Get Well flowers in Santa Cruz

The second hospital is a different kind of building. Sutter Maternity and Surgery Center on Chanticleer Avenue, off Soquel Avenue in Live Oak, does births and outpatient surgery, and its get-well orders are almost all new-baby congratulations or a same-week procedure. The practical detail there is turnaround: a family that arrives Tuesday is frequently home Thursday, so an arrangement that fits in a car footwell and a mother's lap beats a tall basket that has to be abandoned or wedged behind a car seat. If the flowers arrive after discharge, they follow the family home — tell us at checkout and we will route to the house instead, which is usually what the family actually wanted. South in the Pajaro Valley, Watsonville Community Hospital on Nielson Street covers its own end of the county, eighteen miles down Highway 1 from River Street, so a morning order is the reliable one.

The third thing, and the one out-of-town senders rarely anticipate, is that serious cases leave Santa Cruz County. A cardiac catheterization, a complex trauma, a premature birth or a pediatric cancer diagnosis normally means a transfer over the Highway 17 grade or down the coast: El Camino Health Los Gatos on Pollard Road, Good Samaritan and Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, or south to Salinas Valley Memorial, Natividad in Salinas and the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. Most of those sit inside or at the edge of the widened 60-mile radius, but the 17 grade is the variable: it is a slow, winding climb, and a fog morning or a single accident at the summit adds an hour. For an over-the-hill room, order the day before if you can, and if the patient is being discharged within a day or two, send to their Santa Cruz house instead of chasing the bed.

What the room will and will not accept is worth two sentences of your order notes. Dominican's intensive-care rooms and the infusion chairs at its cancer services are the two places where an arrangement can be turned away at the desk, and a newborn's room is the third. The fix is simple: write 'no lilies, low scent' in the notes and the design comes back built on ranunculus, spray roses, lisianthus, alstroemeria and hydrangea instead of stargazers and orientals, in a low vessel that sits on a windowsill rather than crowding a tray table. Add the unit and room number if you have them, and the patient's phone number, because rooms change. Local care buildings follow the same pattern: Dominican Oaks, the retirement community next door on Soquel Drive, and Sunshine Villa, the Victorian-styled senior residence on the hill above Front Street with a straight view over the Boardwalk, both take deliveries at a front desk, and both appreciate a name plus a floor. Hospice of Santa Cruz County, based in Scotts Valley, supports families at home across the county — a hospice patient's flowers nearly always belong at the house.