🔗 Share this article I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey. This individual has long been known as a truly outsized character. Witty, unsentimental – and never one to refuse to another brandy. During family gatherings, he would be the one discussing the newest uproar to involve a member of parliament, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday during the last four decades. It was common for us to pass Christmas morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. However, one holiday season, some ten years back, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, holding a drink in one hand, suitcase in the other, and sustained broken ribs. Medical staff had treated him and instructed him to avoid flying. So, here he was back with us, making the best of it, but looking increasingly peaky. As Time Passed Time passed, yet the stories were not coming in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but his condition seemed to contradict this. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed. So, before I’d so much as don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice 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 Deteriorating Condition By the time we got there, he had moved from being peaky to barely responsive. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the distinctive odor of hospital food and wind was noticeable. What was distinct, however, was the mood. One could see valiant efforts at holiday cheer in every direction, despite the underlying clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and portions of holiday pudding went cold on nightstands. Positive medical attendants, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were moving busily and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”. A Subdued Return Home Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. 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 snow was falling, and I remember feeling deflated – had we missed Christmas? Recovery and Retrospection While our friend did get better in time, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and subsequently contracted deep vein thrombosis. And, even if that particular Christmas 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, I am not in a position to judge, but hearing it told each year certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.