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Our family friend has always been a truly outsized personality. Witty, unsentimental – and not one to say no to an extra drink. At family parties, he’s the one chatting about the latest scandal to befall a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity of various Sheffield Wednesday players during the last four decades.

Frequently, we would share the holiday morning with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, about 10 years ago, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, with a glass of whisky in hand, his luggage in the other, and sustained broken ribs. The hospital had patched him up and advised against air travel. Thus, he found himself back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky.

The Morning Rolled On

Time passed, yet the humorous tales were absent in their typical fashion. He was convinced he was OK but he didn’t look it. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.

So, before I’d so much as don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice to get him to the hospital.

The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?

A Worrying Turn

When we finally reached the hospital, his state had progressed from peaky to barely responsive. Other outpatients helped us help him reach a treatment area, where the distinctive odor of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space.

The atmosphere, however, was unique. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, even with the pervasive sterile and miserable mood; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and portions of holiday pudding went cold on nightstands.

Cheerful nurses, who undoubtedly would have preferred to be at home, were working diligently and using that lovely local expression so peculiar to the area: “duck”.

Heading Home for Leftovers

When visiting hours were over, we returned home to chilled holiday sides and holiday television. We viewed something silly on television, likely a mystery drama, 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 – did we lose the holiday?

Recovery and Retrospection

Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and subsequently contracted deep vein thrombosis. 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”.

If that is completely accurate, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I couldn’t possibly comment, but its annual retelling certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.