I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey.
He has always been a man of a bigger-than-life figure. Witty, unsentimental – and never one to refuse to another brandy. Whenever our families celebrated, he is the person gossiping about the newest uproar to catch up with a member of parliament, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club for forty years.
We would often spend Christmas morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, with a glass of whisky in hand, suitcase in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us, making the best of it, but appearing more and more unwell.
The Day Progressed
The morning rolled on but the humorous tales were absent in their typical fashion. He maintained that he felt alright but his appearance suggested otherwise. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
So, before I’d so much as 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 Rapid Decline
Upon our arrival, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Other outpatients helped us help him reach a treatment area, where the distinctive odor of institutional meals and air was noticeable.
Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at holiday cheer everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on tables next to the beds.
Positive medical attendants, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were working diligently and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
When visiting hours were over, we made our way home to chilled holiday sides and Christmas telly. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
By then it was quite late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember feeling deflated – did we lose the holiday?
The Aftermath and the Story
Although our friend eventually recovered, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and subsequently contracted a serious circulatory condition. And, even if that particular Christmas does not rank among my favorites, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
If that is completely accurate, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I am not in a position to judge, but the story’s yearly repetition certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.