Rose awoke abruptly, still curled up on the hard wooden bench. The blanket she had been given when she had boarded the Carpathia was still wrapped around her, but was damp now from the seawater soaking her coat and dress.
She sat up slowly, looking around. It was growing late; the first hints of sunset were appearing in the sky. She had slept most of the day.
Pulling the blanket up to hide her matted red curls, Rose drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around them and resting her head on her knees. She looked around again, taking in the groups of mostly women and children scattered around the steerage deck. Some were crying, while others sat numbly, as though they didn’t quite know what was happening. One small group slept in a heap on the deck—a man, a woman, and a tiny infant. The man was incongruously clad in a tattered dress and damp shawl—obviously, he had sneaked aboard a lifeboat dressed as a woman.
Watching the little family as they slept peacefully, Rose couldn’t blame him. She wished that she had thought of that—she could have taken off her dress and insisted that Jack wear it—she would still have had her undergarments on for modesty—and given him the blanket to cover his head with. Then he could have gotten into the lifeboat with her. If he had, she would never have jumped out of the boat, and they would never have ended up in the cold, dark sea.
Rose pulled her knees closer to her chest, shivering as she thought of her dream. It had seemed so vivid, so real. She had almost believed that Jack really was alive and well, that they had found each other on the rescue ship.
But it wasn’t true, and it never would be. Jack was gone. When a lifeboat had finally come back, searching for survivors, she had tried to awaken him—to no avail. She had wanted to give up then and die with him—but then she had remembered her promise, and she had known that she had to survive. She couldn’t let Jack down after all he had done for her.
So she had let him go, watching as he sank into the water and disappeared. She had taken a whistle from a nearby dead officer and used it to alert the rescuers to her presence—and that was the last thing she knew until she had opened her eyes to see the officer in her boat waving a flare to show the rescue ship their location.
Tears came to her eyes for the first time since she had realized Jack was gone, and suddenly she was sobbing, burying her face in the blanket and trying not disturb anyone. She had always been taught that such strong emotions were to be expressed only in private, but now—now she couldn’t help it. Her grief ran too deep. It had to be expressed.
Rose’s chest tightened painfully as she wept, a deep cough erupting, but couldn’t stop crying. Her tears wouldn’t stop until her grief had eased.
*****
Jack lay in the infirmary, wrapped in blankets and still shivering. He had been brought there that morning after being raised onto the rescue ship in a sling—he had been too weak from exposure and shivering too hard to manage the climb. One of the Carpathia stewards had helped him to the infirmary, where he had drunk a cup of hot broth and then fallen asleep under several layers of blankets.
Now, he struggled to sit up, looking around. Most of the other beds were occupied, mostly by Titanic survivors. He looked over the faces, hoping to see Rose, but there was no sign of her.
What could have happened to her? he wondered. She promised that she would survive, didn’t she? I made her promise. I’m sure of it.
He thought hard, his memory fuzzy. He remembered finding a piece of wreckage and helping Rose onto it, and he vaguely remembered extracting a promise from Rose that she would survive—but that was the last thing he remembered before being helped aboard the Carpathia.
Where was Rose? Had she rescued him? Had he rescued her? She had to be alive—she’d promised. But then, if the cold had been too much for her, she would have died, promise or no promise.
But how could she be dead? She had been on the piece of wreckage, out of the water, and she had been wearing Cal’s warm coat. He was alive, and he had been in the water and wearing no coat at all. Since he was alive, she had to be, too.
But where was she, then? Had she gone back to first class? Perhaps, after the trauma of the sinking, she had decided she wanted nothing to do with him and life on the edge. She might be there now, safe and warm with Cal and her mother.
He shook his head. No, she wouldn’t have gone back to Cal. He more than anyone knew how she loathed him, how desperate she had been to get away from him. But there was no guarantee that Cal had survived—Jack had his doubts about Cal’s "arrangement." With a certainty, though, Ruth DeWitt Bukater had survived, and Rose might be with her.
The fastest way to find out if Rose had survived, and if so, where she was, would be to check a survivor’s list, but he didn’t know where he might find one, or if one had even been completed yet. He didn’t know how many people had survived or how many had died—or even how many had been on the ship in the first place.
Jack lay back down, pulling the blankets more tightly around himself. He wasn’t as cold anymore—in fact, a quick hand to his forehead made him suspect that he was growing feverish. Still, he was in no condition to go wandering around the ship, searching for someone who might not be there or who might not want to see him.
His eyes drooped wearily as he lay back against the thin mattress. There was no way he could go in search of Rose now—he could only hope that she was alive and keeping her promise.