I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and he went from peaky to barely responsive during the journey.
He has always been a man of a truly outsized figure. Clever and unemotional – and never one to refuse to an extra drink. During family gatherings, he would be the one discussing the most recent controversy to catch up with a member of parliament, or amusing us with accounts of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club over the past 40 years.
Frequently, we would share the holiday morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. Yet, on a particular 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, suitcase in the other, and sustained broken ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.
The Morning Rolled On
Time passed, yet the humorous tales were absent 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, carefully, 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 get him to the hospital.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Deteriorating Condition
By the time we got there, his state had progressed from unwell to almost unconscious. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the characteristic scent of institutional meals and air permeated the space.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and portions of holiday pudding went cold on nightstands.
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 Subdued Return Home
When visiting hours were over, we returned home to lukewarm condiments and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, likely a mystery drama, and played something even dafter, such as a local version of the board game.
By then it was quite late, and snow was falling, and I remember feeling deflated – did we lose the holiday?
Recovery and Retrospection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and went on to get deep vein thrombosis. 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”.
Whether that’s strictly true, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I couldn’t possibly comment, but hearing it told each year certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
