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Our family friend has always been a larger than life personality. Witty, unsentimental – and never one to refuse to a further glass. Whenever our families celebrated, he is the person gossiping about the most recent controversy to catch up with a regional politician, or regaling us with tales of the shameless infidelity 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. However, one holiday season, roughly a decade past, when he was planning to join family abroad, he fell down the stairs, whisky in one hand, his luggage in the other, and sustained broken ribs. The hospital had patched him up and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but seeming progressively worse.

The Day Progressed

The morning rolled on but the humorous tales were absent as they usually were. He was convinced he was OK but his appearance suggested otherwise. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and failed.

Therefore, before I could even put on a festive hat, my mother and I made the choice to drive him to the emergency room.

We considered summoning an ambulance, but what would the wait time be on Christmas Day?

A Rapid Decline

When we finally reached the hospital, his state had progressed from unwell to almost unconscious. People in the waiting room aided us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space.

The atmosphere, however, was unique. There were heroic attempts at holiday cheer all around, despite the underlying sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and dishes of festive dessert sat uneaten on nightstands.

Positive medical attendants, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that great term of endearment so particular to the area: “duck”.

A Subdued Return Home

When visiting hours were over, we returned home to cold bread sauce and Christmas telly. We watched something daft on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as a local version of the board game.

It was already late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – had we missed Christmas?

Recovery and Retrospection

Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and went on to get a serious circulatory condition. And, while that Christmas does not rank among my favorites, it has become part of family legend 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 hearing it told each year 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”.