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Our family friend has always been a larger than life character. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. During family gatherings, he would be the one discussing the most recent controversy to befall a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the outrageous philandering of assorted players from the local club for forty years.

Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, some ten years back, when he was planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, with a glass of whisky in hand, his luggage in the other, and sustained broken ribs. Medical staff had treated him and instructed him to avoid flying. Thus, he found himself back with us, doing his best to manage, but seeming progressively worse.

As Time Passed

The hours went by, however, the anecdotes weren’t flowing like they normally did. He was convinced he was OK but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.

Thus, prior to me managing to placed a party hat on my head, my mum and I decided to get him to the hospital.

We thought about calling an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?

A Worrying Turn

Upon our arrival, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. Fellow patients assisted us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of clinical cuisine and atmosphere was noticeable.

Different though, was the spirit. There were heroic attempts at holiday cheer everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental sterile and miserable mood; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on nightstands.

Positive medical attendants, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so particular to the area: “duck”.

Heading Home for Leftovers

Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We saw a lighthearted program on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.

By then it was quite late, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday?

The Aftermath and the Story

While our friend did get better in time, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and later developed DVT. And, even if that particular Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.

If that is completely accurate, 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”.