Which hospitals do people from Harrison end up in?
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Not one inside the town, because there is not one. Closest of the big ones is University Hospital, 150 Bergen Street in Newark, this region's Level I trauma centre, roughly three miles over the river. Much of the remainder goes to Newark Beth Israel over on Lyons Avenue, the building that contains the Children's Hospital of New Jersey. Northward, Clara Maass in Belleville draws a great many Harrison families. Southward, in the county Harrison actually belongs to, there is Christ Hospital up on Palisade Avenue, Hoboken University Medical Center further along the waterfront, and Jersey City Medical Center down on Grand Street. All are inside the same-day radius of the shops serving 07029.
What do you need from me to deliver to a hospital room?
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The hospital, the ward or unit name, the room number if you have it, and the patient's name as it is registered — which is not always the name you use for them. Add a mobile number for a relative who is likely to be at the bedside. Large buildings such as University Hospital and Newark Beth Israel run more than one entrance and an internal courier step, so an arrangement handed in at the main desk may take another hour to reach the floor. Give the shop the ward name and it can direct the driver properly instead of leaving everything with reception and hoping.
What if the ward does not allow flowers?
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Several will not, and the honest answer is to find out before you order rather than after. Intensive care and transplant units in particular often refuse them outright, and the unit clerk will tell you in one phone call. If the answer is no, two things still work. Send to the family's home in Harrison, where whoever is doing the hospital run every day will actually see it, or send something addressed to the unit staff by name rather than to the patient — kept unscented and free of lilies, that sits on a counter and is welcome. Do not send to a room you have not checked.
The patient is a child at the Children's Hospital of New Jersey.
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Then check with the unit first, and keep the piece small. Paediatric floors at Newark Beth Israel set their own conditions, and they are tighter than the adult wards on either side of them; a few units take nothing living at all. Ask before you add a balloon, because latex is refused in many children's units on allergy grounds even where a foil balloon is fine. Practically, a small bright arrangement in a light, unbreakable vessel travels better through a ward than anything tall, and it can go home with the family on discharge day, which is worth more than height.
My relative is recovering at home on the third floor with no lift.
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This is the most common Harrison get-well address and the one that needs the most thought. A three-family house in the grid behind Harrison Avenue opens onto an interior staircase, and for a fortnight after surgery the person you are sending to cannot come down to the door. Name a receiver on the ground floor, or a neighbour, or a relative and the hours they are in. Then choose the compact design rather than the tall one: somebody else has to carry it up, and a heavy vase of water on a narrow staircase is the arrangement that arrives with half its contents on the steps.
Can I add a balloon or a gift to the arrangement?
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Sometimes, and it depends entirely on where it is going. A home in Harrison will take anything. A ward may not: foil balloons are commonly accepted where latex is not, and some units decline add-ons altogether so that there is one fewer object to wipe down. Food is its own question, since a patient may be on a restricted diet that nobody has mentioned to you. If you want the gesture to be larger, the safest addition on a hospital order is a longer handwritten card message, which the shop writes out for you at no cost and which goes onto the tray table rather than into a cupboard.
They might be discharged tomorrow. Should I still send to the hospital?
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No. Send to the house. A discharge that is scheduled for tomorrow frequently happens today, and an arrangement that arrives at a ward after the bed has been turned over does not follow the patient anywhere — it stays at the nurses' station and then it is thrown out. If you know the discharge is close, ask for delivery to the Harrison address a day or two later instead, once they are home and the visitors have started. That version of the gift also outlasts the one that would have sat in a room they were about to leave.
What can I actually get for these prices?
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The listed arrangements in this selection start at $32.49. Delivery charges, taxes and optional extras are confirmed for the selected florist and recipient before payment.