🔗 Share this article I Took a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive on the way. Our family friend has always been a truly outsized character. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and never one to refuse to a further glass. At family parties, he’s the one chatting about the most recent controversy to involve a member of parliament, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of assorted players from the local club 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. However, one holiday season, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, his luggage in the other, and sustained broken ribs. The hospital had patched him up and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, trying to cope, but seeming progressively worse. The Morning Rolled On Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage. Therefore, before I could even placed a party hat on my head, my mum and I decided to drive him to the emergency room. We thought about calling an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day? A Deteriorating Condition Upon our arrival, he had moved from being unwell to almost unconscious. People in the waiting room aided us get him to a ward, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind permeated the space. The atmosphere, however, was unique. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; decorations dangled from IV poles and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on nightstands. Cheerful nurses, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address 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 viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a regionally-themed property trading game. It was already late, and snow was falling, and I remember experiencing a letdown – was Christmas effectively over for us? Healing and Reflection While our friend did get better in time, he had actually punctured a lung and later developed a serious circulatory condition. And, while that 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 a little bit of dramatic licence, I couldn’t possibly comment, but hearing it told each year has done no damage to my pride. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.