I Took a Close Friend of the Family to the Emergency Room – and his condition shifted from unwell to scarcely conscious during the journey.
He has always been a man of a truly outsized figure. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and never one to refuse to a further glass. During family gatherings, he would be the one chatting about the newest uproar to catch up with a regional politician, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity of assorted players from the local club for forty years.
We would often spend Christmas morning with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. Yet, on a particular Christmas, some ten years back, 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. He was treated at the hospital and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, making the best of it, but seeming progressively worse.
The Day Progressed
The hours went by, however, the humorous tales were absent 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 found he could not; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.
Therefore, before I could even don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice to drive him to the emergency room.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
By the time we got there, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Other outpatients helped us help him reach a treatment area, where the characteristic scent of hospital food and wind permeated the space.
Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at holiday cheer in every direction, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on tables next to the beds.
Cheerful nurses, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
Heading Home for Leftovers
After our time at the hospital concluded, we returned home to lukewarm condiments and Christmas telly. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as a local version of the board game.
By then it was quite late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – had we missed Christmas?
Healing and Reflection
While our friend did get better in time, he had in fact suffered a punctured 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 has definitely been good for my self-esteem. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
