🔗 Share this article I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and he went from unwell to scarcely conscious during the journey. Our family friend has always been a larger than life figure. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and never one to refuse to another brandy. Whenever our families celebrated, he’s the one discussing the most recent controversy to befall a member of parliament, or entertaining us with stories of the outrageous philandering of assorted players from the local club for forty years. Frequently, we would share Christmas morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. But, one Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, suitcase in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky. The Morning Rolled On The hours went by, however, the humorous tales were absent as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful. Therefore, before I could even placed a party hat on my head, we resolved to take him to A&E. We thought about calling an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day? A Rapid Decline Upon our arrival, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind filled the air. What was distinct, however, was the mood. One could see valiant efforts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental sterile and miserable mood; tinsel hung from drip stands and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on tables next to the beds. Cheerful nurses, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”. A Subdued Return Home When visiting hours were over, we returned home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game. The hour was already advanced, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday? Recovery and Retrospection Even though he ultimately healed, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and subsequently contracted deep vein thrombosis. And, although that holiday isn’t a personal favourite, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”. How factual that statement is, or involves a degree of exaggeration, is not for me to definitively say, 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”.