Make Quilts Not War

chapter 18



“Harriet, what are you doing here?” Aiden asked as she was wheeled into a curtained slot in the emergency room.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she replied. “I didn’t think this hospital handled animals.”

“Michelle is here.”

“My mistake.”

“She’s got food poisoning,” he said in an empty voice. “She’s very sick.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Harriet said without feeling. “Are Carla and Wendy okay?”

“Fortunately, they went out to dinner with Terry tonight, and I had to work late.”

“I hope it wasn’t something Carla made.”

“You don’t even care about my sister, do you? She’s in there having her stomach pumped, and all you care about is that it’s not Carla’s fault.”

“Excuse me for caring about my friend.”

“Why are you here, anyway? What’s wrong with your arm?” As if he had only just noticed she was lying on a gurney with her arm wrapped in ice packs.

“You need to wait outside, sir,” a dark-haired nurse said as she came through the curtained entrance to the cubicle. She gently tried to guide Aiden out. He pulled his arm away from her grasp.

“I’m not leaving until you tell me what happened to Ms. Truman.” He returned to her bedside. “Are you okay?”

Harriet felt a flutter in her stomach in spite of her pain as his ice-blue eyes searched her face.

“Are you family?” The nurse raised one eyebrow, and she kept her gaze on him as she checked her patient’s pulse. Finally, she looked at her watch.

“What happened?” Aiden asked.

“I had an accident,” Harriet finally said. “Not that it’s any of your concern.”

He started to protest, but a different nurse stuck her head into Harriet’s space.

“There you are, Dr. Jalbert. Your sister is asking for you.”

He hesitated, resting his hand on Harriet’s leg.

“I’m fine, really,” she said. “You better go, your sister needs you.”

A muscle in Aiden’s jaw twitched. He hesitated, looked at Harriet, then turned and followed his sister’s nurse.

Harriet’s nurse reached into a cabinet and pulled out two white paper-covered packages. She set one down and opened the other, revealing a sterile syringe.

“This will be a little pinch,” she said.

“My arm is on fire. Do you really think I’m going to feel your needle?”

“I suppose not, but it’s what they teach us to say. It seems like a better thing to say than ‘I know you’re in pain, but let me add a little more,’ don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Harriet said and only then realized the nurse had efficiently drawn two syringes of blood while she was talking.

“These will go to the lab just to be sure there wasn’t anything nasty in whatever was splashed on your arm. They’ll check to see if you absorbed anything into your bloodstream.”

“We recovered enough liquid from the bottle to test,” Detective Morse said as she came through the curtain.

“Great, so I didn’t need the blood test?”

“I’m sure they need to test your blood in any case, but we sent the bottle and liquid to the forensic lab for analysis.”

“I suppose you’re going to yell at me for being involved in yet another crime,” Harriet said and leaned her head back on her pillow.

“Actually, no. From all accounts, you were an innocent victim in this little drama. And the perp seems pretty upset that she got you and not whoever she intended to attack. Given the rather specific location, and the events of the last few days, I’m going to assume Jenny was her intended target.”

“Did she say she was trying to hit Jenny?” Harriet asked.

“She’s talked nonstop since we took her into custody, but none of it makes sense. She hasn’t mentioned Jenny by name, but it’s clear she was the target. I talked to the nurse who helped you and her daughter, but now I’d like to hear what you saw.”

Harriet described the blue-suited woman and the sequence of events that led to her being burned.

“Did you see or hear anything else that might shed some light on this incident?”

Harriet thought about Bobby and the story he’d told her but then rejected the idea of telling Morse before she’d had a chance to talk to Jenny. She should be the one to tell Morse about her brother, if she thought it was relevant, not Harriet.

“There was an incident of bleach being thrown on a show quilt a few years ago in Houston,” Harriet said. “It turned out to be a case of a sore loser in a civil lawsuit. Maybe this is something like that.”

“Maybe, but that would imply a relationship between Jenny and the perp.”

“Unless the woman got the wrong quilt altogether. Everyone involved in this show is in costume. Lots of people are wearing Afro wigs and big sunglasses with granny dresses.”

“Hopefully, the woman will calm down and tell us what this is all about. She wasn’t carrying any ID, so we don’t know who she is or why she might have done this. So far, she’s yelling something about her father. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not at all. I’ve never seen that woman before in my life.”

A tall man in green scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck came into the curtained room.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave, Detective,” he said.

“I hope you feel better soon,” Morse said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ll check back with you tomorrow.”

“I’m Doctor Mitchell,” the new arrival told Harriet, “and I’m going to take a look at that burn. If that’s okay with you.”

“Sure,” Harriet said. She wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to say. Did people in this situation refuse treatment? she wondered.

The nurse—Mary Gonzales, according to her name tag—pulled a bundle wrapped in blue cloth from a cabinet and unfolded it next to her arm. It contained a pair of bandage scissors and several pairs of tweezers, along with a plastic tray. Mary removed the ice packs, and Dr. Mitchell moved Harriet’s arm onto the cloth and began cutting away the glove. Harriet turned her face away and studied the curtain on the opposite side of her cubicle. Whatever else they were going to do to her arm wasn’t anything she wanted to see. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Someone must have slipped pain medication into her IV while her eyes were closed, because when she opened them again, her arm was wrapped in a new dressing, and Lauren was sitting in a chair at her bedside.

“How long have I been asleep?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“Shhh.” Lauren held her forefinger to her lips. “Listen,” she whispered.

Harriet could hear two voices coming from one of the cubicles farther down her row.

“That was one of the strangest cases of food poisoning I’ve ever seen,” a woman said.

Harriet looked at Lauren.

“She sure recovered quickly,” a deeper female voice commented.

“Yeah, just in time to avoid the stomach pump.”

“She made a real point of the fact that Dr. Jalbert’s housekeeper made the soup she’d eaten.”

“Funny how no one else got sick.”

“Hard to imagine how vegetable beef soup poisoned even one person. Especially since it was served hot, according to the patient.”

“If you ask me, she was faking,” deep voice replied. “It’s a shame people like that are willing to waste our time and resources when there’s a waiting room full of sick or hurt people who really do need care.”

“It takes all kinds, I guess,” the first woman said.

Harriet and Lauren heard the crinkling of paper and the sound of a broom. Michelle and Aiden must have gone.

“You’ve been out at least an hour. I passed Aiden and that witch he calls a sister as I came in. I assume that conversation was about her,” Lauren said. “She was screeching about Carla trying to kill her.”

“Oh, my gosh! Michelle is trying to get Carla fired,” Harriet said.

“Seems like,” Lauren replied. “I think we need to call your aunt now. I mean, it’s great to let her and Jorge have their moment at the prom and all, but she needs to be here with you. Your nurse was just in here a while ago asking if you’d had a tetanus shot recently. I told her I didn’t have a clue. If your aunt was here, she’d know.”

“She doesn’t have her cell phone with her.”

“Robin has hers—she never goes anywhere without it. Connie, too. She’ll have hers in Rod’s coat pocket.”

“Let’s wait until you take me home. As soon as they figure out that I don’t need a tetanus shot, I should be good to go. My arm is bandaged, so I assume they’re through with it.”

“I asked while you were napping. They want to wait until the test results from the liquid in the bottle are back. They want to be sure the crazy lady didn’t add anything poisonous besides the acids.”

“Did they give any idea how long that would take?”

“Not really,” Lauren told her. “If you’re going to lay there and whine, I’ll go see if I can find anyone who can tell us anything. If they don’t say you’re leaving in the next thirty minutes, I’m calling Robin. The prom is going to be ending in an hour or so, and your aunt is going to be looking for you. She knew you were going to be protesting, right?”

Harriet nodded and closed her eyes. The next thing she knew, Dr. Mitchell was at her bedside holding a clipboard full of papers.

“Your blood test looks okay so far. You should see your regular doctor tomorrow and have your dressing changed. Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”

“Sadly, yes,” Harriet replied. The nurse was looking it up on a tablet. “I was hit on the head and had to have a couple of stitches. They gave me one then.”

“The nurses told me you’re a bit of a regular here,” Dr. Mitchell said. “Anything you can do about that?”

“I was an innocent bystander tonight. My friend may have been the target, but I was just watching her station while she took a break.”

“Maybe you need new friends.”

He proceeded to recite a litany of cautions, care instructions and medication instructions and finished by handing her a printout of prescriptions for pain pills and burn ointment for some smaller splash spots away from the main injury.

“You get to leave,” Lauren said as she came through the curtained doorway. She stopped when she saw the doctor. “Oh, sorry,” she said and moved to the other side of Harriet’s bed.

“As your friend said, you get to leave,” Dr. Mitchell said with a smile. “Since you’re a frequent flyer, I’m sure they have your insurance information, but if anything has changed, take care of it on your way out. Don’t get up until someone comes and gets you with a wheelchair.”

“Now can we call your aunt?” Lauren asked as soon as the doctor was gone.

“I guess I can’t avoid it any longer.”

Lauren had her cell phone out and was dialing Robin before Harriet had stopped speaking.