The sequel to The Handprint
Written by Anne
Blair and Anna
Based on some situations originated by James Cameron.
The triumphant feeling of being free, of
knowing that Jack loved her, of knowing that her mother had let her go, was all
too short for Rose. She stood closely next to Jack, wondering if the feeling of
chaos, of the hopelessness of their situation, was dawning on him, too. He had
been so determined, just a moment or two ago, to get her on a boat. Now, he
looked like he wanted her to stay with him.
The night seemed eerily quiet in spite of the
clamor around them. She looked at him, trying to see him without him seeing
her. They looked at each other, their eyes communicating more than words ever
could. She shook her head, biting her lip as she looked up at him, wondering
how she could possibly go. He smiled lovingly, taking her by the shoulders, his
blue eyes gazing deeply into hers. In that moment, the noise of the lifeboats
being prepared, of people moving and shouting, slowly disappeared. His eyes
showed her the only possible answer there could be. Nevertheless, she found
herself fighting the inevitable.
Hands shaking, she grasped his shirt, her
mind going back to earlier that night, to being in the car with him. She felt
warmer as she thought about his kisses, about the caring, gentle way he had
held her, his breath warm against her skin. Tears came to her eyes as she felt
him trying to push her away, trying to push her towards the boat. She pressed
her face against his shoulder, his soft words going through her mind.
His arms closed around her, and she felt his
strained breath against her hair. He didn’t want her to go, but he knew that
they had no choice. The officer motioned for more people to join the small
group already seated in the lifeboat. Jack nodded to him and helped Rose to
step up to get on the boat. Their hands clung together despite the growing
distance.
The officer, aware only of his own
responsibilities, pushed her into the boat. Her eyes filled with tears as she
was finally wrenched away from Jack. She reached out to him, her fingers
gripping his, until the boat’s downward motion pulled them apart. Her eyes
widened as she gazed up at him, wishing that he was safely beside her instead
of trapped on a sinking ship.
Jack stared down at Rose as the boat
descended, struggling to control the emotions welling up inside him. This might
be the last time he would see her, sinking slowly away from him in the small,
fragile boat. It seemed unthinkable that the open boat was the safer place to
be, safer than the unsinkable ship, which even now felt solid and sturdy. But
it was the seemingly safe ship, which people had believed with such faith was
unsinkable, that might part them forever.
Only a few days before, he had never met
Rose. His whole life had revolved around his next bit of adventure, on
wondering where he would sleep and where his next meal would come from. He had
known many beautiful women in his life, but none had affected him as Rose had,
none able to capture his heart, none able to make him feel like he felt at that
moment. He didn’t want this to be the last time he saw her. Rose was the only
woman who could make him feel such pain as he watched her leave, even though he
knew that it would save her life.
His hands grasped the railing. It was cold
against his skin. His knuckles were turning white as he focused all his pain,
all his feelings into that motion. He felt how his nostrils moved, and a lonely
tear escaped his eye, his controlled way of keeping himself in check. She was
moving in the boat now, fidgeting, her eyes on the deck above her. Jack
swallowed, more conflicting feelings grabbing him. Stay, Rose. Stay there.
Rose looked up at him, her heart aching more
than she had ever thought possible. She was leaving him there, on a ship that
would soon be at the bottom of the ocean, with only sea, ice, and darkness
surrounding him. There weren’t enough boats. The voice ticking inside Rose told
her to get back on the ship, to spend her last hours with him, to love him, to
make sure he knew how much she loved him. She moved nervously, trying to decide
against jumping back. His voice tore through to her heart, overshadowing her
own.
"I’m a survivor, Rose. I’ll be all
right."
She sank down again. Her eyes met his. He
looked relieved, but now she saw the tears coursing down his pale cheeks.
Jack…oh, Jack, not trying to hide his feelings. The water that moved down her
skin felt warm and comforting, but was soon turned to icy roads. Please,
Jack, be all right. I just found you. I just found you and I can’t bear the
thought of losing you.
Once again, her hands moved, her legs shaking
as she once again contemplated jumping back. Once again, she felt Jack’s words,
his eyes on her soothing her into staying put.
The boat hit the lapping waves with a quiet
splash. Rose looked up. He was gone. Swallowing her tears, she watched as the
crew members started rowing away from the ship, away from the inevitable
suction. People around her were quiet, looking at the ship with a mixture of
anger and petrified fascination. Anger because they had been dragged away from
warm cabins to spend a cold April night in a fragile boat. Fear because it was
becoming more and more clear that there was no safety on the unsinkable
Titanic.
Rose felt neither of those emotions. She just
wanted Jack there with her, safe and warm. She looked up at the ship again,
hoping to see him, hoping to see him getting on a boat. She didn’t see his face
as he stole a last glance at her from somewhere closer to the stern of the
ship. He turned quickly, running for safety. He already knew that waiting for a
boat would be fruitless. He saw people panicking, slowly realizing their fate.
He saw people struggling to get aboard a boat, saw Cal buying his way aboard a
boat. Still no men allowed. Officially.
Jack, with the instincts of a true survivor,
ran towards the stern of the ship.
*****
Rose stared at the ship, transfixed, as the
stern rose higher and higher out of the water. Jack was there somewhere…at
least, she assumed he was. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he had found his way into
a boat after all.
A terrible cracking sound rent the air,
followed by the terrified screams of the people still on the ship. As Rose
watched in horror, the ship split in two, the stern falling back to the water
while the bow broke away.
Suddenly frantic, Rose struggled to her feet,
rocking the small lifeboat precariously. Cries of alarm came from the other
passengers as the boat tipped, threatening to spill them all out into the icy
sea. Someone reached out and pulled her back down, but she remained kneeling,
tears streaking her face as she watched the stern section rise out of the water
again.
For a moment, the stern bobbed calmly in the
icy water, giving her hope that it might stay afloat. She could hear the
screams of the people from what remained of the ship, but if it stayed afloat,
they might be able to cling to the railing or to objects on the deck until help
arrived.
Her hope was short-lived. Even as she thought
about it, the stern began to sink into the water, people losing their grips and
falling into the icy sea. She thought about what Jack had told her two nights
before, when she had been ready to jump into the sea behind Titanic. It wasn’t
the fall that would have killed her, but the deep cold of the water. It would
be the same for the people on the sinking stern. If Jack was among them…
Rose shook the thought away, slowly sitting
back down in the lifeboat. He had to have found a way to survive. He might be
on a lifeboat even now. She had to think of that. It was all she had to cling
to.
*****
Jack clung to the railing, his feet slipping
on the damp wood as the stern of the ship rose higher into the air. Around him,
people clung desperately to the railing and to each other, some losing their
grip and sliding away, others jumping from the ship in terror, preferring the
dark, icy water to the ship that was tilting ever further.
Next to Jack, a man climbed over the railing,
his eyes wide with fear. As Jack watched, unable to do anything more than cling
to the railing, the man jumped, his body hitting the propellers below with a
metallic thud and tumbling into the water far below.
Jack shuddered, planting his feet against the
tilting deck and holding onto the railing. He turned his head away, catching a
glimpse of a woman clinging to the railing and holding her child close,
murmuring brokenly to him. Beside her, Helga Dahl, the girl that Fabrizio had
flirted with on the ship, clung to the railing, tears streaking her face. There
was no sign of her family or of Fabrizio.
Jack felt a chill inside that had nothing to
do with the bitterly cold air. He hadn’t seen Fabrizio since he had left the
common room to stand at the bow. It had been daylight then, and now…he had no
idea how late it was. The disaster had taken away his usually keen sense of how
much time had passed. He could only hope that Fabrizio was safely in a boat,
and not among those clinging to the deck, or worse yet, in the icy sea below.
There was a sudden groaning, cracking noise
from the ship. Sparks flew upward from the section of the ship just above the
waterline as it split in two, people tumbling into the dark chasm. The stern
fell back to the water, crushing the people swimming below.
Jack was nearly pitched overboard at the
abrupt motion, stopped only by his death grip on the railing. People cried out,
some in terror and others in relief, believing that they were saved. Jack just
shook his head, knowing better.
As the stern began to tilt upward again, he
climbed over the railing, clinging to it as people began to lose their grips
and fall again. Next to him, another man had climbed over the railing. He
looked down, debating jumping, then took a long swig from a flask of some kind
of liquor.
He glanced at Jack, then offered him the
flask. Jack took it gratefully, taking a swig before handing it back to him.
The liquor warmed his insides, but did nothing to still the fear churning
inside him. He envied the other man’s calm—but then, if he were drunk, he might
not be afraid, either.
Jack heard a scream from just below him, and
looked down in horror to see Helga dangling from the railing, her eyes wide
with terror. Even as he reached to grab her hand, she lost her grip on the
railing, falling and hitting hard against the deck before tumbling into the
water far below.
Jack stared down at the place where she had
fallen, knowing that there was nothing that he could do for her, and was
suddenly more grateful than ever that Rose was safe in a lifeboat. He shuddered
at the thought of watching her tumble into the sea, perhaps dead from hitting
something before she ever reached the water.
The quiet bobbing of the stern, which had
given him hope for a moment, changed to a downward motion. Water exploded
upward as the stern half of the ship began to sink, moving faster and faster as
it flooded. People panicked, some jumping away from previously secure handholds
and into the water below.
Jack glanced at the man beside him, who
stared at the water with a kind of dull drunkenness, then loosened his grip on
the railing. The water was only a few feet below him now. Taking a deep breath,
he let go just as the ship disappeared beneath the water.
*****
Rose watched in frozen horror as the
unsinkable ship disappeared beneath the waves. The Titanic was gone forever—but
it was soon replaced by the screams and thrashing of over a thousand people in
the water, their screams carrying across the night, begging the boats to come
back and save them.
Rose lurched to the feet again, sure that she
heard Jack’s voice among them. "We have to go back!" she cried.
"We have to help them!"
"We can’t go back," the burly
seaman told her, motioning for her to sit back down. "They’ll swamp the
boat, pull us straight down with them."
"We don’t have room," added a
passenger, looking around the small boat.
"We do have room!" Rose insisted.
"We could fit a few more people into this boat."
"Which ones?" the seaman asked her.
"All of them want to get into a boat. They’d be all over us."
"We could row around the outside and
pick up the ones strong enough to make it that far," Rose suggested. Jack
was a survivor. Surely he would be able to swim that far.
"No," the seaman told her firmly.
"We’re not going back."
"But—"
"No!" He glared at her, daring her
to challenge him again.
Rose sank back onto her seat, shaking. She didn’t
know what to do.
*****
Jack struggled against the suction as the
ship headed for the ocean floor. His ears hurt from being pulled so deep, and
his body was slammed against other people as all of them, alive or dead, were
whirled and tossed by the swirling vortex.
Jack’s breath was knocked from him as someone
slammed into him from behind, but he kept struggling, desperate to reach the
surface before he breathed in the water. Freezing was a bad way to die, of that
he was sure, but it beat drowning. At least on the surface, he had a chance.
In the swirling darkness, Jack wasn’t sure
which way was up, but he tried to swim anyway, hoping that he was heading for
the surface. He seemed to have been underwater a very long time, and he had
involuntarily breathed in a little of the salt water, but the pressure on his
ears seemed to be easing, giving him hope that he was near the surface.
Suddenly, he was above the water, and he drew
in a deep breath of the cold air, choking and gagging as he coughed up the
water in his lungs. Around him, people screamed and struggled, trying
desperately to find a way out of the painfully cold water. A fight broke out
over a floating barrel, and a man grabbed a little girl in a lifebelt and
pushed her under the water, trying to climb atop her in his desperation to be
out of the water.
Jack reacted instinctively. He was at a great
disadvantage, and he knew it, having no lifebelt to keep him afloat. The heavy
wool coat was soaked, pulling him downward when he stopped for even a moment,
but he couldn’t let the frightened man drown the little girl. He swam towards
them, grabbing the man and punching him several times.
"Get off of her!" he shouted,
pushing the man away. He turned to the girl, stopping when he saw who it was.
"Cora?"
Cora Cartmell looked at Jack, her dark eyes
filled with tears. She coughed hard, spitting out seawater, before she reached
out to him, her tiny voice almost inaudible. "Help!"
"Cora, it’s me. Jack. Do you recognize
me?"
She nodded, grabbing onto him.
"Jack…" she wailed, clinging to him.
"Come on, Cora. We have to find some way
to get out of the water." He grabbed her lifebelt, but almost went under
as the heavy coat pulled him down. For a moment, he considered taking it off,
but knew that he would be even more at the mercy of the bitter cold without it.
It may have been wet, but at least wool was warm when wet—anyone who came from
a cold climate knew that. Without it, death was certain.
Cora screamed, grabbing his arm as he began
to sink downwards. He struggled back up, wrapping both arms around her
lifebelted form and turning her over so that she faced upwards, safe from
breathing in the water. Already clumsy from the cold, he kicked his feet, the
water resisting his heavy shoes as he tried to swim.
In spite of the slowness of his progress,
though, he was slowly moving away from the crowd. Cora looked around, shivering
violently as Jack tried to find something to get them out of the water with—or
at least her. Suddenly, she screamed, looking to the side.
Jack looked to see what had frightened her. A
black French bulldog swam toward them, then abruptly changed course, heading
out into the open sea. Beyond that, he saw a something floating—something that
appeared to be a large piece of wood.
He headed for it. Cora was crying, frightened
by the dog, but he didn’t have time to stop and comfort her. He had to get them
out of the water as soon as possible.
When he reached the piece of wood—a piece of
paneling that had broken free from the sinking ship and bobbed to the surface
then the ship went down—he hefted Cora onto it, then climbed on himself. The
wood tilted precariously, almost dumping them back into the water, before he
centered himself and Cora and steadied it. It would have been too small for two
adults, and was almost too small for an adult and a small child, but at least
it got them out of the water.
He pulled Cora close, trying to share what
little warmth he had left with her. She was still crying, frightened both by
the dog and by everything else that had happened that night.
"Monster…he’s gonna come get us…"
she sobbed, clinging to Jack.
"No…no, Cora. That wasn’t a monster,
that was a dog. It won’t hurt you."
"Don’t like doggies…"
"He won’t come back. He went away out there."
Jack pointed, trying to convince Cora that she was safe—from that threat, at
least.
"I’m cold."
"I know, Cora. I’m cold, too. We just
have wait for the boats to come back, okay? They had to row away from the
suction, but now they’ll be getting ready to come back and get us," Jack
told her, hoping that it was true. The screams from the water were lessening,
but he saw no sign of any boats coming back.
"Where’s my daddy?" Cora asked.
"Jack, where’s my daddy?"
"I don’t know, Cora." He felt his
heart clench at the thought of the child losing her father—he knew that she had
lost her mother before she and father had set sail on the ship. If he survived,
he vowed, he would help her look for her father, and if he was gone—he would do
his best to take care of her himself. He knew what it was like to be left alone
in the world, and she was too little to be left alone.
"He’s drownded," Cora told Jack
almost matter-of-factly, in a tone of voice that told him that she didn’t
understand what had happened.
"How do you know he’s drowned,
Cora?"
"We was at the gates and we couldn’t get
through ‘cause it was stuck, and a big wave of water came up and drownded him.
And I couldn’t find him, but I found a hole in the wall and climbed into it,
and the water didn’t come with me, and then I got into a room, and a mean lady
grabbed my hand and made me go outside. She said we needed a boat, but I wanted
to find Daddy. There weren’t no boats, either, and she falled into the water
and drownded, just like Daddy, and I ain’t seen ‘em at all. And the water
drownded me, too, and then that mean man tried get me, and then you got me, but
I still want my daddy."
Jack looked at Cora sadly, knowing how little
a chance there was that Bert Cartmell had survived, but he didn’t tell her
that. She had enough to think about, with them lying on a piece of wood and
nearly frozen, and the boats showing no sign of coming back.
"We’ll look for him, Cora, after we’re
rescued. Okay?"
"When will that be?"
"I don’t know, Cora. Soon, I hope."
*****
Rose sat huddled in the boat, her coat
wrapped around her feet. The screams had died down in the water beyond, with
only a few faint cries for help still echoing across the water. None of the
boats had made any attempt to go back. She could see them congregating about
fifty feet away, bumping together loudly as flashlights lit the scene. Many of
the boats were less than half-full, while a few hundred yards away, the faint
cries for help grew fainter.
"I don’t think there’s enough of them
left to swamp the boat," she told the seaman in charge of the lifeboat.
"Can’t we please go back?"
He shook his head. "I’m not going to
risk it. Besides, most of them are steerage, anyway. They knew the risks of
riding on a ship."
A few steerage passengers gasped, their gazes
growing hostile as they stared at the crewman. Rose stiffened, her eyes
flashing angrily.
"They have as much right to live as
anyone else," she told him. "And they didn’t know the risks. Everyone
thought the ship was unsinkable."
"Lady, there’s no such thing as an
unsinkable ship," the crewman replied, unmoved by her plea.
"Obviously!" Rose snapped.
"But it was advertised as unsinkable. We all boarded this ship in good
faith, and now look at us!"
A few women nodded, agreeing with her.
Another woman spoke up in a timid voice.
"I think my husband is out there.
Perhaps we could row around the outside like she said…"
"No!" the crewman snapped, tired of
having his authority questioned. "We are not going anywhere."
"Yes, we are," Rose informed him,
her patience at an end. "Didn’t you hear her say that her husband is
probably out there? How can we let any more people die?"
"Young lady, I am in charge of this
boat—"
"Then take us back! Take us back, or
I’ll have your job!"
He just looked at her, snorting
contemptuously.
"I will," Rose insisted, her voice
taking on its most snobby upper class tone. "My name is Rose DeWitt
Bukater, fiancée of Caledon Hockley, who even now might be out there waiting to
be rescued. He’s a powerful man, sir, and I wouldn’t cross him."
"If he’s out there, he’s probably dead
by now."
"His family is very powerful. Hockley
Steel contributed several tons of steel to the Titanic’s construction."
Rose didn’t like Cal, but she was willing to use his name to get the seaman to
take them back—even though she was no longer engaged to him. And if they did
find Cal, she would pull him into the boat. No one deserved such a horrible
death, not even him.
The crewman glanced at her, torn between her
threat—which very well might cost him his job—and the need to protect the
passengers in the small boat.
Finally, he sighed, taking up an oar, after
he saw that Rose and a few of the other women had already done so. "All
right, miss. We’ll go back."
*****
The boat moved slowly across the water, the
oars thumping against the sides of the boat in the hands of the inexperienced
women. As they reached the periphery of the area that the victims had spread
out into, it became apparent that there were few survivors. Most of the people
they saw were dead, frozen to death in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.
Still, Rose did not give up hope. Jack was a
survivor. Hadn’t he told her himself that he had survived falling through thin
ice on Lake Wissota when he was a boy? And he had been on his own for a long
time, sleeping under bridges and the like. No doubt he had grown used to the
cold, at least to some extent.
She scanned the bodies as they passed them,
doing their best not to hit them with their oars, but she didn’t see Jack among
them. In one way, she was relieved—he wasn’t among the dead that she saw—but in
another, not finding him filled her with even more anxiety. Where was he? Was
he safe in a boat? Was he somewhere out in the dark water, too far away for her
to see? Or had he drowned when the ship went down, pulled down into a watery
grave from which his body might never be recovered?
Rose shuddered at the thought, resolutely
pushing it from her mind. There were so many people on the surface, he had to
be among them—or safe in a lifeboat.
In spite of their best efforts, the oars
thumped against the bodies in the water. One woman fainted, dropping her oar
with a splash. Two other women moved to tend to her, while the others moved
grimly on, searching among the bodies for survivors.
Rose gasped in shock as a man who had
appeared dead suddenly opened his eyes and grabbed onto the edge of the boat,
tipping it precariously. Several women screamed, both at the shocking sight and
from the fear that the boat would overturn.
The crewman in charge of the boat leaned
forward, grabbing the man’s hands with the help of some of the women and
pulling him into the boat, where he sat soaked, shivering, and smelling
strongly of liquor. The seaman stared at him, shaking his head in disgust at
the sodden form of Baker Joughin, the same notorious drunk who had shared his
liquor with Jack on the stern.
They moved forward slowly, their spirits
falling at the sight of so many dead. Rose was beginning to wish that she
hadn’t insisted that they go back when a faint whimpering was heard from
nearby. They turned toward it, and found a small baby still cradled in the arms
of its dead mother. The infant was nearly frozen itself, but still had enough
life in it to cry.
One of the women leaned forward and pried the
baby from its dead mother’s arms, wrapping it in her shawl and rocking it
gently. The others stared, a bit of hope returning. If a baby could survive,
why not someone else?
They had nearly reached the other side of the
vast lake of bodies when one of the little girls who had been placed in the
boat by their father screamed and lurched forward, reaching for someone in the
water. "Daddy!" she screamed, nearly tumbling overboard.
"Daddy!"
Her mother grabbed her back as her sister
began to wail, pressing both girls’ heads against her shoulders and covering
their eyes. "Don’t look, darlings. Don’t look," she begged, turning
her head away from the sight of her dead husband.
Rose looked down, her eyes widening at the
sight of the man who had put his wife and daughters into the boat, telling them
that it would be good-bye for a little while…only for a little while. He, too,
had perished in the sinking, and the little while had become a lifetime.
The girls were still screaming and sobbing
when the crewman turned to the women, many of whom sat frozen in shock and
misery, and told them that they were going back to the rest of the boats. No
one objected. There didn’t seem to be any point in searching further, not after
what they had seen.
Rose moved her oar dully through the water,
her head bowed. They hadn’t found Jack. If he was among the dead, she wouldn’t
know until a survivors’ list was posted. But if he was alive in one of the
boats, safe and dry, she might find him while they waited for rescue, or see
him on the rescue ship.
She closed her eyes, unable to bear the sight
of the bodies in the water any longer. She couldn’t let herself hope, only to
be disappointed. Very few third class men had made it to a boat, and she
couldn’t count upon Jack being one of them.
Her eyes closed and her thoughts turned
inward, Rose failed to notice the motionless forms lying on a piece of wood as
they passed by—or that one of them lifted its head and tried to call out. She
did hear the shouts of an officer on an another boat as he went back to search
for survivors. But even this didn’t encourage her to open her eyes. She knew
that his efforts would be in vain.
*****
"Is anyone alive out there? Can anyone
hear me?"
Jack lifted his head again as a second lifeboat
moved through the water searching for survivors. Another boat had passed by
just a few minutes earlier, but no one on the boat had seen them floating on
the piece of wood, or heard his faint cry for help.
Jack looked at Cora, who lay still and silent
on the board, her eyes closed. His heart sank at the sight, as he realized that
she had probably died. But he couldn’t abandon her without knowing for sure.
Lifting her head, Jack winced at the sound of
her frozen hair ripping free of the wood. He put his hand in front of her
mouth, not expecting to feel anything, but hoping against hope that she might
still be alive, that she might still be breathing.
Just as he was about to give up hope, he felt
a puff of air, slightly warmer than the surrounding environs, and saw the steam
of the little girl’s breath rising into the air. Filled with renewed hope, he
wrapped his arms around her and rolled off the piece of paneling and back into
the icy water. Cora whimpered slightly, even in her unconscious state, and Jack
tried to move his frozen limbs in the direction of the lifeboat, which was even
now moving away from them.
In despair, Jack stopped, knowing that he
could never catch up with it, and that his voice was too frozen to let them
know that they were there. He looked around, hoping to see
something—anything—that he might use to alert the people in the boat to his
presence.
He finally saw it. Just a short distance
away, an officer clung to a piece of wood, frozen to death. His whistle was
still in his mouth, gleaming faintly in the starlight. Kicking his legs and
swimming awkwardly, trying to keep Cora’s head above the water, Jack made his
way to the dead officer.
Pulling the icy whistle from the officer’s
lips, Jack blew on it, faintly at first, then louder and louder. He heard a
voice echo across the water. "Come about!"
Clinging to both Cora and the whistle, Jack
refused to let go of either until they were safely in the boat.
*****
Rose sat huddled in the lifeboat, her feet
tucked beneath her to shield them from the cold. She hugged herself gently,
waiting.
As the first light of morning appeared in the
eastern sky, a ship appeared on the horizon, moving towards them. The surviving
officers and crew members lighted flares, directing the approaching ship to
them.
Rose just sat quietly, too lost in her grief
to react. She had looked over the other boats, but hadn’t seen any sign of
Jack. She had seen Cal and her mother—her mother’s face had been twisted in
misery and Cal had been drinking liquor from a flask offered to him by a
steerage man. But she hadn’t seen Jack, nor had she seen any sign of Fabrizio,
Helga, Cora, or Tommy. It appeared that none of them had survived.
The second rescue boat had come back with
three survivors, one a Chinaman who sat wrapped in a blanket, waiting stoically
with the rest of the survivors for rescue, and the others a pair wrapped in
blankets and huddled together on one of the seats. Rose had looked at them
hopefully, hoping that Jack was there, but the taller figure appeared to be holding
a small child, and Rose saw no reason why Jack would have a child with him. The
taller figure had been swathed in blankets from head to toe, so Rose had
finally looked away, assuming that it was a mother and child who had been saved
from the water.
The infant that they had picked up began to
wail softly. They had feared at first that the baby was too far gone to be
saved, but when it had clung to life, a nursing mother on the boat had fed it,
reviving the infant. She had wrapped the baby up in a large blanket with her
own baby, allowing her own infant to warm the half-frozen child. They had soon
determined that the rescued baby was a boy, and the nursing mother had held
both her own infant daughter and the tiny boy close, rocking them and
comforting them.
Rose looked up as the rescue ship approached,
stopping some fifty yards from them. Rousing herself from her misery, she
picked up an oar and began to help row the tiny lifeboat in the direction of
the only ship that had responded to the Titanic’s pleas for help.
*****
Jack watched as the rescue ship approached,
lit by its own windows and by the flares of the officers and crew members. He
sat quietly as they began rowing towards it, Cora still cradled in his arms.
The girl had not awakened, and her breathing
had grown ever fainter as the night had passed. Jack had continued to hold her
close, but he didn’t have much hope for her survival.
When they reached the ship, he finally let go
of her, allowing her to be lifted up in a sling. He followed her a few minutes
later, too weak from his ordeal to climb the ladder onto the ship.
Once on the safe, solid deck, he stood at the
railing for a few moments, resting, before a stewardess came and picked up
Cora, carrying her towards the ship’s hospital.
Jack followed. He had vowed to take care of
Cora, and he would, whether she recovered or died.
*****
Rose sat in the first class dining saloon,
sipping gratefully at the hot soup and tea she had been served. She was cold,
hungry, and exhausted, but she couldn’t rest yet. Not until she knew what she
would do.
She looked up, startled, as she saw Cal and
her mother enter the room, deep in conversation. As they passed amongst the
groups of huddled survivors, she strained to listen, wanting to know what they
were talking about.
"I will search for her, Ruth, if you
want me to."
Ruth stopped, shaking her head. "No, Mr.
Hockley. I know that Rose is alive and well…I saw her boarding the Carpathia
only an hour ago. I’ve no doubt that she knows we are alive as well, or least
that I am alive. If she chooses to come to me, she knows where to find me. If
not—she’s made her decision. It is her life, and she will do as she
chooses."
"Ruth, I must insist…"
"No. Rose made her decision last night.
Whatever she does now is up to her, and I will not allow you to interfere. Is
this in any way unclear?"
Cal stared at Ruth for a moment, unable to
believe what he was hearing. Then he sighed, resigned.
"All right, Ruth. You’re right, Rose has
made her decision—and I won’t try to stop her."
Rose looked down at her soup, her surprise at
what she had just heard surpassed only by her indecision. Should she go them,
now that Jack was gone? The wedding was off, of course, but she could return to
her old life with her mother.
She looked up as Cal turned and walked away.
Her eyes met her mother’s briefly, and then Ruth nodded to her and turned away,
too. It was true. Whatever Rose did next was up to her, and no one would
interfere with her life or with her dreams again.
*****
Rose slowly made her way down to steerage. A
few people gawked at her, staring at her expensive clothing, but she ignored
them, making her way to a bench and settling down. Jack might be gone, but here
she felt closer to him. She might even stay, if she so chose.
But now her exhaustion was overcoming her.
Lying down on the bench, she ignored the hardness of the wood as she closed her
eyes.
*****
Rose awakened abruptly, surprised to find
that she had slept the day away. The sun was growing low in the sky as she sat
up, her muscles screaming in protest from the unaccustomed exertion of the past
twenty-four hours and from the hardness of the bench.
Rubbing her eyes, she got up and began to
walk slowly through the steerage area, her head bowed as she passed groups of
grieving women and children, a few men among them. She wished that she could go
to them and join in their sorrow, for she, too, had lost the man she loved—but
somehow it didn’t seem right. These women had lost husbands, brothers,
sons—some of them had lost their entire families—and it seemed almost obscene
for her to be mourning so strongly for a man that she had only known for three
days.
Without anything else to do, Rose kept
walking, wandering through the steerage area and up to the ship’s hospital in
second class. She had seen the woman who had cared for the rescued baby walking
in that direction, so perhaps she could stop and see how the baby was doing and
if they thought it would survive.
When she reached the hospital, Rose opened
the door quietly and slipped inside. She walked past the babies first, smiling
when she saw the rescued boy sleeping soundly, his tiny backside sticking up in
the air as he snuggled beneath a warm blanket. She saw the woman who had
rescued him and the woman who had nursed him sitting nearby, watching him
sleep, and smiled softly at them, communicating her happiness that the baby had
survived.
Walking onward, Rose looked at the other
patients, wondering if she knew any of them. She stopped short when she saw the
tiny, black-haired girl in the last bed, a blonde-haired man wrapped in
blankets watching over her.
Rose stared at them, unable to believe her
eyes. There was no doubt that the little girl was Cora Cartmell, and the man
looked like—Jack! But that impossible. She had looked for him, and hadn’t seen
him—unless he had been the blanket-wrapped figure she had seen in the second
rescue boat, the one she had thought to be the child’s mother.
Taking a deep breath, Rose walked towards
them. "Jack?" she whispered, putting her hand on the shoulder of the
man.
Jack turned, startled, as he heard Rose’s
voice. He stared at her, his eyes wide with shock, as though he couldn’t
believe that she was there. "Rose?" His voice was hoarse from his
ordeal the night before.
Rose looked at him, her eyes full of love and
relief. He looked terrible, pale and red-eyed from the hypothermia, and still
shivering in spite of the blankets wrapped around him, but it was definitely
Jack. He had survived.
"Jack…" Rose threw her arms around
him. "I thought you’d died. We went back to look for survivors, but we
didn’t find you, and then another rescue boat went out, but I didn’t see you
there, either. The only people I saw in the other boat were a Chinaman and
someone wrapped in blankets and cradling a child. Was that you?"
Jack put his arms around her. "Yeah,
that was me."
Rose blushed, a little embarrassed. "I
thought you were the child’s mother."
Jack laughed a little, the laugh ending in a
cough. He gave her a grin. "Rose, you know I can’t be a mother."
Rose giggled a little, blushing even more.
"Yes, I know—especially after last night."
It was Jack’s turn to blush, but before he
could say anything, a little voice came from the bed beside them.
"Jack? Rose? Where’s my daddy?"
"Cora!" Jack knelt down beside her,
his eyes filled with relief. Even after she had been taken to the ship’s hospital,
he hadn’t been sure that she would live. But now it looked like she would.
"Jack…where’s my daddy?"
Jack shook his head sadly. "He isn’t
here, Cora." Bert Cartmell had not been on any of the survivors’ lists.
"Can you go get him?"
"No, Cora." Jack sat down beside
her, trying to comfort her. "He isn’t on the ship."
"Where is he?"
"In heaven, I think."
"Oh." Cora looked at him sleepily,
digesting this fact. After all that had happened the night before, this was
more than she could comprehend, so she just nodded. "Okay. Daddy’s in
heaven." She closed her eyes, dozing off again.
Jack looked at Rose. He had expected tears
and protests from Cora, but she didn’t seem to understand what had happened.
Rose sat down beside them.
"She’ll understand eventually," she
assured Jack. "But she’s so little, and last night was horrible for all of
us…just give her time. I didn’t understand at first when my father died—and I
was fifteen years old. It took a while for it to sink in, but when it did…then
I cried for him."
"I was in shock for a while when my
parents died, too," Jack admitted. "But I don’t remember being so
calm about it."
"She’s little, Jack. She sees things a
different way. She’ll understand one day—and she’ll be all right. I’m sure of
it."
*****
Jack, Rose, and Cora huddled together on the
deck as the Carpathia made its way toward Pier 54. The Statue of Liberty loomed
over them, a beacon of light in the pouring rain.
Jack stared at the statue, realizing that
this was the first time he had been back in America in two and a half years. He
was returning older and wiser, with Rose at his side and Cora in his care. None
of his friends had survived the sinking. It was a miracle that even he and Cora
had survived.
Rose looked at the statue with new appreciation,
understanding now how all the immigrants coming to America to be free felt when
they saw it. She was free now, her old life behind her. Her mother knew that
she was alive, but accepted that Rose was ready to make her own way in the
world now. She might go back to visit, but never again would she be locked into
the gilded cage that her life had been before.
An officer approached them, making one last
list of the survivors before they disembarked. "Can I take your names,
please?" he asked, approaching the small group.
Jack looked at Rose, not sure if she wanted
him to answer for her or not. They had been together since they had been
reunited on the Carpathia, but what would happen after they left? Rose was
strong-willed and independent, and she didn’t need him. He loved her, but would
she want to leave the ship with him? He was responsible for a small child now,
a child who was beginning to realize that she would never see her father again,
and he didn’t know if she was ready for that responsibility.
"Jack Dawson," he began. "Cora
Cartmell, and…"
"Rose Dawson," Rose interjected,
her heart pounding. What would Jack think of her taking his name?
"Rose?" Jack’s face was incredulous
as the officer moved on to the next group of survivors.
"I said that I was getting off the ship
with you, and I meant it. I’m getting off with you, even if it is a different
ship than we expected."
Jack opened his mouth, then closed it, at a
loss for words to tell her how much that meant to him. Finally, he just leaned
forward and kissed her, whispering, "I love you."
"I love you, too, Jack," Rose
whispered back, returning the kiss with a love she had never thought she would
feel.
Cora wrapped her arms around their legs,
looking up at them. "Jack? Rose?"
They stopped, reaching down and picking her
up, and hugging her between them.
"Am I going with you?" Cora wanted
to know, clinging to both of them.
"Yes, Cora. You’re going with us,"
Rose assured her, hugging the girl and smiling at Jack.
"Are you gonna be my mommy and
daddy?"
"Yes," Jack told her, pulling both
Cora and Rose into his embrace. "We will be."
Cora smiled, hugging them both, then snuggled
comfortably against them as the ship made its way to the pier, carrying them to
their new life.
The End.