Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life figure. Clever and unemotional – and hardly ever declining to an extra drink. During family gatherings, he is the person chatting about the most recent controversy to catch up with a regional politician, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of assorted players from the local club during the last four decades.
We would often spend Christmas morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. But, one Christmas, some ten years back, when he was planning to join family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, trying to cope, but appearing more and more unwell.
As Time Passed
The morning rolled on but the humorous tales were absent like they normally did. He maintained that he felt alright but his condition seemed to contradict this. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.
Therefore, before I could even put on a festive hat, my mum and I decided to drive him to the emergency room.
We thought about calling an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?
A Rapid Decline
When we finally reached the hospital, he had moved from being unwell to almost unconscious. People in the waiting room aided us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of institutional meals and air permeated the space.
Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at Christmas spirit in every direction, notwithstanding the fundamental sterile and miserable mood; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on tables next to the beds.
Positive medical attendants, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were working diligently and using that great term of endearment so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
Heading Home for Leftovers
After our time at the hospital concluded, we headed home to lukewarm condiments and festive TV programming. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as a local version of the board game.
By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – did we lose the holiday?
Healing and Reflection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and later developed a serious circulatory condition. And, even if that particular Christmas does not rank among my favorites, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
Whether that’s strictly true, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I am not in a position to judge, but hearing it told each year certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
