SANTA'S HIP-REPLACEMENT OPERATION

My wife had a hip replaced exactly four years ago, and it inspired me to write this.

The day that Santa took Rudolf out for a practise run to test the repaired satellite navigation system on Rudolf's antlers turned out to be a disastrous day indeed. You see, a star got in the way.

It wasn't a proper star, of course. Proper stars are countless light years away and well out of range of such earthbound delights as a Father Christmas and his reindeer. But there are other objects that can quite easily get in the way of a reindeer trying to avoid being spotted by terrestrial radar, and amongst them are several thousand man-made satellites. And it was one of those that tripped Rudolf as he soared majestically across the skies, and made him tumble towards Earth.

Rudolf, being highly skilled in aerobatics, managed to regain control in fairly short order, but not before Santa had been dislodged from his seat on the practise sleigh and was sent hurtling towards the ground at a terrifying speed.

He was, of course, always prepared for this kind of eventuality, and he rapidly deployed his parachute. Then, swaying slowly, he descended Earthwards, a silly grin on his fat, bewhiskered face. Santa was enjoying himself. The freedom appealed to him, the whisper of the wind past his sideburns and generous moustache, the very silence of life high in the atmosphere above the North Pole.

He would have been less happy had he remembered the last time he'd had that parachute serviced. It had been a long time ago and it had been specially measured for a Santa who had been several stones lighter. Yes, like more ordinary folk of a certain age, Santa found it very easy to grow bigger round the middle and very difficult to shrink back to a previous girth.

To cut a long story short, Santa's descent, though apparently sedentary, was much too fast to be actually safe, and it will be of no surprise to anyone to learn that he landed with a bone-jarring thump when finally he touched down.

An ambulance was sent for. He had a private ambulance and all necessary facilities in his Ice Castle, so although he was well beyond the normal range of NHS services, help was soon on its way.

A doctor took one look at him and whistled between his teeth in a sucking way, very much like any expert anywhere likes to draw breath in through his teeth when he's got bad news to convey.

“You've smashed your hip,” he said, gravely. “It's in tiny bits and it's going to take some effort to fix. You need a new one: there's no doubt about that much! The ball that's supposed to be in its socket is completely ruined!”

“I'll need it in a fortnight for this year's run,” moaned Santa, who was in considerable pain.

“Then we'd best see what we can do when we get back,” declared the doctor. “I'll whip you straight to the operating theatre! It's a good job you provided for such emergencies when you established your Ice castle!”

“Just get me up and running,” groaned Santa. “All the little children of the Earth are depending on me and the last thing they want me to do is cancel Christmas this year!”

“You threaten to do that every year!”

Santa smiled weakly. “It's just my little joke,” he sighed.

“Well, old chap, if we've got to do the job in a hurry to get you fit in a couple of weeks we'd best not put you under with a general anaesthetic. It takes a tad longer to recover from one of those!”

“Then what will you do?” exclaimed the red-coated fat man, “I am a wimp, you know, and I can't stand pain!”

“We'll give you a spinal,” decided the doctor as the ambulance raced up the front drive that led to the Ice Castle, it's blue lights flashing away �" though there was nobody to scare out of the way.

“What's a spinal?” almost wept Santa.

“You'll see. It's a great big injection into your spine, and it will numb everything from the waist down. That way we'll be able to chip away at you and you won't feel a thing...”

“Chip away at me?”

“It's quite a big operation,” explained the doctor as the ambulance skidded to a standstill. “Just bear with me, old chum. I'll get you sorted and you'll wonder what all the fuss was about!”

Then Santa was wheeled straight from the ambulance to the operating theatre and a syringe the size of a small lamp-post was thrust into his back. He felt the prick, all right, and then everything south of his waist started to feel frozen. Even his willy gave him the general impression that it wasn't there, and he moaned at the idea that he might have to spend the rest of his life in a state of utter celibacy.

“Just keep as still as you can,” ordered the doctor jovially. “You might hear the odd creak and bang, but you won't feel a thing!”

It was then that the noises began. He heard the sound of sawing, the thump of hammering, each sound being accompanied by a sense of being nudged from below.

“What's that?” squawked Santa as a specially loud sound-effect assaulted his ears.

“Just reaming out your femur,” replied the doctor, assuming a jolly tone.

Then there was some more hammering.

“Just banging the new whatsit into place!” boomed the good doctor.

He heard a drill whining away, felt the vibration as something was being hammered forcefully into something else �" and finally what could only be the sounds of staples being clicked into position.

“Jolly good, all done and dusted!” beamed the doctor, coming into Santa's field of vision for the first time since the procedure had begun.

It was all over in what seemed like ages but actually in what the doctor described as double-quick time, and before the moon set over the Northern skies that winter's day, Santa found himself lying, on his back, in a bed that he didn't like with a pain beginning to gnaw at the whole left side of his body.

“Well,” he muttered to himself ruefully, “I guess that's that!”

© Peter Rogerson 11.12.12

Author's Note

This might be four years old, but it is seasonal!