“You miss him, huh?” Tidye asked.
“I just wish he had qualified for the men’s team.”
“He’s a good one, Caroline. He’s really proud of you.”
“I know. I can’t wait to see him when we get to Los Angeles. Poor guy, he’s going to be sleeping in his car most nights unless I can sneak him into our hotel. I can count on you girls not to rat me out, can’t I?”
They all laughed, and Caroline stayed for a couple more minutes before saying good night and heading downstairs. After she left, Louise took the napkin filled with pie and dropped it into the hallway wastebasket before shutting the door behind her.
Tidye nodded with satisfaction. “They can keep their darned pie.”
After Louise switched off the light, they lay in their beds staring into the darkness.
“I’m getting worried Coach is going to change the relay team and we’re going to be dropped,” Tidye said.
Louise rolled to her side, trying to make out Tidye’s outline in the darkness. “Why? What makes you say that?”
“Well, why are we stuck up here when everyone else is downstairs?”
THE NEXT DAY, aboard the train, Louise and Tidye lay in their berths, subdued, but relieved to be leaving the humiliation of the Brown Palace Hotel behind. From her upper bunk, Louise flipped the pages of a Photoplay. The experience at the hotel had left her with a tense stomachache, but the constant swaying of their train eventually lulled her into a sense of lethargy until a screech from Tidye’s bunk pierced the quiet. Startled, Louise shimmied to the side of her own bed and peered over the edge, where she came almost eye-to-eye with Babe. A smug grin split across the blond woman’s angular features. Tidye sprang from her bunk, her clothes dripping with water as Babe tucked a silver pitcher, the kind the waiters in the dining car carried, under her arm.
“Why on earth did you do that?” Tidye shrieked.
Babe guffawed and leaned over and smacked her thighs. “Lordy, I wish you could see your face right now.”
Outraged, Tidye pulled her soaked dress from her chest and stared at the drips of water pooling underneath her feet. “Have you lost your mind?”
Drawn to the commotion, Mary and a couple of other women appeared in the berth, circling around Babe and Tidye with grim expressions.
“What?” Babe surveyed the group. “It was a joke. Y’all have no sense of fun. I was just trying to liven things up.”
“I suppose it’s no accident that I’m the one you picked for your stupid joke.” Tidye was practically spitting in fury.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m pretty sure you know exactly what I mean.” Tidye poked a finger straight at Babe and the Texan took a step backward.
“Sheesh, I thought I was doing you a favor. It’s blazing hot. Figured you’d appreciate cooling down.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t appreciate it at all. Keep away from me, you hear? I don’t want any more of your jokes or favors. Nothing, got it?”
“Spoilsport. Can’t we have a little fun around here?” Babe huffed.
The other women averted their gazes and shuffled from the compartment. Only Mary stayed behind and helped Tidye step out of her wet dress.
“How can you stand to room with her?” Tidye fumed.
Mary bit her lip. “No one else would, and I felt bad for her.”
“You think I should feel sorry for her too?”
“No, of course not.” Mary lowered her gaze and shifted her weight from side to side. “Sorry,” she mumbled before handing the dress to Louise and hurrying from their berth.
With hands trembling in outrage, Louise snapped the wet dress to shake out the water. She would have hoped, even expected, her teammates to scold Babe or at least say something, but the girls who had convened to see what had happened seemed cowed by the Texan. She sighed. In her annoyance, Louise thrust the dress onto a hook with such force that she heard a small ripping sound come from its waistband.
Sheepish, she turned to Tidye, who stood in her slip, her arms folded across her chest. “Oh, that dress is the least of my concerns. But it sure is starting to feel like you and I are on a different team from the rest of ’em, huh?”
24.
July 1932
Oak Forest Infirmary, Illinois
BETTY AWOKE TO FIND A NURSE HOVERING OVER HER, A woman she didn’t recognize. The nurse raised a thermometer and Betty opened her mouth reflexively to receive it. After a minute or so, the nurse plucked the thermometer from Betty’s mouth and inspected it, smiling. “No fever. No sign of infection. Today’s going to be a good day. I can feel it.”
Mrs. Robinson leaned forward from where she sat by Betty’s side. “I agree,” she said, cocking her head at Betty to check for her reaction.
Betty coughed. What made today any different from the other days? Her hours of wakefulness stretched into a long tunnel of uncertainty. Her mother read books to her, but Betty couldn’t remember what they were. Her father updated her on the newspapers, but none of it stuck with her. Both of her legs were encased in plaster casts from the tips of her toes to the tops of her thighs, while her left arm, also in a plaster cast from her hand to her shoulder, dangled from the ceiling in an elaborate traction system of pulleys and cords. Her life had gone from one of promise to one of pain and doubt. She’d been trying to ignore her worries, lose herself in the haze of medicine that had kept her in a fog, but she knew she needed some answers. “What’s the date? How long have I been here?”
The nurse and her mother looked at each other for a moment before the nurse looked back at Betty and said, “You’ve been here for almost a month.”
It was like a blow to the chest. That long? Minutes, hours, days, daytime, nighttime—everything had become a blur, impossible to measure.
Her mother clasped Betty’s hand. “The nurse told me that she can help you with a bath and then we could do your hair. You know who would like to come and see you?”
Betty shook her head.
Her mother glanced at the lines of cards filling the two windowsills and swallowed. “Bill calls every day to ask about you.” Betty’s stomach gave a sickening lurch, and she turned to look at the vase of daisies on the bedside table; her mother followed her gaze. “He sent those. Aren’t they lovely? Just think, we can get you all fixed up and you can see him.”
The white petals glowed in the indigo shadows of the morning light.
Bill.
Kind, funny, smart, and talented Bill.
Betty scratched at one of the plaster casts entombing her leg. She didn’t remember much from the day of the plane crash, but she did remember Bill proposing. It was the last memory she had. Now that she was injured, what would he make of her? Her mother had not called him Betty’s fiancé. Had he not told anyone about the proposal? Did he still want to marry her?
“You’re looking so much better. Do you feel better? Don’t you want to see Bill?”
Did she? From within her cast, Betty’s knee began to itch. Everything ached and ached, but she felt the weight of her mother’s hopefulness more than anything. “Yes, of course, I can’t wait to see him.”
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, she settled into the crisp, fresh sheets on her hospital bed, wearing a pink cotton nightgown instead of her flimsy striped hospital gown. No matter how many lavender sachets her mother sprinkled in the room, the smell of laundry bleach lingered, even over the lily-of-the-valley-scented-shampoo smell of her hair. Her hospital room was finally quiet and empty. After weeks of constantly being surrounded by nurses and her parents, solitude came as a relief. It was like she was a marionette and someone had let go of the strings. She could finally relax.