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Our family friend has always been a truly outsized character. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to a further glass. During family gatherings, he would be the one gossiping about the newest uproar to befall a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the notorious womanizing of assorted players from the local club over the past 40 years.

Frequently, we would share Christmas morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. However, one holiday season, about 10 years ago, when he was planning to join family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and sustained broken ribs. He was treated at the hospital and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, trying to cope, but seeming progressively worse.

As Time Passed

The morning rolled on but the anecdotes weren’t flowing as they usually were. He maintained that he felt alright but he didn’t look it. He endeavored to climb the stairs 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 don any celebratory headwear, we resolved to drive him to the emergency room.

We thought about calling an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?

A Rapid Decline

By the time we got there, he’d gone from unwell to almost unconscious. Other outpatients helped us get him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space.

What was distinct, however, was the mood. There were heroic attempts at holiday cheer everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental sterile and miserable mood; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on nightstands.

Upbeat nursing staff, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were moving busily and using that lovely local expression so particular to the area: “duck”.

Heading Home for Leftovers

When visiting hours were over, we made our way home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, perhaps a detective story, and played something even dafter, such as a local version of the board game.

It was already late, and snowing, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – had we missed Christmas?

Healing and Reflection

Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and subsequently contracted deep vein thrombosis. And, although that holiday does not rank among my favorites, it has become part of family legend 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 done no damage to my pride. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.