🔗 Share this article I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from peaky to scarcely conscious on the way. This individual has long been known as a truly outsized personality. Clever and unemotional – and never one to refuse to an extra drink. At family parties, he would be the one discussing the most recent controversy to catch up with a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the shameless infidelity of various Sheffield Wednesday players over the past 40 years. Frequently, we would share the holiday morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, about 10 years ago, when he was planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, holding a drink in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and broke his ribs. Medical staff had treated him 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 anecdotes weren’t flowing like they normally did. He insisted he was fine but his condition seemed to contradict this. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful. Therefore, before I could even put on a festive hat, my mum and I decided to take him to A&E. We considered summoning an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day? A Deteriorating Condition Upon our arrival, his state had progressed from unwell to almost unconscious. People in the waiting room aided us guide him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of clinical cuisine and atmosphere filled the air. The atmosphere, however, was unique. There were heroic attempts at Christmas spirit in every direction, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on bedside tables. Positive medical attendants, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were moving busily and using that charming colloquial address so unique to the area: “duck”. A Subdued Return Home Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to lukewarm condiments and festive TV programming. We viewed something silly on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as a local version of the board game. By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember feeling deflated – had we missed Christmas? The Aftermath and the Story While our friend did get better in time, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and went on to get deep vein thrombosis. And, while that Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”. If that is completely accurate, or involves a degree of exaggeration, is not for me to definitively say, but the story’s yearly repetition has definitely been good for my self-esteem. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.