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Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life personality. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and hardly ever declining to another brandy. At family parties, he would be the one gossiping about the most recent controversy to catch up with a regional politician, or amusing us with accounts of the notorious womanizing of assorted players from the local club for forty years.

We would often spend the morning of Christmas Day 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 supposed to be meeting family abroad, he fell down the stairs, holding a drink in one hand, suitcase in the other, and fractured his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky.

The Morning Rolled On

Time passed, yet 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, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.

So, before I’d so much as placed a party hat on my head, we resolved to drive him to the emergency room.

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

A Deteriorating Condition

By the time we got there, he’d gone from peaky to barely responsive. Fellow patients assisted us get him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of clinical cuisine and atmosphere filled the air.

The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at festive gaiety in every direction, despite the underlying depressing and institutional feel; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on bedside tables.

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

A Quiet Journey Back

Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to cold bread sauce and Christmas telly. We watched something daft on television, likely a mystery drama, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.

By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember experiencing a letdown – did we lose the holiday?

Recovery and Retrospection

While our friend did get better in time, he had actually punctured a lung and subsequently contracted DVT. And, although that holiday is not my most cherished memory, it has entered into our family history 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 its annual retelling 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”.