Michael Gove has thanked the “wonderful” NHS staff who treated his teenage son after he fell through a plate glass windows on Christmas Eve.
The environment secretary took to Twitter to pay tribute to the team at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their “kindness and professionalism”, saying his family were “in your debt”.
It comes after his 14-year-old son Will was left with a “huge gash on his shoulder about 10 centimetres long and deep enough so you could see the bone and tissues”.
Gove’s wife – journalist Sarah Vine – described in her Daily Mail column on Boxing Day how she returned home from last-minute Christmas shopping to find a strip of flesh was hanging off the teen’s arm “like something out of a horror movie”.
“His lips were blue, and the hall was looking distinctly Quentin Tarantino,” she said. “Both French door windowpanes were jagged, gaping holes. Carpet, presents, tree were all covered in a fine spattering of blood,” she wrote, having rushed home after getting a call from her son.
Meanwhile, Gove arrived back home “gasping for air having sprinted back from the Tube station” as an ambulance crew prepared to take Will hospital.
Once in the hospital, Vine said their son was “stitched up a treat” by doctors, who included consultant surgeon Edward Ibrahim.
By the next morning, he was feeling well enough to wake his parents early to watch him open his presents like any other Christmas Day.
Vine said the episode had left her haunted by the fragility of life and grateful for “my great good fortune in life”.
“Had he fallen an inch to the side either way, he could easily have severed a ligament or, much worse, an artery,” she said. “Or if had I missed his call - as I often do - I might not have got home in time.
“Had Will’s guardian angel not been paying close attention this Christmas Eve, I could have been facing a very different Christmas from the one I’ve just enjoyed.”