Evelyn

Fletcher, Evelyn. DOB 2/2/29. Chem panel, total iron, transferrin, ferritin and, a CBC with differential. Sounded like an anemia issue, not uncommon for the age group. I hoped I would get her on the first go.

I crept in with a knock as I opened the door. “Good morning.” I said quietly into the silence. The blinds were drawn, the room lit only by the soft glow of the sun rising behind them. Unexpectedly, I was hit with a wall of fragrance. I turned and there on the dresser by the door was a luxurious bouquet of white Easter lilies in a green glass vase. A welcome surprise from the usual smells in a long-term care facility, I inhaled deeply, pausing to inspect the bouquet. I love fresh cut flowers. Someone had spent a bit of dough on those. Underneath the vase was a faded cross stitch doily.

Old people love doilies. Somewhere at home I have a stack of them from my grandmother’s house that I couldn’t bear to let go of when she passed. She had stitched them herself and I had dusted under and around them so many times as a child, I just couldn’t put them in the good will pile. I always thought I would use them in a mixed media art project, but I had not been brave enough to take a scissor to them yet. I made a mental note to use the small circular ones under vases of flowers from now on, happy to have found a practical use for these pieces of nostalgia.

Ours was a long-term care/rehab facility in Connecticut with a lab on the premises for general lab testing. As a medical technologist, my job was to perform laboratory analysis on patient samples; blood and urine mostly, but sometimes other body fluids and tissue biopsies. I’m the one with the results usually, but med techs were expected to pitch in for the first morning draw collection. It gave me anxiety to wake people up to stick them with a needle, but, it’s part of the job. So here I was, creeping into some old lady’s room with the full knowledge I was about to inflict pain on an already sick person.

This room felt different from the others. A private room is unusual to begin with, but this room felt like a step back in time. Along with the scent of lilies, a colorful granny square afghan draped across the foot of the bed. Reading glasses were on the bedside table in perfect parallel to an old-fashioned Victorian style bristle hair brush with a light pink melamine handle. A half glass of water on a coaster. A stack of books neatly piled. A basket of yarn containing the latest crochet project sat handily on a chair pulled up close to the bedside. Her bed was in that Lazy-boy type configuration, head at a slight incline, knees supported. She lay sleeping peacefully, a hint of a smile on her face. It pained me to wake her. I switched on the dim night lights behind the bed.

“Good morning Mrs. Fletcher.” I said in my gentlest voice. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I am here to draw your blood for some tests your doctor ordered.” Her hands moved first, reaching for something in her lap. Sky blue eyes opened and briefly met mine with a questioning gaze that was answered as soon as she noticed the chair pulled up close to the bed, her crochet needles lain just so, her work carefully set aside by someone from the night shift. I bet it was Tisha.

“I must’ve fallen asleep crocheting.” She said with a lilting laugh. I breathed an internal sigh of relief. Hardly anyone ever woke up this happily when I came in for morning draw. Well, Mr. Henderson always woke up “happy,” but that was a decidedly different kind of happy. I often needed reinforcements when drawing his blood. He was what we called “a groper.”

Mrs. Fletcher’s kind of happy put me at ease immediately. She noticed my supply cart and it registered to her what I was there for. “Whatever you need to do, dear, that’s fine.” Rolling up her sleeves to reveal frail bruised arms, she said “I hope you brought your luck! Seems my veins are rebelling these days.” Hopes of an easy draw dashed, I spied a vein on the side of her wrist and mentally prepared. She had that papery kind of skin that bruised when you looked at it too intently. I wondered if she’d had coagulation studies drawn previously. I’d check when I got back to the lab.

She sat herself up straight and held her hands up in a double stop. “Before we get started, let me gather my power.” she said. It struck me as funny the way she emphasized the word power. I smiled and took my time gathering my supplies.

She grabbed the hairbrush from the bedside and with four or five graceful practiced strokes, tamed her shoulder length silver hair. She then placed the brush back precisely where it was before, and with an almost theatric flair, she raked her hands through her hair, rubbed her eyes and playfully slapped/pinched some color into her cheeks. “Okay, ready!” she said as she straightened her posture and turned to look at me square on, hands in her lap, with a grin that said she was clearly pleased with herself.

It occurred to me that many must’ve fallen in love with her in her lifetime. It was hard to look at this woman without smiling. I wondered who had bought the lilies.

I couldn’t believe she was 92.

“Wait!” she exclaimed, with a big smile, her hands out in front of her and sweeping towards the window. “Please open the blinds first! I like to watch the sunrise.”

I had a list of other patients to draw but I said “What a great idea! It’s a beautiful morning.” And I opened them ceremoniously, so contagious was her spirit. We were met with a glorious sunrise dawning. How often did I miss this during rounds? Gosh. I was already formulating the story for my colleagues in the lab. We often traded war stories of morning draw. This was a love story so far.

We talked about the lilies as I worked. She wondered aloud what the empirical formula for the pheromone was. I thought that was a very interesting question that I never thought about before, but I never got the words out as… don’t ask me how I did it, I got her on the first try with no bruising at all! She said she didn’t feel a thing and asked could I please be the one to draw her all the time? I assured her it was totally luck from that sunrise and we both turned to take it in as I cleaned up.

Just before I left, she asked me to gather her journal and pen from the top drawer of the dresser with the lilies by the door. She said she wanted to add my name to her book of gratitude, as she called it. I dutifully complied and watched as she flipped through handwritten pages with colorful drawings and newspaper clippings. She asked me how to spell my name and inscribed it onto the first blank page in big loopy cursive, then loosely sketched a large lily across two pages. It was adorable. We said our farewells for the day and I left her room, onto my next patient.

The next day, there were more labs ordered for Mrs. Fletcher, but everyone wanted to meet her after hearing my story, so I didn’t say anything when I was assigned to another ward. I was on my second patient when I was summoned to Mrs. Fletcher’s floor as she had requested me. My colleague Jen was the one who was rejected in favor of me, but said she didn’t feel badly because Mrs. Fletcher was “SO nice about it. Did you know she was a high school Anatomy and Physiology teacher?”

That made perfect sense. She had a definite “Magic School Bus” vibe about her. I knocked on her open door and peeked into the room. “Hello dear!” she exclaimed, holding her little black journal aloft “I’m so happy to see you! I found that formula!” She opened the book up to show me “my” pages on which she had painted a watercolor sunrise background for the lily which was now fully fleshed out with color, shading and details. Under the lily in the bottom right corner of the page she wrote the genus and species of the flower along with the pheromone empirical formula and notes about the genus. There were now bumble bees drawn on the page as well, some in flight as if they were looking for nectar and one appeared to be reading the inscriptions. We chatted about botany as I drew her blood again. I told her I’d love to have a big garden one day, like my grandfather did. And I’d like to have workshops for kids to learn how to plant vegetables and flowers. She really liked that idea. “It’s important for young people to dig in the dirt.” she said.

She only stayed at our facility for a month, but we enjoyed each other’s company so much we had lunch together on occasion. We talked about anything and everything just as easily as you please. She showed me some pages in her book of gratitude and shared her stories freely. I was inspired. Apparently, this did not go unnoticed because on the day she left the facility to move in with her son and his family in California, she gifted me my first gratitude journal. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers but only talked a handful of times after that. She was happy to be near her grandchildren. “They keep me young.” she would say.

About a year later I got a phone call from her son informing me of her passing. After condolences were exchanged, he told me to expect to be contacted by his mom’s lawyer in Hartford as she had left me something in her will. I said I couldn’t imagine what she'd have left for me. We had only known each other a short time. He laughed and said he didn’t know either, but she was always good with surprises. I heard her in his laugh, it was comforting but it made me choke up a bit. I was glad to get off the phone before the tears took over.

A few weeks later I found myself in a Hartford law office where I was handed an envelope with my name inscribed in Evelyn’s handwriting. Inside was a handmade card crafted from my pages of her journal and a hand written check for $20,000 with a note that simply said “for gardening supplies.” I laughed and then cried. I knew right away how I’d use it.

Five years have passed since then. These days at sunrise you can find me walking the rows of flowers and vegetables at Lilium Farms with my morning coffee, gathering my power. We have a small produce stand by the road, my grandmother’s cross stitch doilies highlighting the day’s harvest. I love my sweet quiet life and have much to be grateful for. I keep my journal with me and when customers catch me sketching, I tell them about my friend Evelyn who taught me gratitude journaling. I keep a stack of journals handy to bestow upon those who show interest. I shall never tire of the smiles I get when I hand someone a journal of their own, the possibilities swimming in their eyes.