I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive during the journey.
Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life figure. Witty, unsentimental – and not one to say no to an extra drink. At family parties, he would be the one discussing the newest uproar to involve a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the outrageous philandering of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday over the past 40 years.
We would often spend Christmas morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. But, one Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, holding a drink in one hand, suitcase in the other, and broke his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and instructed him to avoid flying. So, here he was back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.
The Morning Rolled On
The morning rolled on but the stories were not coming like they normally did. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.
Therefore, before I could even placed a party hat on my head, 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 Worrying Turn
When we finally reached the hospital, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of institutional meals and air was noticeable.
What was distinct, however, was the mood. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety all around, notwithstanding the fundamental depressing and institutional feel; decorations dangled from IV poles and portions of holiday pudding went cold on bedside tables.
Positive medical attendants, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were bustling about and using that great term of endearment so unique to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
Once the permitted time ended, we made our way home to lukewarm condiments and Christmas telly. We watched something daft on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.
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?
The Aftermath and the Story
Although our friend eventually recovered, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and went on to get a serious circulatory condition. And, while that Christmas does not rank among my favorites, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
Whether that’s strictly true, or involves a degree of exaggeration, is not for me to definitively say, but hearing it told each year certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
