I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from unwell to scarcely conscious during the journey.
He has always been a man of a truly outsized personality. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. During family gatherings, he is the person gossiping about the newest uproar to catch up with a member of parliament, or amusing us with accounts of the outrageous philandering of assorted players from the local club for forty years.
Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, holding a drink in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and fractured his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and advised against air travel. So, here he was back with us, making the best of it, but appearing more and more unwell.
As Time Passed
The morning rolled on but the stories were not coming as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but his appearance suggested otherwise. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
Therefore, before I could even placed a party hat on my head, my mother and I made the choice to drive him to the emergency room.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?
A Deteriorating Condition
By the time we got there, his state had progressed from poorly to hardly aware. Other outpatients helped us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of institutional meals and air permeated the space.
Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; decorations dangled from IV poles and portions of holiday pudding went cold on bedside tables.
Positive medical attendants, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were working diligently and using that lovely local expression so particular to the area: “duck”.
A Subdued Return Home
When visiting hours were over, we headed home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We saw a lighthearted program on television, probably Agatha Christie, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as a local version of the board game.
By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember feeling deflated – did we lose the holiday?
Recovery and Retrospection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and subsequently contracted DVT. And, while that Christmas does not rank among my favorites, it has entered into our family history as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
Whether that’s strictly true, or involves a degree of exaggeration, is not for me to definitively say, but the story’s yearly repetition has done no damage to my pride. And, as our friend always says: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
