Michael Gove has paid tribute to NHS staff who treated his son after a Christmas Eve accident.
The environment secretary’s son Will, 14, was left badly injured after tripping over the Christmas tree and crashing through French windows at the family’s London home.
Gove thanked staff at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital who treated his son in a tweet.
Just wanted to thank wonderful team at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their kindness and professionalism this Christmas - especially the superb trauma surgeon Mr Ibrahim - we are in your debt
— Michael Gove (@michaelgove) December 26, 2018
Gove’s wife, the newspaper columnist Sarah Vine, described how the teenager was rushed to A&E and spent seven hours having cuts on his shoulder and arm stitched up.
She rushed back home after being called by her son while out doing last-minute Christmas shopping, and arrived to find a scene “reminiscent of a horror movie”.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Vine said she answered a mobile phone call in the supermarket to hear a “howl of anguish” from her son. When he switched to video calling, she saw “a white-faced child with a huge gash on his shoulder about 10 centimetres long and deep enough so you could see the bone and tissues”.
“On the same arm, a strip of flesh was hanging, like something out of a horror movie,” she continued.
After running home in 10 minutes, she found her son shaking, with blood-soaked kitchen towels wrapped around his arm.
“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.”
Gove arrived back home – “gasping for air having sprinted back from the tube station” – as an ambulance crew prepared to take Will to Chelsea and Westminster hospital.
Vine said their son was “stitched up a treat” by doctors, who included the consultant surgeon Edward Ibrahim.
The teenager emerged that evening “excited at the prospect of some thrilling scars with which to wow the girls”.
By the next morning, he was feeling well enough to wake his parents early to watch him open his presents.
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.”