Assuming the patient is here, the geography is mercifully simple. Both hospitals sit in the central 79761 blocks, ten minutes from each other and twenty from the shop, and both hand arrangements off at a main entrance desk or to a unit clerk rather than carrying anything to a bedside. An order there works best carrying three things in this order of importance: how the name is spelled on the chart, which unit the patient is on, and the room — the unit outranks the room, because rooms change through an admission and units usually do not. The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center campus on West 4th Street sits beside Medical Center Hospital and runs clinics rather than inpatient rooms, so a patient being seen there goes home the same day and the flowers belong at the house instead. Two rules hold at both hospitals and are worth asking about specifically rather than assuming: critical-care and intensive-care rooms generally do not take flowers or plants, and the newborn and women's and infants' areas restrict them as well — in the newborn case the practical move is to send to the mother's room if she is admitted, or to the house for when they come home. For a cancer patient, ask the pollen question out loud before you order: skip lilies, skip anything perfumed, and skip a potted piece altogether if the unit has ruled soil out of the room.
For recoveries at home — which is most of them, because stays here are short and discharge is quick — the delivery problem is the address rather than the floor rule. Odessa's ZIPs run from the central and downtown blocks in 79761 through the north side around 42nd Street and University in 79762, the unincorporated West Odessa county roads in 79763, the northwest in 79764 and the east side toward Faudree and the Midland line in 79765, plus Gardendale up Andrews Highway and Goldsmith, Notrees and Penwell out in the county. West Odessa is the one that needs care: numbered county roads with directions, gravel drives, a house number on a mailbox out at the road rather than on the building, gates without callboxes, dogs. Give the road number with its direction, a description of the house, a gate note and a mobile number, and the run is routine — the shop's own address is on North County Road West, so those addresses are home ground for it. Two climate notes that decide whether the piece survives the last ten feet: in July and August a west-facing step at 100 degrees finishes an arrangement quickly, so ask for a morning window and a shaded handoff, and in spring the wind will tip anything tall left outside, so ask for a low weighted container.