🔗 Share this article

This individual has long been known as a bigger-than-life character. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. Whenever our families celebrated, he’s the one gossiping about the newest uproar to catch up with a regional politician, or entertaining us with stories of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club during the last four decades.

We would often spend the holiday morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. Yet, on a particular Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, holding a drink in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and sustained broken ribs. Medical staff had treated him and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky.

As Time Passed

The hours went by, however, the humorous tales were absent as they usually were. He maintained that he felt alright but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.

Thus, prior to me managing to don any celebratory headwear, my mum and I decided to take him to A&E.

We thought about calling an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?

A Deteriorating Condition

Upon our arrival, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Fellow patients assisted us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of institutional meals and air filled the air.

Different though, was the spirit. There were heroic attempts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and portions of holiday pudding went cold on tables next to the beds.

Upbeat nursing staff, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were working diligently and using that lovely local expression 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 saw a lighthearted program on television, probably Agatha Christie, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.

By then it was quite late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember feeling deflated – did we lose the holiday?

Healing and Reflection

Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and subsequently contracted DVT. And, while that Christmas does not rank among my favorites, 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, I am not in a position to judge, but hearing it told each year 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”.