Flora and Fauna

I love flowers. Hollyhocks, primrose, lavender, arum lily, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, you name it and I like to grow it. I spent hours a day out in the sun, weeding, raking, feeding, fertilizing, trimming, lining things up. The result was that I had the best flower garden for hundreds of miles around. People would drive hours to come take stock of my neat rows of plants. It was my delight to be able to share not only the plants, but the secrets of how to grow them.

I held dinners and galas and other events where I displayed the differences between various methods of cultivation, purely for the benefit of the public. I labored tirelessly in the education of the youth. I have to admit, I got a little bit too wrapped up in it all. For a while I was called the king of flowers. Looking back, I am certain that I let it go to my head.

So I took a break, and here I am in a seaside town on the Mediterranean, fiddling with some flower pots outside my bedroom window. It had been three months since I had left home for this vacation—my first in 11 years. It took a while to hit me, but I realized how much I needed a break. As I was rearranging the soil to provide for better drainage, a bee flew in. The timing was unfortunate: the industrious little drone was aiming for the flower in the pot right as I was moving it. Incensed, the little fellow rushed at me in the attack.

I had never been stung by a bee before. The tiny prick in my arm was followed by the much more painful feeling of venom working its way under my skin. My arm immediately started to turn red. I tried to brush the bee away, but I only succeeded in crushing the poor thing. It was so terribly sad. I sat down, at first from the grief, but then I realized. This wasn’t grief! This was shock. Anaphylactic shock. I tried to stand up, but the room spun, and no matter how much I blinked my head wouldn’t clear.

The chair wasn’t there when I sat down, and I crashed to the floor. I must have knocked it. My eyes were swelling now, and I couldn’t see much. My heart was racing, beating too fast. I started to feel incredibly warm. My fingers were swollen now too. I staggered up out of the chair, lurching half-blind to the windowsill. The flowerpots fell and shattered everywhere, and then I went limp, dropping backwards out of the window into the sunny room. I lay on the floor, surrounded by bits of terra cotta pot and ragged flowers.