Chapter 5

When she showed up at the ER door the next morning to take up her duty, Dawney saw Bette standing in the doorway. It was thirty minutes before the start of her shift and her colleague, taking advantage of that moment of “relative calm,” was smoking her electronic cigarette. However, when she became aware of her presence, she stopped smoking for a moment and winked at her.

“Ah, there you are, Dawney. Of course you could have told me, though.”

Dawney furrowed her brow. What on earth was Bette talking about? “Tell you what?” she asked her, unable to understand.

“That you had an admirer.”

An admi...what?!

“Come on Bette, don't joke! It's not funny.”

“Well, then how do you explain that huge bouquet of flowers they left in reception for you?”

Huge bouquet of flowers? Increasingly confused, Dawney took large strides toward the entrance of the ER.

“Bette, I swear if this is one of the usual ER jokes, I'll make you pay!” she shouted at her.

“I never joke, and you will see for yourself!”

Dawney heard her laughing behind her back, but as she walked through the front door, she discovered to her horror that she had not lied at all.

In front of her, on the reception desk, there was indeed a huge bouquet of flowers!

As soon as she saw her coming Lorraine, the receptionist, winked. “Did you see how beautiful they are? The Flowers King delivery man brought them this morning, he said they are for you.”

Dawney rolled her eyes, then sighed. “Did he tell you who sent them?”

“No, but whoever it is, it must be someone very generous. Once my friend's husband, for Valentine's Day, bought a small bouquet of red roses there and spent a lot of money, think, as much as eighty dollars! Then a simple bouquet of red roses, not one with diamonds in it like yours.”

What, with diamonds in it? For the first time, she approached the bouquet of flowers in question, which had been placed in a white vase to keep it cool, to look at it more closely.

It was really huge! Dawney tried to count the flowers, and when she finished, she was left with salt: there were one hundred giant white daisies, each devoid of the slightest imperfection, and one hundred stabilized red roses, each of which had inside its bud, as Lorraine had told her, a small heart-cut diamond.

“Ah, there was also this,” said the receptionist, handing her a cream-colored note. It had been handwritten in gold ink.

'For Dawney,' was written on the front side.

Dawney, curious to know who the sender was, turned the note over. Immediately, her expression darkened.

“So? What does the note say?”

She reread the sentence to make sure she understood it correctly.

'Do you want to have dinner with me? I'll take you to Maxim's. Call me when you are free, this is my private number. Love, Cole.'

Underneath the message was a phone number. Which she would never call, however: she had saved his life, that much was true, but she was not intent on resuming relations with him.

Cole Young was now part of her past and in her past he had to remain. Their meeting had been a chance event, one that would not be repeated, under any circumstances.

Under Lorraine's dumbfounded gaze, she tore up the note, then handed it to her.

“Throw it away, then arrange the flowers to be brought to Mrs. Wright's room. No one ever comes to see her, poor thing, and I'm sure they will please her very much, far more than they do me.”

She barely had time to say those words, then came a call from nine-one-one:

“Nine-one-one, code red, shark attack on Golden Sand Beach. Ten-year-old boy, no other injured.”

Dawney greeted that call with relief and, not thirty seconds later, was in the ambulance with Bette and Mark.

Mark operated the sirens, then they headed at speed toward the beach, which was one of the most popular among tourists during the Christmas vacations.

That was her life, and it would be her life for at least the next four decades when she would retire. She had to keep that in mind.

***

The same scene repeated itself the next morning, then the next, then the next again.

When the following Friday arrived, Dawney was at her wits' end: the flowers kept coming, as did Cole's dinner invitations, but now, along with the ever-present oversized bouquet, the delivery man had begun delivering boxes of Queen Elizabeth chocolates.

It was an increasingly awkward situation, because Lorraine, when the second box had arrived, had done a search on the Internet and told her that, just one of those boxes cost as much as a month's worker's pay!

She had given the first one to her sister, the second to Bette, and the third to Lorraine, who had almost begged her since she had always wanted to try them at least once, but with her salary she could not even afford to buy the smallest box. The chocolates from the other three boxes she had distributed among all her colleagues in the ER.

Now, however, in front of the seventh box and in front of yet another bouquet of flowers, a beautiful arrangement of white roses, orange gerberas and pink tulips, she would have wanted to shout.

That story had to end, and within the shortest possible time: she was becoming the laughingstock of L.A Hospital.

“As soon as the delivery man returns, give him back the flowers and the box of chocolates and tell him not to bring anything more.”

Lorraine looked at her with a stunned expression. “But, Dawney...”

“Please, Lorraine, do as I said,” she cut her off, trying not to sound too categorical. “Tonight was a very difficult night. We had a code blue, which then became a code black in the ambulance...a little girl not even five years old.”

The receptionist put her hand in front of her mouth to stifle a sob. The death of a young person was already a tragedy, but that of such a small child was hard to accept.

“Poor thing, I'm so sorry.”

“Unfortunately, she is not the first and will not be the last,” she tried to gloss over. Inside, however, she felt a bundle of nerves. “I'm going home to rest, see you in the morning. Please take care: as soon as the delivery man arrives, tell him to take back the flowers and chocolates, then tell him not to bring anything more.”

“All right. What do I do though...if he asks me why?”

“Then in that case tell him to take this message back to the sender: that I accept his thanks, but that I only did my job. And that I don't have time for anything else,” and, having said those words, she walked toward the exit.

Even though it was a warm day and it was sunny outside, she looked forward to taking a warm bath, putting on a clean pajama and sleeping for the next twenty-four hours.