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Our family friend has always been a larger than life character. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and never one to refuse to a further glass. At family parties, he is the person gossiping about the latest scandal to involve a regional politician, or amusing us with accounts of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players over the past 40 years.

It was common for us to pass Christmas morning with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. But, one Christmas, some ten years back, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, whisky in one hand, his luggage in the other, and broke his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, trying to cope, but appearing more and more unwell.

The Day Progressed

The morning rolled on but the humorous tales were absent as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.

So, before I’d so much as put on a festive hat, my mother and I made the choice to get him to the hospital.

We considered summoning an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?

A Rapid Decline

Upon our arrival, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. Other outpatients helped us get him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of hospital food and wind filled the air.

What was distinct, however, was the mood. People were making brave attempts at festive gaiety everywhere you looked, despite the underlying depressing and institutional feel; tinsel hung from drip stands and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on bedside tables.

Cheerful nurses, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were working diligently and using that lovely local expression so peculiar to the area: “duck”.

A Subdued Return Home

When visiting hours were over, we made our way home to lukewarm condiments and Christmas telly. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.

It was already late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?

The Aftermath and the Story

Although our friend eventually recovered, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and later developed 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 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. And, as our friend always says: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.