🔗 Share this article I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious on the way. Our family friend has always been a truly outsized figure. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to an extra drink. At family parties, he’s the one discussing the newest uproar to befall a member of parliament, or entertaining us with stories of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club for forty years. Frequently, we would share the holiday morning with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. But, one Christmas, some ten years back, when he was planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, with a glass of whisky in hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and fractured his ribs. Medical staff had treated him and advised against air travel. Thus, he found himself back with us, making the best of it, but looking increasingly peaky. As Time Passed Time passed, yet the humorous tales were absent in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but his appearance suggested otherwise. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed. Therefore, before I could even put on a festive hat, we resolved to get him to the hospital. The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day? A Rapid Decline Upon our arrival, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. People in the waiting room aided us get him to a ward, where the generic smell of institutional meals and air permeated the space. What was distinct, however, was the mood. There were heroic attempts at holiday cheer everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on tables next to the beds. Positive medical attendants, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were bustling about and using that lovely local expression so particular to the area: “duck”. Heading Home for Leftovers Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, likely a mystery drama, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a regionally-themed property trading game. The hour was already advanced, and it had begun to snow, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday? Healing and Reflection Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and subsequently contracted a serious circulatory condition. And, even if that particular Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”. If that is completely accurate, or a little bit of dramatic licence, I am not in a position to judge, but the story’s yearly repetition certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.