🔗 Share this article I Took a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and he went from peaky to barely responsive during the journey. He has always been a man of a truly outsized figure. Witty, unsentimental – and hardly ever declining to another brandy. At family parties, he’s the one chatting about the newest uproar to involve a local MP, or amusing us with accounts of the shameless infidelity of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday over the past 40 years. We would often spend the holiday morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. But, one Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, whisky in one hand, his luggage in the other, and sustained broken ribs. The hospital had patched him up and advised against air travel. Thus, he found himself back with us, making the best of it, but looking increasingly peaky. The Day Progressed Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but his condition seemed to contradict this. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage. Therefore, before I could even put on a festive hat, we resolved to take him to A&E. The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day? A Worrying Turn When we finally reached the hospital, he had moved from being peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind was noticeable. The atmosphere, however, was unique. There were heroic attempts at Christmas spirit in every direction, notwithstanding the fundamental sterile and miserable mood; tinsel hung from drip stands and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on tables next to the beds. Upbeat nursing staff, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were working diligently and using that lovely local expression so particular to the area: “duck”. Heading Home for Leftovers When visiting hours were over, we made our way home to cold bread sauce and holiday television. We saw a lighthearted program on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly. It was already late, and snowing, and I remember experiencing a letdown – did we lose the holiday? The Aftermath and the Story While our friend did get better in time, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and subsequently contracted DVT. And, although that holiday does not rank among my favorites, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”. How factual that statement is, or contains some artistic license, I couldn’t possibly comment, but its annual retelling 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”.