She was visiting her friend in the hospital as the beautiful red vase of cut flowers from the church secretary arrived. Moments later the friend was to be taken for an emergency surgery and then to ICU, where no flowers could follow. As hospital transport stood waiting to take her friend, the friend was sending an email about getting the flowers to the church so the secretary could enjoy them.
When her friend was stable following that surgery, she gathered the flowers, but delivery was not made because of church office hours. The secretary called the following day saying she should keep and enjoy the flowers rather than worrying about getting them to the church. The arrangement still looked beautiful when her friend was back in a room where she could have them, so she was taken them back to her friend.
She got onto the elevator with two hospital staff. The woman said, “Those flowers are beautiful.”
“Bringing flowers to a friend?” the man asked.
“Well, actually I am bringing them BACK to my friend,” she said. “They were delivered a couple of days ago just as my friend was being taken to ICU where she could not have them. She is back on the 4th floor now.”
As the elevator door opened to let the man and woman off at the 3rd floor, the man turned and looked at her, “I hope your friend has a very good day today.” As the door closed — touched deeply by his caring comment — a few tears formed just behind her eyes. Her friend has been through so much, and the latest was a collapsed lung, complication from the insertion of a pacemaker.
When the pulmonologist entered her friend’s room a bit later the woman and man from the elevator were part of her friend’s “lung team.”
And it was the man from the elevator who came to tell them the team had been successful inserting a chest tube to reinflate her friend’s lung. As they walked together out of the waiting room the man said, “Your friend is strong. She is going to get through this just like she has gotten through everything else she has been through.”
The symbolism of red flowers is said to include passion, love, desire, romance, beauty, respect, admiration, courage, and STRENGTH….