The Last Delivery

The Last Delivery

The keys clatter against the heavy, wooden alley door as I unlock the shop. My own flower shop. I walk in and inhale deeply. The scent of spring welcomes me, even though it’s the middle of November. I can’t help but smile, after two and a half years it still feels like a dream owning my own shop.

Hanging my coat on a hook I move into the front of the shop, stopping by the counter to fill the register with change for the day’s customers. I glance at the calendar, November 10th.

Then I pick up the orders to see what needs to be done first. There’s the standing order for the second Wednesday every month. It’s an order for eleven roses to be picked up at 11:30 AM. The man that ordered them will personally deliver them to his lunch date. I asked him once why he only wanted eleven. He answered with the sweetest sentiment, “I order eleven roses for the perfect rose.” I purchased lavender roses yesterday just for his order. There’s a baby girl arrangement to be delivered to the hospital, I’ll use the pink ceramic shoe with mini carnations and daisies and add a balloon. There are a couple of funeral home orders. I’ll prepare a standing spray with purple mums, orange carnations and fall leaves and the waist high Peace Lily for these two orders.

I wish there was enough money in the budget to hire a delivery person but even though sales are picking up there’s still not enough extra for that. I’ll have to close the shop while I make the hospital and funeral home deliveries. I’ve heard that if a small start up business can make it three years it has a good chance of survival. At two and a half years I’m almost there. With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming it will give me the boost to make it to Valentine’s. The income from that’ll help me make it through to Easter and then June weddings. I’ll cross the magic three-year threshold.

Customers begin to wander in. I’m encouraged as they marvel over the gifts that are strategically placed among the flowers. I carry a selection of geodes, marble chess sets, glass jewelry boxes that play music, and clear-cut crystals. The geodes are a magnificent display of purple, brown, and clear colors. There is one set six to eight inches tall that has been designed into bookends. The crystals shower tiny rainbows when the light hits them just right.

After completing the morning orders, I walk through the shop and decide to make some silk arrangements, and a couple of fall wreaths, to fill the empty holes on the showroom floor. I pause at the front bay window. My mind wanders back to last year when I needed a place to hide the Christmas gifts for our three young children. My husband helped me decorate the tree in the window and we placed the children’s wrapped gifts there along with a fake fire place and a rocking chair. The kids thought the packages were empty boxes I’d used to fill the oversized window with Christmas cheer, little did they know.

Our children attend a private Christian school and today is the secretary’s birthday. I make a bud vase of pink carnations to deliver to her on my way home. It’s time to go, turning off the radio and locking the door I glance around with contentment.

I put on my jacket and grab the vase of flowers for Suzanne. As I head out the door, I plop one of those three-inch everlasting suckers in my mouth. I get in my seal grey Topaz, I like this car it’s one of the newest cars I’ve owned, and by far in better shape than the oversized station wagon that I used to call a big green tank. In the car I push in one of my favorite gospel CDs.

Traveling in the left lane of a four-lane highway about two miles into my delivery I’m stopped by a traffic light. I wait patiently, tapping my hand on the steering wheel to the beat of the radio. The light changes and I begin to move forward. Without notice there they were, a car load of senior ladies directly in front of me. They’d started across the two lanes on my side of the road to make a left turn. The driver froze right in front me. She had misjudged the oncoming traffic from the other side. Jamming on the breaks and pulling the wheel hard to the right kept me from a straight on collision.

Seat belts are encouraged but not enforced so I didn’t have mine hooked. My chest hits the steering wheel so hard that it bends the wheel down and my forehead smacks the windshield.

“Oh God,” not as slang, but as a prayer. “Have I just killed four little grannies?”

Sitting back in my seat I try to look out the windshield but it is so smashed that I can’t see through it. Blood is pouring from my head and running down in my eyes which further prohibits vision.

There are people all around, someone peeks in my window and asks, “Do you need me to do anything?” It is Melissa, she goes to church with us.

I ask her to take my purse and call the pastor and the school and tell them I will be late picking up the children. “I will take care of the kids, don’t worry,” she assures me.

I can’t get out of the car. My ankle is stuck. The CD keeps replaying the same song, it plays over and over.

Finally, the rescue squad arrives. The EMT sticks his head in the window. “Ma’am, are you OK?”

I’m still sucking on that never-ending sucker. “I’m OK, but the flowers are spilling all over my seat, they are going to ruin it.”

As he takes the sucker from my mouth he says, “Let me have this.” Then glances in the direction of the flowers. “I don’t think you have to worry about those,” he tries to console me. The truth is the rest of the car is in far worse shape than the seat with a bud vase of water spilled on it.

The EMTs begin to get me out of the car. They slide my seat back and turn my body toward the door and pull.

“The right ankle hurts.” I tell them.

Struggling to get me out of the car they begin to pull on my legs, I scream. “The ankle really hurts.”

They try a different approach, pulling a little higher on my legs. Finally, I am out of the car and on a rescue gurney.

In the hospital the doctor tells me that I my ankle is broken in three places. It’s going to mean six to eight weeks in a cast.

Thankfully in the months that follow I learn that all of the elderly ladies also survived.

I have no idea how I’m going to run the flower shop now. I can’t walk or stand, and definitely won’t be able to drive to make deliveries. My husband is a trooper, he tries hard to help me keep the flower shop afloat but in his own words, “I am not a floral designer, I can look at something and tell you where it needs fixing but I can’t do it.”

The cascade effects of the accident force me realize that three-year goal is not going to be a reality. My ankle is not the only thing broken, so is my heart. I’ll have to close the shop.