Make Quilts Not War - By Arlene Sachitano Page 0,45
your aunt, but she’s not answering.
“She probably doesn’t have her phone with her.”
Jenny turned as if to go.
“Don’t go get her. Leave the ladies to their dance. Lauren is at the protest in the foyer to the dance hall. Tell her to bring her car out front. She can drive me to the hospital after the paramedics look at my arm.”
“They’re going to want to transport you,” Jenny protested.
“And I’m not paying for an ambulance ride when I don’t need to.”
Jenny looked at Dorothy for help. The nurse shrugged.
“Her arm is burned, but if there was something really nasty in the mix she’d be reacting by now, and it’s true—they can’t force her.”
The same team of paramedics that had responded to the shooting came up, ending the discussion. The quilter-nurse identified herself and gave a concise description of the event as one EMT began taking Harriet’s vitals and the other opened a bottle of Milk of Magnesia, dumping it into a long-armed latex glove before slipping the glove over Harriet’s burned hand and arm. When the injury was covered, he taped the glove in place.
“What’s the white stuff for?” Harriet asked.
“Milk of Magnesia will neutralize hydrofluoric acid, if that’s what she used,” the paramedic said with a nod at blue-suit-woman. “She’s incoherent, but my partner heard her say something about rotting bones, so we figured we’d better be safe than sorry.
“Hydrofluoric acid is used in the electronics industry, so it’s pretty readily available here in the Northwest. It’s nasty stuff. You don’t feel the burn immediately, but it penetrates to the bone and destroys everything along the way. Clearly, it was mixed with something else that burned immediately—maybe sulfuric or hydrochloric acid, or even both.”
Harriet felt the blood leave her face as she listened to the description. The second paramedic inserted a needle into her unaffected hand and began a saline drip.
“I think you’d better reconsider taking that ambulance ride,” he said when he’d finished.
“Why am I not surprised to see you?” Office Nguyen said as he approached.
Harriet started to protest, but Dorothy shushed her.
“I saw the whole thing,” she said. “She was standing there on the stage, showing the quilt to me and my daughter, and that woman came up and threw a bottle of acid on her. Without provocation, I might add.”
Officer Nguyen raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything.
“That woman in the blue suit is who you need to be talking to,” Dorothy continued, pointing at the her. She was sitting quietly, talking to herself in a continuous litany that made sense to no one but her.
Nguyen walked over to where two men still held the acid thrower. He said something into the radio on his shoulder then went behind the woman and handcuffed her.
“What have you gotten yourself into now?” Lauren demanded as she pushed through the growing crowd, kneeling beside Harriet when she arrived. “Are you okay? What happened?” She was more rattled than Harriet had ever seen her.
“That woman over there threw acid on my arm,” she said. “Luckily, I had just turned the edge up on the quilt and stepped behind it as she threw, so she only got my arm.”
“Where’s your aunt?”
“She’s at the prom still, and I told Jenny not to bother her or the rest of the Threads. Will you come with me to the hospital?”
“Your aunt is going to flip—you do know that, right?”
“She’s going to be upset in any case, so she might as well enjoy the dance. Before you come to the hospital, go look at Jenny’s quilt where the acid burned it.” Jenny was now talking to Officer Nguyen. “It’s behind the curtain. Hurry, before she gets done.”
“Aren’t you just the bossy one?” Lauren said, but she got up and went behind the curtain. She hadn’t returned before the paramedics loaded Harriet onto a gurney and pushed her out to the waiting ambulance.
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