back with us, making the best of it, but appearing more and more unwell.
The Day Progressed
The hours went by, however, the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but his appearance suggested otherwise. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
Therefore, before I could even put on a festive hat, my mother and I made the choice to take him to A&E.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
Upon our arrival, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us get him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of clinical cuisine and atmosphere filled the air.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. There were heroic attempts at holiday cheer in every direction, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; decorations dangled from IV poles and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on nightstands.
Upbeat nursing staff, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were working diligently and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
After our time at the hospital concluded, we returned home to chilled holiday sides and holiday television. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.
By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember experiencing a letdown – did we lose the holiday?
The Aftermath and the Story
Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and later developed 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”.
If that is completely accurate, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I couldn’t possibly comment, but hearing it told each year 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”.
