🔗 Share this article

Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life character. Clever and unemotional – and never one to refuse to a further glass. Whenever our families celebrated, he would be the one gossiping about the most recent controversy to befall a regional politician, or entertaining us with stories of the shameless infidelity of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday 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. However, one holiday season, roughly a decade past, when he was planning to join family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, holding a drink in one hand, suitcase in the other, and sustained broken ribs. He was treated at the hospital and advised against air travel. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but seeming progressively worse.

The Morning Rolled On

Time passed, yet the stories were not coming in their typical fashion. 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 was unsuccessful.

So, before I’d so much as put on a festive hat, we resolved to get him to the hospital.

We considered summoning an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?

A Rapid Decline

Upon our arrival, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. People in the waiting room aided us get him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of hospital food and wind filled the air.

What was distinct, however, was the mood. People were making brave attempts at Christmas spirit in every direction, despite the underlying depressing and institutional feel; 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 lovely local expression so particular to the area: “duck”.

A Subdued Return Home

When visiting hours were over, we headed home to cold bread sauce and holiday television. We viewed something silly on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as a local version of the board game.

By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember feeling deflated – had we missed Christmas?

Healing and Reflection

Even though he ultimately healed, 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 entered into our family history as “the Christmas I saved a life”.

If that is completely accurate, or a little bit of dramatic licence, I couldn’t possibly comment, but the story’s yearly repetition 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”.