I Took a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive during the journey.
He has always been a man of a truly outsized personality. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. At family parties, he’s the one chatting about the most recent controversy to catch up with a local MP, or amusing us with accounts of the notorious womanizing of assorted players from the local club for forty years.
Frequently, we would share the holiday morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. Yet, on a particular Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and sustained broken ribs. He was treated at the hospital and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, making the best of it, but appearing more and more unwell.
The Day Progressed
Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He maintained that he felt alright 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.
Therefore, before I could even don any celebratory headwear, my mum and I decided to take him to A&E.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?
A Worrying Turn
By the time we got there, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. Other outpatients helped us get him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of institutional meals and air filled the air.
What was distinct, however, was the mood. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety in every direction, despite the underlying sterile and miserable mood; tinsel hung from drip stands and portions of holiday pudding went cold on tables next to the beds.
Positive medical attendants, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were moving busily and using that great term of endearment so unique to the area: “duck”.
Heading Home for Leftovers
When visiting hours were over, we headed home to chilled holiday sides and Christmas telly. We saw a lighthearted program on television, likely a mystery drama, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.
The hour was already advanced, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday?
Healing and Reflection
Although our friend eventually recovered, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and went on to get 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”.
How factual that statement is, or contains some artistic license, is not for me to definitively say, but its annual retelling 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”.
