I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and he went from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey.
Our family friend has always been a truly outsized personality. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to another brandy. At family parties, he’s the one gossiping about 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 during the last four decades.
It was common for us to pass the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, before going our separate ways. Yet, on a particular Christmas, some ten years back, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, whisky in one hand, his luggage in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, trying to cope, but seeming progressively worse.
The Day Progressed
The hours went by, however, the stories were not coming like they normally did. 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, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.
Thus, prior to me managing to placed a party hat on my head, 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 Rapid Decline
Upon our arrival, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us get him to a ward, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind filled the air.
What was distinct, however, was the mood. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety in every direction, despite the underlying sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on tables next to the beds.
Upbeat nursing staff, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were working diligently and using that great term of endearment so unique to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
After our time at the hospital concluded, we headed home to lukewarm condiments and holiday television. We saw a lighthearted program on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
By then it was quite late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – had we missed Christmas?
The Aftermath and the Story
Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and went on to get DVT. And, while that Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
How factual that statement is, or contains some artistic license, I am not in a position to judge, but hearing it told each year certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. And, as our friend always says: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.