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He has always been a man of a truly outsized personality. Witty, unsentimental – and never one to refuse to a further glass. At family parties, he is the person chatting about the most recent controversy to befall a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the notorious womanizing of assorted players from the local club over the past 40 years.

We would often spend Christmas morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. However, one holiday season, about 10 years ago, when he was supposed to be meeting family abroad, he fell down the stairs, holding a drink in one hand, a suitcase gripped in the other, and broke his ribs. Medical staff had treated him and instructed him to avoid flying. So, here he was back with us, trying to cope, but looking increasingly peaky.

The Day Progressed

Time passed, yet the stories were not coming like they normally did. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and did not manage.

So, before I’d so much as don any celebratory headwear, we resolved to drive him to the emergency room.

The idea of calling for an ambulance crossed our minds, but how much of a delay would there be on Christmas Day?

A Deteriorating Condition

By the time we got there, his state had progressed from peaky to barely responsive. People in the waiting room aided us guide him to a ward, where the characteristic scent of institutional meals and air permeated the space.

Different though, was the spirit. There were heroic attempts at festive gaiety in every direction, despite the underlying clinical and somber atmosphere; festive strands were attached to medical equipment and portions of holiday pudding went cold on bedside tables.

Upbeat nursing staff, 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 Quiet Journey Back

Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to cold bread sauce and holiday television. We watched something daft on television, likely a mystery drama, and played something even dafter, such as a regionally-themed property trading game.

By then it was quite late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember feeling deflated – was Christmas effectively over for us?

Healing and Reflection

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

How factual that statement is, or involves a degree of exaggeration, I am not in a position to judge, but the story’s yearly repetition has done no damage to my pride. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.