Well, right or wrong, Betty was gone. Where? The mother shuddered and knelt by her bed with wordless prayers upon her lips.
In the early dawn of the Sabbath morning Betty came to her senses with a breath of cold air blowing in her face. Somewhere in the air there was the vanishing sound of a crash, and there seemed to be splinters of glass all about her, for when she put out her hand feebly, she touched something sharp and brittle that crushed under her fingers, and afterward there was blood on her hand and face.
There were two men standing over where she was huddled, and before long they loosened the thing that confined her and lifted her out into the cold morning, stinging sharply on her cheeks, snow falling in great splotches on her forehead and eyes.
There was a large car standing a few feet away, and they opened the door and put her on the backseat, tenderly, as though there was something sad and terrible about it. Then they went back and left her there alone. She watched them idly, apathetically, from the window of the car, licking the snow from her lips where it had fallen and wondering what it was all about. She could see the two men working, bending over in the snow, lifting something, pulling, lifting again, and then they came toward her bearing something between them. They stopped and shook their heads and looked toward her, and laid it down, gently, oh, very gently, almost reverently. She wondered!
Why, it looked like Dudley! Where—? How? Where was she?
The two men came and asked her if she could sit up. It had not occurred to her that she was lying down until then. She said yes, and her voice sounded weak and far away, with a tremble in it. She wondered what was the matter with her.
The men lifted her into the front seat and tucked a rough blanket around her. They went back and picked up the thing that looked like Dudley and brought him and laid him in the backseat of the car, being very careful about it. She caught a glimpse of his face. It was ghastly, and streaked with blood. One arm hung limply down, and his hand was bleeding, too. Was there a cut across his cheek? She might have turned to look again, but she felt so weak and tired, and somehow her soul was revolted with the sight of him. She tried to shake off the daze and think back. Where had they been? What had happened? How had they got here in the road? She looked over to the broken car, scattered on the roadside, its bright-painted body splintered like a child’s toy, its fenders ripped off and bent out of shape. How long ago was it that she and Dudley had been careening down that hill?
She closed her eyes with a dizzy memory and swooned away.
A long time afterward, it seemed, she came to herself again, and they were driving along a smooth road. There was snow only at the sides of the road now. The roadway was clear, and there were many cars coming and going, and houses and other buildings along the way.
The two men were talking. One of them was driving the car and the other sat in the backseat with the thing that was Dudley, holding him. She was glad she could not see behind her. She did not have to look. It sent a great wave of sickness over her to think of it. She heard the men saying something about a hospital. The nearest hospital.
“It might be a question of minutes whether the lad lives or dies,” one said. “He’s pretty far gone!”
Something froze within her. Suddenly the whole ugly business flashed across her consciousness. She and Dudley had been running away to get married, and they had come to this! And perhaps Dudley would die! Then would she be a murderer? And have her picture in the paper! And a terrible trial! And all the family have to come and hear the whole thing told out! They would tell how she had dropped her suitcase out of the window and stolen out of the house before daylight. They would have great big headlines in the newspapers: HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR RUNS AWAY WITH YOUTH WHO DIES IN SMASHUP! Father and Mother would be dragged through all that!
She thought of herself as she had been the night of the last high school dance, dressed in her rose petal taffeta. Betty Thornton, the star pupil of the school, the acknowledged beauty, the belle of the school! Herself, Betty, come to this!
She began to watch the way with a wild fascination. Dare she jump out and run away? Oh, she must not go to a hospital and have them ask her questions. She must never, never be discovered! And yet! Could Betty Thornton run away? When she had let Dud get into this mess, she would have to stand by!
She must have swooned away again, for the next time she knew anything the car had stopped in the din of a city street. In the distance was the outline of tall buildings against the sky, and in the immediate foreground loomed a many-storied brick building, which she seemed to understand was the hospital.
Some men in white linen coats hurried out, and two others came with a stretcher. She heard one of the men in the car say: “I thought we’d never get to New York with ‘em! This here lad is far gone!”
So they were in New York at last! This was the way they had arrived! They had meant to be married in New York, and now Dudley was dying, dead perhaps already! It was ghastly! It couldn’t be real! It must be she was asleep, dreaming. Perhaps she was really back in her bed at the farm having the nightmare!
The men in the linen coats had opened the car door and stepped in. They were lifting out Dudley and laying him on the stretcher. She tried to keep her eyes shut, but something made her look, and as she looked Dudley moaned, moving his swollen, cut lips. There was more blood on his face. It was horrible!
She closed her eyes and dropped her head sideways on the back of the seat and listened as they carried the stretcher with its ghastly burden up the steps and into the great building.
A hand touched her forehead, and then another hand was laid firmly about her shoulders. She looked up and saw a white-robed nurse looking at her kindly.
She looked down startled and saw a stretcher waiting to take her into the hospital. There was a smear of blood on one edge. She started to her feet in fright.
“Oh, no! I can walk!” she said. “Let me go home!”
“Are you able to walk?” asked the nurse kindly and helped her out of the car.
Betty’s feet felt strange and weak. Her knees trembled. She stood uncertainly. One of the helpers came forward and put his arm about her, and the nurse helped her on the other side; so she walked, tremblingly, up those awful steps and into that grim building where they had taken that huddled form that was Dudley. Would she have to look at him?
The nurse put her into a wheelchair and pushed her down a long hall to an elevator. They went up several flights and she was wheeled down another hall to a little white room where they made her lie down on a white iron bed.
“But I’ve got to go—” protested Betty as she sank back on the pillow.
“The doctor must examine you,” said the nurse, unfastening her coat and taking her hat off.
An interval followed in which Betty drowsed and realized nothing. Then a doctor and another nurse came in and gave her a thorough examination, looking for broken bones. “Does that hurt?” they asked her.
Betty assured them that it did not, although she had not much of an idea what it all meant. She had a feeling that she must please them all so that they would go away and let her alone and she might steal away from them. It was terribly hot around her now, and she was one big ache from head to foot.
“Mainly shock,” she heard the doctor say. “Keep her quiet. Give her some nourishment. I’ve left a prescription.”
The doctor went out, and the nurse gave her something in a spoon.
“I must get up,” said Betty, trying to lift her head from the pillow.
“You’ll have to have something to eat,” said the nurse crisply. “I’ll bring it.” Betty reflected that she was faint. Perhaps that was the reason her legs felt so weak, and her arms and hands when she lifted them. It would be better to wait for breakfast. It wouldn’t take long, and she remembered that she had no money.
The nurse brought hot milk and fed it to her in a spoon. It tasted good. She wondered that she had always despised hot milk.
Memories were beginning to drift into
her mind. The morning she started. The place she had left her galoshes under a seat in the station in Springfield. Would they be there when she got back?
In a minute now when the nurse went out she would put on her shoes and her coat and hat and slip out. Nobody would know. They would think she was a visitor. The nurse had put her coat and hat in that peculiar long wardrobe at the foot of the bed. It would be easy to get away. And she would go to Aunt Florence’s. Aunt Florence would help her. She wouldn’t have to tell everything. She could make up some kind of an excuse for being in New York alone. She would think about it later when she got a little rested.
She closed her eyes and took the last few spoonfuls.
“Now,” said the nurse, setting the cup and spoon down on the little stand by the bed, “you haven’t told me your name yet. We have to have your name and address to keep our records.”
Betty kept her eyes closed and breathed steadily. She didn’t want to answer that question. Perhaps the nurse would think she was asleep.
The nurse brought her pad and pencil, and said: “Now, what did you say your name was?” But Betty did not hear her. She seemed to be lying in her bed upstairs at the farm, with her father downstairs praying, and God standing out there somewhere in the room watching her.
The nurse went out in the hall.
“She dropped off to sleep before I got her address,” she said to the head nurse. “Now, what’ll I do? The doctor told me to phone her folks.”
The head nurse consulted the card the doctor had given her: “Better let her sleep,” she said. “What her folks don’t know won’t hurt them, and the doctor’s got her marked up as just needing to rest before she goes home.” So Betty slept.
From time to time the nurses flitted in and out of the little room where she had been taken for examination. They took her temperature, and they gave her medicine, and even fed her a few mouthfuls of broth, and still Betty slept.
She slept all through the long Sabbath day, while her mother was agonizing at the farm unable to get in touch with her father, while Chris kept the wires hot telephoning and telegraphing in various directions, while the children sat around disconsolately trying to amuse themselves, and Jane stood at the window and watched and grew strangely silent and mature.
It was Monday morning, bright and shining when Betty awoke.
She found that she had been undressed and put to bed properly. She stirred and found that she was able to move. She got up and stood upon her feet. They were shaky, but they would hold her. She could walk as well as ever.
She was nearly dressed when the nurse came in with her tray.
“Well!” said the nurse. She was a new one that Betty had not seen before. “Good morning. You’re up already! And ready for the day. I hear you’re to be dismissed this morning if you haven’t any temperature. The doctor comes in about ten o’clock, and he’ll look you over, and then I guess they’ll let you go if he doesn’t find any complications. I guess you’ll be glad.”
Betty smiled shyly.
“You’re fortunate!” said the nurse. “The young man that was brought in the same time as you hasn’t got conscious yet.” A horror filled Betty.
She did not feel like eating the breakfast that was spread before her, hungry as she was. She tried to ask a question, but it stuck in her throat.
“Is he—Then he isn’t—He’s—a–live yet?” she asked with blanching face.
“Oh, yes, he’s alive. But he’s got a fractured leg and arm and a fractured skull. They don’t know, but they may have to trephine. They’ve sent for his folks. They found his driver’s license and got ‘em on the phone. The doctor wouldn’t let anyone wake you. He said you’d be all right after you woke up, but you needed an unbroken rest.”
Betty tried to eat a little of the fluffy omelet, but another question was sticking in her throat. Ought she to go and see Dud? Would they let her? It wouldn’t be quite upright not to even ask about him. He had been unspeakable. It made her shudder to think of that terrible ride. She felt as if she never wanted to see him again. But she didn’t want to run away and leave him. If he was dying she couldn’t run away. Even if they thought she was the cause of his death! Even if they had her arrested for murder, she had no right to run away. It was yellow to do it. Something fine in her nature would not let her go without making some effort to help. She would have to stick by.
“Would they—” she paused to gather words—“could I go in and see him?”
“Oh, yes, I guess you could,” said the nurse. “I could ask the head nurse. It couldn’t do him a mite of harm I shouldn’t think. He isn’t conscious. Of course his folks aren’t here yet—”
But Betty had to get to the bottom of this. She must know just how far she ought to be expected to go.
“Would I be allowed to—to—help him—any?” The nurse gave her a keen look.
“What relation are you to him?” she asked curiously. “You ain’t his sister, are you? You don’t happen to be married to him, do you? You look awful young for that.”
“Oh, no!” said Betty quickly, her cheeks growing scarlet. “I’m just a—just a—just an acquaintance. We were out taking a—a—ride together!”
“Mercy goodness!” said the nurse, aghast. “An’ you were out at that time in the morning!”
Betty’s cheeks flamed hotter.
“Oh, no,” she said quickly, “it was early evening when we started,” and then she realized that she was only making things worse.
“Good night!” said the nurse. “Then you musta lain on the roadside pretty near all night before anyone found you.”
Betty looked down at her tray and poured cream on the dish of oatmeal.
“It was—pretty awful—I guess—” she tried. “I don’t really remember much about it after the car began to go down the hill.”
“Well, don’t talk about it,” said the nurse. “You best forget it as soon as you can. You’ve got to live, and you can’t keep yourself upset remembering things like that. I guess you could go in and look at him, but they won’t let you stay. He’s too sick. They won’t let even his mother stay in the room when she comes. She’ll mebbe take a room near here, but they don’t let folks stay in the room much when a patient is so bad.” Betty brightened.
“You don’t think I—that is, perhaps it would be polite for me to stay around till he was better. It doesn’t seem just right to go off and leave him alone.”
“Oh, my land, child! He ain’t alone. His folks phoned for him to have a special nurse, two if necessary, and they’re coming on this morning, too. They’ll be here by noon or a little after. And even if you wanted, there wouldn’t be any place for you to stay except the little sun parlor down the hall, and that’s always full with visitors. This room is engaged for today. A girl. Operation. Appendicitis! She’ll be in about three o’clock. The hospital’s awful full now. You’d a been put in the ward if you’d been a regular case, but they had two women dying there last night, and one was hollering to beat the band. The doctor thought it would be better for you to rest in here, being as this wasn’t occupied till today.”
Betty shivered and drew a deep breath of thanksgiving. She had never realized before what depths of horrors there were that one might escape. She took another bite of the oatmeal and cream.
“I ought to pay something for all you’ve done for me here,” she said, thinking aloud. “But I haven’t got my pocketbook with me. I guess it got lost in the snow.”
Betty remembered the meager two cents left in her pocketbook and wondered if that had been a lie. “I’ll have to send something back when I get home.”
“Oh, that’ll be all right, I’m sure,” said the nurse, smiling. “But don’t your folks know about your accident? Aren’t they coming to see you?”
“Why—my family”—Betty hesitated—“my family are out of town,” she finished glibly, “and it wasn’t worthwhile to worry them, you know. I—am—going to my aunt’s. She didn’t know just what day I was coming, so
of course she won’t worry.”
“Well, that’s fortunate, now isn’t it? I always feel so sorry for the folks that have to worry. What pretty hair you have. It’s naturally curly, isn’t it? I always say that people that have naturally curly hair have the advantage of everybody else. Now, if you’ve finished your breakfast, I’ll see if they will let you look at your friend.”
She went out with the tray, and Betty felt suddenly cold and frightened and very young. Oh, if she only didn’t ever have to see Dudley Weston again looking that way! It was too horrible! Why did people have to die anyway? What an awful world it was!
The nurse came back with permission for Betty to go to Dudley’s room, and in fear and trembling she followed the nurse.
“He won’t know you, you know,” the nurse whispered as she opened the door, and Betty took a deep breath and stepped within the threshold casting frightened eyes at the bed.
But there was nothing of Dudley Weston there on the bed to recognize save the tip of his chin with the cleft in it, the cleft that used to make him so good looking. His hair had been cut away, and his head and face were swathed in bandages. Some of them were soaked in blood. His hands were bound up in gauze also, and one arm was in splints. There was a weight hanging at the foot of the bed from under the sheets, which the nurse explained was put there to keep the broken bone in place and stretch it so that if he got well one leg would not be shorter than the other. If he got well!
She shivered at the thought of Dudley, bound up that way, with all those terrible possibilities hovering over him. Dudley the lithe, the athletic, the best dancer and tennis player in high school. Dudley, who was planning to be a polo player! Dudley whose pride was his grace of movement, his incessant activity! What if he should never walk again! What if one leg should be shorter than the other, like the Boyd boy who had to walk with a crutch! She could not picture Dudley a cripple.
The Prodigal Girl Page 25