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Our family friend has always been a larger than life personality. Clever and unemotional – and never one to refuse to a further glass. At family parties, he is the person chatting about the latest scandal to befall a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of various Sheffield Wednesday players during the last four decades.

Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. Yet, on a particular Christmas, about 10 years ago, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, whisky in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us, making the best of it, but appearing more and more unwell.

The Day Progressed

Time passed, yet the anecdotes weren’t flowing as they usually were. He maintained that he felt alright but his condition seemed to contradict this. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, gingerly, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.

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

We thought about calling an ambulance, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?

A Rapid Decline

When we finally reached the hospital, he’d gone from unwell to almost unconscious. People in the waiting room aided us guide him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of hospital food and wind was noticeable.

What was distinct, however, was the mood. There were heroic attempts at Christmas spirit everywhere you looked, despite the underlying clinical and somber atmosphere; tinsel hung from drip stands and portions of holiday pudding went cold on bedside tables.

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

A Subdued Return Home

Once the permitted time ended, we headed home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We watched something daft on television, likely a mystery drama, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a local version of the board game.

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

Healing and Reflection

Although our friend eventually recovered, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and subsequently contracted a serious circulatory condition. And, even if that particular Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”.

Whether that’s strictly true, or a little bit of dramatic licence, 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”.