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Our family friend has always been a truly outsized personality. Sharp and not prone to sentiment – and hardly ever declining to a further glass. Whenever our families celebrated, he would be the one gossiping about the latest scandal to catch up with a local MP, or regaling us with tales of the notorious womanizing of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday during the last four decades.

It was common for us to pass the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, then departing for our own celebrations. However, one holiday season, some ten years back, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he took a fall on the steps, with a glass of whisky in hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and broke his ribs. He was treated at the hospital and told him not to fly. So, here he was back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.

The Day Progressed

The morning rolled on but the humorous tales were absent as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but his appearance suggested otherwise. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but found he could not; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.

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

We thought about calling an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?

A Worrying Turn

By the time we got there, his state had progressed from unwell to almost unconscious. Other outpatients helped us guide him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of institutional meals and air permeated the space.

Different though, was the spirit. One could see valiant efforts at holiday cheer in every direction, even with the pervasive clinical and somber atmosphere; decorations dangled from IV poles and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on bedside tables.

Upbeat nursing staff, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were working diligently and using that charming colloquial address so peculiar to the area: “duck”.

A Quiet Journey Back

After our time at the hospital concluded, we returned home to cold bread sauce and festive TV programming. We saw a lighthearted program on television, likely a mystery drama, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.

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

The Aftermath and the Story

Although our friend eventually recovered, he had in fact suffered a punctured lung and later developed a serious circulatory condition. And, even if that particular 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, I couldn’t possibly comment, but hearing it told each year certainly hasn’t hurt my ego. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.