I Drove a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive during the journey.

Our family friend has always been a truly outsized figure. Witty, unsentimental – and never one to refuse to another brandy. Whenever our families celebrated, he’s the one discussing the latest scandal to involve a member of parliament, or entertaining us with stories of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players during the last four decades.

We would often spend the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. However, one holiday season, roughly a decade past, when he was planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and fractured his ribs. Medical staff had treated him 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 anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but his condition seemed to contradict this. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.

So, before I’d so much as don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice to drive him to the emergency room.

The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?

A Rapid Decline

By the time we got there, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. Other outpatients helped us guide him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space.

Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at holiday cheer everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and portions of holiday pudding went cold on bedside tables.

Upbeat nursing staff, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were working diligently and using that great term of endearment so unique to the area: “duck”.

A Subdued Return Home

After our time at the hospital concluded, we headed home to lukewarm condiments and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.

The hour was already advanced, and snowing, and I remember feeling deflated – did we lose the holiday?

Recovery and Retrospection

Even though he ultimately healed, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and later developed DVT. And, even if that particular Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has entered into our family history as “the Christmas I saved a life”.

Whether that’s strictly true, or contains some artistic license, I couldn’t possibly comment, but hearing it told each year 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”.