I Took a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive on the way.
This individual has long been known as a bigger-than-life character. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to another brandy. During family gatherings, he’s the one gossiping about the most recent controversy to befall a member of parliament, or entertaining us with stories of the shameless infidelity of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday for forty years.
Frequently, we would share the holiday morning with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. Yet, on a particular Christmas, some ten years back, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, with a glass of whisky in hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and sustained broken 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 looking increasingly peaky.
The Day Progressed
The hours went by, however, the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He was convinced he was OK but his condition seemed to contradict this. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Thus, prior to me managing to put on a festive hat, we resolved to take him to A&E.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Worrying Turn
By the time we got there, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. Other outpatients helped us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind filled the air.
Different though, was the spirit. People were making brave attempts at Christmas spirit all around, notwithstanding the fundamental clinical and somber atmosphere; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on tables next to the beds.
Positive medical attendants, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that great term of endearment so unique to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
When visiting hours were over, we headed home to cold bread sauce and holiday television. We saw a lighthearted program on television, perhaps a detective story, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a local version of the board game.
By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday?
Healing and Reflection
Although our friend eventually recovered, he had actually punctured a lung and subsequently contracted a serious circulatory condition. And, even if that particular 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 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”.
