Four things get an arrangement turned away at a nurses' station here, and none of them are arbitrary. Lilies, first and hardest: the pollen transfers to a gown or a sheet the instant a sleeve touches it, the scent carries down a corridor to patients who cannot walk away from it, and when the arrangement finishes its life in somebody's kitchen it becomes a genuine emergency for a cat. Height, second: an inpatient arrangement lives on a rolling tray table that is already carrying a water pitcher, a phone, a call button and a lunch tray, so it needs to be short and it needs a base that does not go over when a nurse swings the table across the bed. Fragrance, third, enforced most strictly on the units a patient cannot leave, where nausea is close to universal. And latex balloons, fourth — banned across this region over allergy exposure, so a balloon tied to the handle comes off at the door while mylar goes up. Material that performs well on any floor in this radius: alstroemeria, lisianthus, spray roses, stock, carnation, gerbera, solidago, and cymbidium orchid out of the Carpinteria greenhouses.
The map of where recovery actually happens runs along two streets and one highway. West Pueblo Street carries the weight: the hospital at 400, including the children's services inside that campus, and the Ridley-Tree Cancer Center at 540 West Pueblo, a few hundred addresses west on the same road, where the infusion schedule runs all day. Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital at 2415 De la Vina Street sits two blocks over from State and is the shortest run of the three — De la Vina is parallel to State, so it is barely a detour. Sansum Clinic's campuses on Pueblo Street and Hitchcock Way handle the outpatient half. Out west, Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital at 351 South Patterson Avenue is fifteen minutes up the 101 and is where Goleta, Isla Vista and the UCSB edge go first. Over San Marcos Pass on Highway 154, the Solvang hospital on Viborg Road serves the Santa Ynez Valley. And because the live radius here is widened to 60 miles, the Ventura hospitals on North Brent Street and Hillmont Avenue, the Oxnard campus on North Rose Avenue, the Ojai hospital, Lompoc Valley Medical Center on East Ocean Avenue and — right at the outer edge, plan next-day — the Santa Maria campus on East Church Street are all technically in range.
Three questions worth answering before you order, because a hospital name is not a delivery address. Which unit, and which room? A patient who has asked to be kept off the facility directory cannot be confirmed to a courier by anyone at an information desk, and that is the point of the request rather than a failure of the desk — so get campus, unit and room from the family, and if you can only get two of the three, send to the house with a mobile number attached. How long is the stay? Discharges here are quick, and an arrangement that arrives while somebody is signing paperwork gets carried to a car by a person whose hands are full and looked at properly for the first time three days later. If the answer sounds like days rather than a week, book the home address for the day after they get back. And is it a plant or is it cut flowers? Many units decline live potting soil in a room even where they welcome a cut arrangement, which makes the plant the right gift for the kitchen windowsill and the wrong gift for the bedside.