While helping a surgical patient take his afternoon walk, I noticed the delivery girl from a local floral shop delivering plants and flowers to our hospital unit. Later, when I returned to the nurse’s station to chart, a beautiful bank of flowers lined the front desk. Deciding that my charting could wait, I began to deliver the flowers to their specific rooms.
One arrangement caught my attention. It consisted of a large, clear glass vase filled with water and topped with a bareroot peace lily, secured so that it would neither sink in deeper, nor fall out. In the water among the plant’s white roots, was a lone betta fish.
Holding the vase up, I commented to a nurse, “Look, this is the latest fad. People have been giving these fish and floral arrangements as gifts to our patients for the past month. What do you think of it?”
The nurse studied the fish and the greenery above it, before answering, “It’s pretty, but I always forget to water house plants. Neither fish nor plant would do very well at my house.”
I carried the vase into the room that was written on the gift tag, and announced, “Someone loves you and they’re saying it with flowers!”
Life Lines 