I Took a Close Friend of the Family to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive during the journey.

This individual has long been known as a larger than life personality. Witty, unsentimental – and hardly ever declining to an extra drink. During family gatherings, he’s the one chatting about the most recent controversy to catch up with a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the shameless infidelity of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday for forty years.

We would often spend the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, about 10 years ago, when he was planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, his luggage in the other, and sustained broken ribs. He was treated at the hospital and told him not to fly. Thus, he found himself back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.

The Day Progressed

The hours went by, however, the stories were not coming like they normally did. He maintained that he felt alright but he didn’t look it. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.

So, before I’d so much as put on a festive hat, my mother and I made the choice to drive him to the emergency room.

We considered summoning an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?

A Worrying Turn

By the time we got there, he had moved from being peaky to barely responsive. Other outpatients helped us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of institutional meals and air filled the air.

Different though, was the spirit. People were making brave attempts at Christmas spirit all around, despite the underlying sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and portions of holiday pudding went cold on tables next to the beds.

Positive medical attendants, 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 Quiet Journey Back

When visiting hours were over, we returned home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We viewed something silly on television, likely a mystery drama, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.

It was already late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember experiencing a letdown – did we lose the holiday?

The Aftermath and the Story

Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and subsequently contracted deep vein thrombosis. And, although that holiday isn’t a personal favourite, it has entered into our family history as “the Christmas I saved a life”.

If that is completely accurate, or contains some artistic license, is not for me to definitively say, but its annual retelling has definitely been good for my self-esteem. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.