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Our family friend has always been a truly outsized personality. Clever and unemotional – and not one to say no to a further glass. During family gatherings, he’s the one discussing the latest scandal to befall a member of parliament, or amusing us with accounts of the outrageous philandering of various Sheffield Wednesday players for forty years.

It was common for us to pass Christmas morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, roughly a decade past, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he fell down the stairs, with a glass of whisky in hand, his luggage in the other, and sustained broken ribs. Medical staff had treated him and advised against air travel. So, here he was back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky.

The Morning Rolled On

Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing like they normally did. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.

Thus, prior to me managing to placed a party hat on my head, my mother and I made the choice to get him to the hospital.

The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?

A Deteriorating Condition

When we finally reached the hospital, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. Other outpatients helped us help him reach a treatment area, where the distinctive odor of institutional meals and air permeated the space.

Different though, was the spirit. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, notwithstanding the fundamental clinical and somber atmosphere; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on tables next to the beds.

Upbeat nursing staff, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were moving busily and using that great term of endearment so particular to the area: “duck”.

A Subdued Return Home

When visiting hours were over, we made our way home to chilled holiday sides and festive TV programming. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.

By then it was quite late, and snow was falling, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?

Recovery and Retrospection

Although our friend eventually recovered, he had actually punctured a 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”.

How factual that statement is, or contains some artistic license, is not for me to definitively say, but the story’s yearly repetition has definitely been good for my self-esteem. In keeping with our friend’s motto: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.