I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and he went from unwell to scarcely conscious during the journey.
He has always been a man of a larger than life personality. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to a further glass. During family gatherings, he would be the one discussing the most recent controversy to catch up with a member of parliament, or entertaining us with stories of the outrageous philandering of assorted players from the local club for forty years.
We would often spend the holiday morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. However, one holiday season, some ten years back, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and fractured his ribs. Medical staff had treated him and advised against air travel. Thus, he found himself back with us, making the best of it, but looking increasingly peaky.
The Morning Rolled On
Time passed, yet the stories were not coming like they normally did. He was convinced he was OK but his condition seemed to contradict this. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
Thus, prior to me managing to 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 Deteriorating Condition
Upon our arrival, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind was noticeable.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive sterile and miserable mood; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and portions of holiday pudding went cold on bedside tables.
Upbeat nursing staff, 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”.
Heading Home for Leftovers
When visiting hours were over, we returned home to lukewarm condiments and festive TV programming. We saw a lighthearted program on television, likely a mystery drama, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a local version of the board 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
Although our friend eventually recovered, he had actually punctured a lung and later developed deep vein thrombosis. And, although that holiday isn’t a personal favourite, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
How factual that statement is, or contains some artistic license, I am not in a position to judge, 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”.
