🔗 Share this article

Our family friend has always been a larger than life character. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to another brandy. At family parties, he would be the one chatting about the latest scandal to befall a member of parliament, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of assorted players from the local club for forty years.

We would often spend Christmas morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. Yet, on a particular Christmas, some ten years back, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, with a glass of whisky in hand, suitcase in the other, and sustained broken ribs. He was treated at the hospital and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us, trying to cope, but appearing more and more unwell.

As Time Passed

The morning rolled on but the stories were not coming in their typical fashion. He insisted he was fine but his appearance suggested otherwise. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.

So, before I’d so much as placed a party hat on my head, my mum and I decided to get him to the hospital.

We considered summoning an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?

A Rapid Decline

Upon our arrival, his state had progressed from peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us help him reach a treatment area, where the distinctive odor of clinical cuisine and atmosphere filled the air.

Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety in every direction, even with the pervasive sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on tables next to the beds.

Upbeat nursing staff, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so unique to the area: “duck”.

Heading Home for Leftovers

After our time at the hospital concluded, we made our way home to chilled holiday sides and holiday television. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.

By then it was quite late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember feeling deflated – did we lose the holiday?

The Aftermath and the Story

Although our friend eventually recovered, he had actually punctured a lung and subsequently contracted a serious circulatory condition. And, while that Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, 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 couldn’t possibly comment, but hearing it told each year has done no damage to my pride. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.