🔗 Share this article I Took a Family Friend to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive on the way. He has always been a man of a larger than life character. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and never one to refuse to an extra drink. Whenever our families celebrated, he’s the one gossiping about the newest uproar to involve a regional politician, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday over the past 40 years. We would often spend the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. But, one Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, holding a drink in one hand, his luggage in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and instructed him to avoid flying. Thus, he found himself back with us, trying to cope, but seeming progressively worse. The Morning Rolled On The morning rolled on but the stories were not coming in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed. So, before I’d so much as placed a party hat on my head, my mother and I made the choice 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 Rapid Decline When we finally reached the hospital, his state had progressed from peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us help him reach a treatment area, where the distinctive odor of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space. Different though, was the spirit. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, despite the underlying depressing and institutional feel; 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 bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so unique to the area: “duck”. A Quiet Journey Back Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to lukewarm condiments and holiday television. We watched something daft on television, likely a mystery drama, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly. By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember experiencing a letdown – had we missed Christmas? Recovery and Retrospection Even though he ultimately healed, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and later developed deep vein thrombosis. And, even if that particular Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”. How factual that statement is, or contains some artistic license, is not for me to definitively say, but its annual retelling 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”.