🔗 Share this article I Took a Close Friend of the Family to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey. Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life personality. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to another brandy. During family gatherings, he’s the one discussing the latest scandal to involve a member of parliament, or amusing us with accounts of the shameless infidelity of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday over the past 40 years. We would often spend the morning of Christmas Day 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 planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and fractured his ribs. Medical staff had treated him and instructed him to avoid flying. Thus, he found himself back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky. The Morning Rolled On The hours went by, however, the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He maintained that he felt alright but he didn’t look it. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful. So, before I’d so much as don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice to drive him to the emergency room. We thought about calling an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day? A Deteriorating Condition When we finally reached the hospital, he’d gone from unwell to almost unconscious. Fellow patients assisted us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind filled the air. The atmosphere, however, was unique. There were heroic attempts at holiday cheer all around, 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. Upbeat nursing staff, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”. A Quiet Journey Back After our time at the hospital concluded, we headed home to chilled holiday sides and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as a local version of the board game. It was already late, and snowing, and I remember feeling deflated – had we missed Christmas? The Aftermath and the Story 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 gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”. Whether that’s strictly true, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I couldn’t possibly comment, 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”.