I Took a Close Friend of the Family to A&E – and his condition shifted from peaky to barely responsive during the journey.

Our family friend has always been a truly outsized personality. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and not one to say no to an extra drink. During family gatherings, he would be the one chatting about the newest uproar to catch up with a member of parliament, or entertaining us with stories of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club during the last four decades.

We would often spend Christmas morning 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, a suitcase gripped in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, making the best of it, but seeming progressively worse.

The Day Progressed

The morning rolled on but the anecdotes weren’t flowing as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, gingerly, 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.

We considered summoning an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?

A Worrying Turn

By the time we got there, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Other outpatients helped us guide him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of hospital food and wind permeated the space.

What was distinct, however, was the mood. People were making brave attempts at festive gaiety all around, even with the pervasive sterile and miserable mood; tinsel hung from drip stands and portions of holiday pudding went cold on nightstands.

Cheerful nurses, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”.

A Subdued Return Home

Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to cold bread sauce and Christmas telly. We viewed something silly 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 it had begun to snow, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?

The Aftermath and the Story

While our friend did get better in time, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and subsequently contracted a serious circulatory condition. And, while that Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, 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 its annual retelling certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.