🔗 Share this article I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and he went from unwell to scarcely conscious during the journey. Our family friend has always been a truly outsized character. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. During family gatherings, he would be the one gossiping about the most recent controversy to catch up with a member of parliament, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday during the last four decades. Frequently, we would share the holiday morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, some ten years back, when he was planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, with a glass of whisky in hand, his luggage in the other, and sustained broken ribs. The hospital had patched him up and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky. As Time Passed The morning rolled on but the stories were not coming as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but his appearance suggested otherwise. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed. So, before I’d so much as placed a party hat on my head, my mum and I decided to get him to the hospital. We thought about calling an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day? A Deteriorating Condition By the time we got there, he had moved from being peaky to barely responsive. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the distinctive odor of hospital food and wind was noticeable. What was distinct, however, was the mood. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental depressing and institutional feel; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and portions of holiday pudding went cold on bedside tables. Positive medical attendants, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that lovely local expression so unique to the area: “duck”. A Quiet Journey Back Once the permitted time ended, we headed home to chilled holiday sides and holiday television. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly. The hour was already advanced, and snowing, and I remember feeling deflated – did we lose the holiday? The Aftermath and the Story While our friend did get better in time, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and went on to get DVT. And, while that Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”. Whether that’s strictly true, or a little bit of dramatic licence, I am not in a position to judge, but the story’s yearly repetition certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.