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Our family friend has always been a truly outsized character. Witty, unsentimental – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. Whenever our families celebrated, he’s the one gossiping about the most recent controversy to catch up with a local MP, or amusing us with accounts of the outrageous philandering of assorted players from the local club over the past 40 years.

It was common for us to pass the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, before going our separate ways. However, one holiday season, some ten years back, when he was planning to join family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, with a glass of whisky in hand, suitcase in the other, and sustained broken ribs. He was treated at the hospital 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 anecdotes weren’t flowing like they normally did. He was convinced he was OK but he didn’t look it. He tried to make it upstairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.

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

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

A Deteriorating Condition

By the time we got there, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. Fellow patients assisted us guide him to a ward, where the generic smell of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space.

Different though, was the spirit. People were making brave attempts at holiday cheer all around, despite the underlying depressing and institutional feel; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and portions of holiday pudding went cold on nightstands.

Cheerful nurses, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar 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 watched something daft on television, likely a mystery drama, and took part in a more foolish pastime, such as a local version of the board game.

It was already late, and snowing, and I remember feeling deflated – was Christmas effectively over for us?

Healing and Reflection

Even though he ultimately healed, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and went on to get DVT. And, although that holiday 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 certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. And, as our friend always says: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.