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Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life personality. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and not one to say no to an extra drink. At family parties, he’s the one discussing the most recent controversy to catch up with a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the outrageous philandering of various Sheffield Wednesday players over the past 40 years.

It was common for us to pass Christmas morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. However, one holiday season, roughly a decade past, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and sustained broken ribs. The hospital had patched him up and instructed him to avoid flying. Thus, he found himself back with us, doing his best to manage, but seeming progressively worse.

As Time Passed

Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing like they normally did. He maintained that he felt alright but his condition seemed to contradict this. He attempted to go 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, we resolved to drive him to the emergency room.

We thought about calling an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?

A Deteriorating Condition

When we finally reached the hospital, he’d gone from unwell to almost unconscious. Fellow patients assisted us help him reach a treatment area, where the generic smell of hospital food and wind filled the air.

What was distinct, however, was the mood. One could see valiant efforts at festive gaiety all around, despite the underlying depressing and institutional feel; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on bedside tables.

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

A Subdued Return Home

Once the permitted time ended, we made our way home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, perhaps a detective story, 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 having a sense of anticlimax – had we missed Christmas?

Healing and Reflection

Although our friend eventually recovered, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and subsequently contracted deep vein thrombosis. And, while that Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.

How factual that statement is, or a little bit of dramatic licence, I am not in a position to judge, but the story’s yearly repetition has done no damage to my pride. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.