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Our family friend has always been a larger than life figure. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and never one to refuse to a further glass. At family parties, he’s the one gossiping about the latest scandal to befall a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players over the past 40 years.

We would often spend the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. But, one Christmas, roughly a decade past, when he was planning to join family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and fractured 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 looking increasingly peaky.

The Day Progressed

The morning rolled on but the stories were not coming in their typical fashion. He maintained that he felt alright but his condition seemed to contradict this. 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 put on a festive hat, my mother and I made the choice to drive him to the emergency room.

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

A Deteriorating Condition

When we finally reached the hospital, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Other outpatients helped us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of institutional meals and air permeated the space.

Different though, was the spirit. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety in every direction, notwithstanding the fundamental depressing and institutional feel; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on tables next to the beds.

Upbeat nursing staff, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were moving busily and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”.

Heading Home for Leftovers

When visiting hours were over, we made our way home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, perhaps a detective story, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.

The hour was already advanced, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday?

Recovery and Retrospection

Although our friend eventually recovered, he had actually punctured a lung and later developed a serious circulatory condition. 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 contains some artistic license, I am not in a position to judge, but the story’s yearly repetition 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”.