🔗 Share this article I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive on the way. He has always been a man of a bigger-than-life personality. Witty, unsentimental – and hardly ever declining to an extra drink. Whenever our families celebrated, he’s the one chatting about the newest uproar to involve a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the outrageous philandering of various Sheffield Wednesday players for forty years. Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, before going our separate ways. But, one Christmas, some ten years back, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, with a glass of whisky in hand, his luggage in the other, and broke his ribs. Medical staff had treated him and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, making the best of it, but looking increasingly peaky. As Time Passed Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful. So, before I’d so much as don any celebratory headwear, my mum and I decided to drive him to the emergency room. We thought about calling an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day? A Worrying Turn When we finally reached the hospital, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. People in the waiting room aided us help him reach a treatment area, where the distinctive odor of clinical cuisine and atmosphere filled the air. What was distinct, however, was the mood. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on bedside tables. Upbeat nursing staff, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were bustling about and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”. A Quiet Journey Back Once the permitted time ended, we made our way home to chilled holiday sides 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. The hour was already advanced, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us? The Aftermath and the Story Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and later developed DVT. And, even if that particular 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 involves a degree of exaggeration, I am not in a position to judge, but the story’s yearly repetition 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”.