The linear propagation of femtosecond pulses in the growth direction of excited II-VI semiconductor MQW heterostructures is studied by combining calculations of the nonlinear absorption of quantum wells from many-body theory with the transfer matrix method from classical electrodynamics. It is shown that the time-resolved transmission of the heterostructure is substantially modified in the presence of a nonvanishing quasi-equilibrium carrier density which is accompanied by characteristic changes of the optical absorption and refractive index.