I Drove a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from unwell to scarcely conscious during the journey.
This individual has long been known as a truly outsized personality. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to a further glass. During family gatherings, he would be the one gossiping about the most recent controversy to involve a regional politician, or amusing us with accounts of the outrageous philandering of assorted players from the local club for forty years.
Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. Yet, on a particular Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, with a glass of whisky in hand, his luggage in the other, and sustained broken ribs. Medical staff had treated him and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky.
The Morning Rolled On
The morning rolled on but the stories were not coming in their typical fashion. He was convinced he was OK 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.
Thus, prior to me managing to don any celebratory headwear, my mum and I decided to take him to A&E.
The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?
A Deteriorating Condition
Upon our arrival, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. People in the waiting room aided us help him reach a treatment area, where the distinctive odor of institutional meals and air was noticeable.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive depressing and institutional feel; decorations dangled from IV poles and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on bedside tables.
Upbeat nursing staff, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
Heading Home for Leftovers
Once the permitted time ended, we made our way home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We viewed something silly on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.
By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?
The Aftermath and the Story
Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and went on to get DVT. And, even if that particular Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has entered into our family history as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
If that is completely accurate, or a little bit of dramatic licence, is not for me to definitively say, but the story’s yearly repetition 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”.
