ABSTRACT
FOR OVER TWO WEEKS now female gray-haired relatives-daughters, daughters-in-law, granddaughters, and nieces-had been stepping off the elevators carrying bunches of bright yellow daffodils. There, Gwendolyn knew she was right. It was spring again. She could always tell. She loved the scent of new beginnings that she caught in small snatches as the fl owers dripped their gooey sap onto table tops before being captured in vases where they withered and died in two, maybe three, days. The fresh air that also accompanied the nurses into the building hung on their uniforms like dew drop fairies and she could breathe in the fragrance as it lingered through the fi rst of their shift’s rounds. Their uniforms did not feel cold as in winter, or smell fetid as in summer but were fresh as in new, and hopeful, and willing.
