Our family friend has always been a larger than life character. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and not one to say no to an extra drink. At family parties, he’s the one chatting about the newest uproar to befall a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity of various Sheffield Wednesday players 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, about 10 years ago, when he was planning to join family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, with a glass of whisky in hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and sustained broken ribs. He was treated at the hospital and advised against air travel. So, here he was back with us, trying to cope, but appearing more and more unwell.
The morning rolled on but the anecdotes weren’t flowing as they usually were. He was convinced he was OK but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.
Thus, prior to me managing to put on a festive hat, we resolved to take him to A&E.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?
When we finally reached the hospital, he had moved from being poorly to hardly aware. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the characteristic scent of hospital food and wind permeated the space.
The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on tables next to the beds.
Cheerful nurses, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were working diligently and using that great term of endearment so particular to the area: “duck”.
After our time at the hospital concluded, we made our way home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.
By then it was quite late, and snowing, and I remember experiencing a letdown – had we missed Christmas?
Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and subsequently contracted deep vein thrombosis. And, although that holiday 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 involves a degree of exaggeration, is not for me to definitively say, but the story’s yearly repetition 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”.
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