🔗 Share this article I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey. Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life figure. Clever and unemotional – and never one to refuse to a further glass. Whenever our families celebrated, he would be the one gossiping about the latest scandal to befall a regional politician, or amusing us with accounts of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players during the last four decades. It was common for us to pass the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. However, one holiday season, about 10 years ago, 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. The hospital had patched him up and advised against air travel. Thus, he found himself back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky. As Time Passed Time passed, yet the humorous tales were absent like they normally did. He was convinced he was OK but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful. So, before I’d so much as put on a festive hat, my mum and I decided to take him to A&E. The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day? A Worrying Turn By the time we got there, he had moved from being peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us guide him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of clinical cuisine and atmosphere was noticeable. Different though, was the spirit. People were making brave attempts at festive gaiety all around, despite the underlying sterile and miserable mood; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and portions of holiday pudding went cold on nightstands. Upbeat nursing staff, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”. Heading Home for Leftovers When visiting hours were over, we made our way home to lukewarm condiments and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly. By then it was quite late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – had we missed Christmas? Healing and Reflection Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and subsequently contracted a serious circulatory condition. And, while that Christmas does not rank among my favorites, it has entered into our family history 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 hearing it told each year 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”.