Now the night was bright and she reveled in its beauty. She spread her map on her knee and checked for the positions of ships out of Honolulu, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The ships on or near her course had agreed to keep their searchlights on for her. She looked at her clock: it was nearing midnight.
Off the right wing and below, against the black sea, shone a pink light. It had to be a searchlight from a ship. Amelia snapped on her landing lights, flashing them three times. Then she flicked the toggle three more times. She turned her radio dial, trying to tune in on station KFI in Los Angeles. A spattering buckshot of radio code hit her ears. She realized it was the ship, trying to submit a signal to her. Then from the ship’s lights came a rapid flicking on and off. They were answering her earlier signal from her landing lights. She checked her map again: on course, 900 miles out; the ship was—it had to be—the Maliko, from the Matson Line.
Below, clouds now joined, knitted, and closed over the ocean. Ahead, the stars grew misty, dim, and distant. There was blackness everywhere, and dead ahead on course—rain.
Like pins, fine raindrops hit the windshield and spread in long, wet needles down the glass. Amelia squeaked open the cockpit window and breathed deeply of the cool wet air. The rain squalls continued for the next two hours.
Suddenly she realized that she was hungry and thirsty. She reached into the little cupboard she had prepared in the right wing. There, neatly stored against hunger, were water, tomato juice, sweet chocolate, malted-milk tablets, a thermos bottle of hot chocolate, and a picnic lunch. She decided on the hot chocolate. She unscrewed the top of the thermos, pulled out the cork stopper, and poured out a cupful. In short, quick sips, she drank the hot, sweet chocolate liquid. Its warmth spread through her and she felt good.
She set the empty cup down in the cupboard; then, changing hands on the stick, she rubbed and kneaded the muscles of her thighs and calves. They were stiff and tired. She could not look upon her legs for long without feeling a deep sense of thankfulness, for they invariably called up the image of those amputees she had seen in Toronto during the war. The experience had changed the course of her life.
15. Nurse’s Aide in Toronto
She had been nineteen at the time. It was in 1917, during the Christmas vacation of her senior year at Ogontz, the Philadelphia finishing school, when Amelia and her mother went to visit sister Muriel, who was attending St. Margaret’s in Toronto.
On one blustering morning, a few days before Christmas, Amelia went shopping. She pulled the collar of her long, warm coat close to her neck and buried her chin in the fur against the cold. She bent into the icy wind whipping in from Lake Ontario and slowly pressed her way down the street. Late shoppers bustled in and out of the stores and up and down the sidewalk.
Toward her came four one-legged soldiers with crutches, thumping and swinging up the pavement, and grimly pressing their shoulders against the wooden supports. The sight of one of the veterans in particular greatly disturbed Amelia. He was younger than the others and he caught her eye as they went by. He had smiled at her with difficulty and in his face was the look of incredulous bewilderment, as if he had suffered his loss too soon to realize what had happened to him. Amelia tried not to stare at his empty khaki pants leg which had been folded and pinned to his hip. She forced a smile in return for his, and then looked the other way as her eyes welled up with tears.