I Drove a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive on the way.
He has always been a man of a bigger-than-life personality. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to an extra drink. At family parties, he’s the one gossiping about the newest uproar to catch up with a regional politician, or amusing us with accounts of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players during the last four decades.
Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. Yet, on a particular Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was planning to join family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, holding a drink in one hand, his luggage in the other, and broke his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and instructed him to avoid flying. Thus, he found himself back with us, making the best of it, but looking increasingly peaky.
As Time Passed
Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but his appearance suggested otherwise. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Thus, prior to me managing to don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice to get him to the hospital.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?
A Worrying Turn
Upon our arrival, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Fellow patients assisted us guide him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of hospital food and wind filled the air.
Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental depressing and institutional feel; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on nightstands.
Cheerful nurses, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were moving busily and using that great term of endearment so particular to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
When visiting hours were over, we headed home to lukewarm condiments and Christmas telly. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.
It was already late, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?
Healing and Reflection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and went on to get deep vein thrombosis. And, even if that particular Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has entered into our family history as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
How factual that statement is, or involves a degree of exaggeration, is not for me to definitively say, but its annual retelling certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. And, as our friend always says: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
