I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey.
Our family friend has always been a larger than life figure. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. Whenever our families celebrated, he is the person discussing the most recent controversy to catch up with a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the outrageous philandering of various Sheffield Wednesday players over the past 40 years.
We would often spend Christmas morning with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. Yet, on a particular Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, with a glass of whisky in hand, suitcase in the other, and fractured his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and instructed him to avoid flying. Thus, he found himself back with us, trying to cope, but appearing more and more unwell.
As Time Passed
Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing like they normally did. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
Thus, prior to me managing to placed a party hat on my head, we resolved to take him to A&E.
The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?
A Worrying Turn
By the time we got there, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. Other outpatients helped us get him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of hospital food and wind was noticeable.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at Christmas spirit all around, even with the pervasive sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on tables next to the beds.
Upbeat nursing staff, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were bustling about and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
After our time at the hospital concluded, we headed home to cold bread sauce and Christmas telly. We watched something daft on television, likely a mystery drama, 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 – had we missed Christmas?
Recovery and Retrospection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and went on to get DVT. And, although that holiday 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 hearing it told each year has done no damage to my pride. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
