I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from unwell to barely responsive on the way.
Our family friend has always been a truly outsized personality. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. During family gatherings, he would be the one chatting about the most recent controversy to catch up with a regional politician, or entertaining us with stories of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players during the last four decades.
Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. Yet, on a particular Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, holding a drink in one hand, a suitcase gripped 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, making the best of it, but appearing more and more unwell.
As Time Passed
Time passed, yet the stories were not coming as they usually were. He was convinced he was OK but his appearance suggested otherwise. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Therefore, before I could even placed a party hat on my head, my mum and I decided to take him to A&E.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?
A Deteriorating Condition
Upon our arrival, his state had progressed from peaky to barely responsive. Other outpatients helped us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on nightstands.
Cheerful nurses, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
Once the permitted time ended, we headed home to chilled holiday sides and holiday television. We saw a lighthearted program on television, probably Agatha Christie, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a local version of the board game.
By then it was quite late, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday?
The Aftermath and the Story
Even though he ultimately healed, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and subsequently contracted DVT. And, even if that particular Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
If that is completely accurate, or a little bit of dramatic licence, 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”.
