🔗 Share this article I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from unwell to scarcely conscious on the way. He has always been a man of a larger than life personality. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and hardly ever declining to an extra drink. Whenever our families celebrated, he’s the one discussing the newest uproar to befall a member of parliament, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club during the last four decades. It was common for us to pass the holiday morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. Yet, on a particular Christmas, roughly a decade past, 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. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. Thus, he found himself back with us, making the best of it, but appearing more and more unwell. The Morning Rolled On Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing as they usually were. 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 did not manage. Therefore, before I could even don any celebratory headwear, we resolved to drive him to the emergency room. We thought about calling an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day? A Worrying Turn Upon our arrival, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind filled the air. Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety all around, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on bedside tables. Upbeat nursing staff, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were moving busily and using that lovely local expression so unique to the area: “duck”. Heading Home for Leftovers After our time at the hospital concluded, we headed home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We saw a lighthearted program on television, likely a mystery drama, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly. By then it was quite late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us? Recovery and Retrospection While our friend did get better in time, he had actually punctured a lung and went on to get a serious circulatory condition. And, while that Christmas does not rank among my favorites, it has entered into our family history 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 definitely been good for my self-esteem. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.