I Took a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious on the way.
This individual has long been known as a truly outsized personality. Clever and unemotional – and never one to refuse to another brandy. Whenever our families celebrated, he would be the one chatting about the latest scandal to befall a regional politician, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing 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 supposed to be meeting family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, whisky in one hand, his luggage 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 looking increasingly peaky.
The Morning Rolled On
The morning rolled on but the anecdotes weren’t flowing as they usually were. He maintained that he felt alright but his appearance suggested otherwise. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
So, before I’d so much as don any celebratory headwear, we resolved to get him to the hospital.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Worrying Turn
Upon our arrival, he had moved from being unwell to almost unconscious. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of clinical cuisine and atmosphere filled the air.
Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety in every direction, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; decorations dangled from IV poles and portions of holiday pudding went cold on bedside tables.
Upbeat nursing staff, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were moving busily and using that great term of endearment so unique to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
When visiting hours were over, we returned home to cold bread sauce and Christmas telly. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a local version of the board game.
By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember experiencing a letdown – had we missed Christmas?
Recovery and Retrospection
While our friend did get better in time, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and later developed DVT. And, while that Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
Whether that’s strictly true, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I couldn’t possibly comment, but hearing it told each year 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”.
