🔗 Share this article I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from unwell to scarcely conscious during the journey. He has always been a man of a bigger-than-life character. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to another brandy. During family gatherings, he is the person gossiping about the most recent controversy to involve a member of parliament, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players over the past 40 years. Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. Yet, on a particular Christmas, some ten years back, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and sustained broken ribs. He was treated at the hospital and advised against air travel. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but appearing more and more unwell. The Morning Rolled On Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed. Therefore, before I could even don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice to get him to the hospital. We considered summoning an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day? A Deteriorating Condition When we finally reached the hospital, 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 filled the air. What was distinct, however, was the mood. One could see valiant efforts at Christmas spirit in every direction, 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. Positive medical attendants, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were working diligently and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”. A Subdued Return Home After our time at the hospital concluded, we made our way home to lukewarm condiments and festive TV programming. We viewed something silly on television, perhaps a detective story, 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? Recovery and Retrospection While our friend did get better in time, he had in fact suffered a punctured 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”. If that is completely accurate, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I couldn’t possibly comment, but the story’s yearly repetition 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”.