🔗 Share this article I Drove a Family Friend to A&E – and he went from peaky to scarcely conscious during the journey. This individual has long been known as a truly outsized character. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. Whenever our families celebrated, he would be the one chatting about the newest uproar to catch up with a regional politician, or amusing us with accounts of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club during the last four decades. Frequently, we would share Christmas morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. Yet, on a particular Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he fell down the stairs, holding a drink in one hand, his luggage in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and instructed him to avoid flying. Thus, he found himself back with us, making the best of it, but appearing more and more unwell. As Time Passed Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing in their typical fashion. He maintained that he felt alright but his appearance suggested otherwise. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed. Thus, prior to me managing to put on a festive hat, my mum and I decided to drive him to the emergency room. The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but how long would that take on Christmas Day? A Worrying Turn Upon our arrival, he’d gone from unwell to almost unconscious. People in the waiting room aided us get him to a ward, where the generic smell of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space. The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at holiday cheer all around, notwithstanding the fundamental clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on nightstands. Cheerful nurses, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were bustling about and using that lovely local expression so unique to the area: “duck”. Heading Home for Leftovers After our time at the hospital concluded, we headed home to cold bread sauce and Christmas telly. We saw a lighthearted program on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly. By then it was quite late, and snow was falling, and I remember feeling deflated – did we lose the holiday? The Aftermath and the Story Although our friend eventually recovered, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and went on to get deep vein thrombosis. And, while that Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”. Whether that’s strictly true, or contains some artistic license, is not for me to definitively say, but the story’s yearly repetition has done no damage to my pride. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.