Blood crusted her hair on the left side of her head and bloomed bright on the pillowcase behind her. Tubes tangled around the hospital bed, winding to ports on her chest and wrist. It was the emergency room; no one plans to be there.
She had been driving to Applebee's on a run-of-the-mill Thursday; then there was a bang, a crash, a shattering, a jolt. She didn't know what had happened, and there were people asking if she was okay, and glass everywhere, and someone pressing something to her bleeding head, and lights, and medical workers. "Would you call my son?" she asked a woman, pressing her cell phone into the stranger's hand.
And now she was at Providence, scantily wrapped in a hospital gown, propped and prodded by hospital pillows in a tilted hospital bed. Her son, his wife, and her granddaughter had just arrived, and they were asking if she was okay, holding her scraped hands, looking at the newly stitched slice in her ear and the mango-sized colored lump on her leg. The nurse came in, and then the doctor, to fill them in on her condition. Nothing serious, but they wanted to keep her overnight to monitor for possible bleeding in the brain.
Into the crowded stall slipped another person, a vase of vibrant daffodils and lush hydrangeas in his hands. He held them out to her: "Here, I brought something for you," he said, a little shy.
"Well, are you the flower delivery service?" she asked, trying to place him.
A nervous laugh. "I guess today I am."
"Who are they from?" she asked, still not making all the connections. "I guess I have to look at the card."
He didn't know how to answer her questions; he was embarrassed to have to explain his own gift. "I was at the accident," he said.
"Oh, yes, I thought I had seen you somewhere before! I knew you looked familiar. And you brought me flowers --" Suddenly, the tears came as she realized this young stranger had not only stopped to help her at the collision but had followed her to the hospital to make sure she was okay and deliver his compassion in the form of sunny yellow daffodils. "Come here, I need to give you a hug," she said through her tears. His face crinkled with emotion, and he couldn't speak either as he stepped past her family to bend to her side, giving her an awkward hug in between pillows and her IV.
He said goodbye and slipped back through the curtain drawn over the doorway, her blood dried on the sleeve of his grey hoodie from when he knelt by her car and applied pressure to her bleeding head. Her son and daughter-in-law followed him into the hall, not willing to let this remarkable young man go without thanking him, getting his contact information, hearing his story of the accident that was still largely a mystery.
He wept again as he spoke with them, shaken by this close contact with death, with life. He was young, maybe eighteen; bright orange gauges decorated his ears. Where had he been going when he witnessed the collision? When was the last time he had truly connected with another human? When had he last felt that he was needed? What made him call all the area hospitals to find out where one old lady had been taken after a wreck on the highway? And how would it change his life to give a grandma a bouquet of daffodils?
