The Ghost of Christmas Past

Many years ago in a grimy Northern town...
I sat opposite Jan for years - we shrieked with laughter and cried bitter tears and saw each other through the death of parents, the desertion of duff boyfriends and the wrath of Managers for over ten years. Like a bolshy version of the Blues Brothers, we wore black jackets and sunglasses (it was the fashion, honest) - we were social workers with a side order of cynical humour and a determination to do the job right, if not always strictly according to the rules.
It was the dead first week of January, Christmas decorations drooped on the windows and we drooped in sympathy but an emergency referral came in and we hit the road to do our thing. The referral had come in from a neighbour who was worried about Mr. F., the old gentleman next door, she said he had flu and he was not being cared for properly by his daughter, she had not seen him for days and she was concerned. We wondered why the neighbour had not tried the radical step of knocking on the door and asking how the chap was but decided we had better have a look. It could have been anything, abuse, inadequacy or more likely nothing that couldn't be dealt with by medical attention- you learn quickly not to take any referral at face value, relying instead on the evidence of your own eyes.
The evidence did not look promising as we pulled up outside the house. Any social care worker will tell you that you don't always need the house number, sometimes you see the house with the filthy curtains, the broken fence and the peeling paint and you just know that you have reached your destination. We knocked several times before the door was opened by a disheveled young woman whose age could have been anywhere between thirty and forty five. There was something in her bearing that told me she wasn't quite right, not seriously impaired, but as she introduced herself it was clear that Mary had a mild learning disability. She told us that she and her dad had been suffering with flu since Christmas Eve but that she was now feeling a bit better. As Mary let us in I was thinking that the referral was probably simply an over anxious neighbour, this family obviously did not cope well by conventional standards but had undoubtedly ticked along like this for years.
My opinion changed rapidly as we walked into the lounge behind the young woman. The armchair held a tall gaunt man in his seventies who looked close to death. His breathing was rapid and shallow with an underlying bubbling that sounded ominous to me. "He's looking much better" said Mary brightly. This is where colleagues who know each other inside out are invaluable. A brief meeting of eyes and Jan swooped Mary off into the kitchen while I leaned over the gentleman and tried to wake him. His eyes flickered open briefly but they didn't really register that I was there and his skin was hot and papery under my touch. I gently pinched the skin on the back of his hand and it remained in the telltale ridge that says someone is seriously dehydrated. I don't call ambulances lightly, potentially every non urgent call could prevent a crew from attending a real emergency, but this time I could see blue lights were going to be justified.
I called Jan and Mary back. Jan had been extracting some details from Mary about her dad and already had the salient points noted down to go with him. I explained that Mr. F. needed to go to hospital and we got details of an aunt we could inform so that Mary would not be left to cope alone. We phoned for an ambulance and tried to reassure a very tearful Mary that her dad would be alright and that we weren't suggesting she hadn't looked after him properly. The atmosphere was tense with emotion, the semi conscious man and the daughter veering dangerously close to hysteria with the two of us trying to explain what he would need to take to hospital with him when suddenly Mary brightened. She rushed into the kitchen and came back with an enormous cooked turkey. The meat was obviously rancid, the partly carved breast meat was slimy and had a covering of fluffy mold. "See?" said Mary "I have been feeding him, we cooked this on Christmas Eve and we haven't felt well enough to eat it until the last few days!" "Err, that's good Mary" I said "But I think maybe that the turkey is...past it's best".....I said before that colleagues who know each other well are invaluable - they are, but not always. I caught Jan's eye over the malodorous corpse of Christmas dinner and suddenly felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rising in my chest. I had to look away rapidly as Jan disappeared into the kitchen with her shoulders shaking suspiciously and it was good luck that the ambulance crew arrived at that moment so that I could turn my back and get a grip on myself while they dealt with the situation.
Mr. F. was taken off to hospital where he made a full recovery, Mary's aunt arrived and turned out to be bustling and lovingly competent as she swooped Mary away. And the turkey? Sadly the turkey was beyond help, we took it away and gave it a decent burial, we made it sit in the boot on the way back to the office though.....