KEY POINTS:
A generous Herald reader has given Takanini couple Arthur and Barbara Broome the best Christmas present they could have wished for - the chance to have their Christmas lunch together.
The couple have been isolated on separate floors of their two-storey house for 33 days since their lift broke down.
The Ministry of Health promised that it would be replaced three weeks ago but the new lift is too small and has not yet been certified as safe.
Yesterday, two Herald readers separately offered to pay St John Ambulance to carry wheelchair-bound Mrs Broome downstairs to join her husband for Christmas lunch.
An anonymous New Lynn reader got in first and will pay ambulance officers $105 to carry Mrs Broome downstairs and back up again a few hours later.
An 83-year-old Glen Eden widow, whose late husband installed a lift for her before he died two years ago, made the same offer but was told she was too late.
"She was really upset about it, " a friend said. "She said, how can people be so nasty at Christmas?" Mr Broome, 75, came home from a rest home in September with cancer in his bones so his wife could care for him.
However, Mrs Broome, 76, who has multiple sclerosis, has been unable to care for him since the lift broke down on November 20. She is stuck in her bedroom upstairs and he sleeps downstairs near a door so that he can be taken to hospital quickly if anything goes wrong.
Mrs Broome said his condition deteriorated badly during the long wrangle over replacing the lift, but he was "a little bit better" yesterday after he heard that St John would be coming to the rescue. The couple communicate by phone.
"He is very excited," Mrs Broome said. "So am I. The one thing that was very, very hard to accept was that we were going to be separated on Christmas Day."
She said it was "wonderful" to receive the two offers to pay the ambulance officers.
St John northern ambulance communications manager Allan Rhodes said they were providing the service half price as it was Christmas.
"It's quite unusual that someone will do this for someone else they have never heard of. I think she [the donor] wanted to do it in the spirit of Christmas."
