For the next two and a half days, Rose fought against pneumonia, struggling deliriously to breathe, while Jack, in spite of suffering from a bad cold after his exposure to the icy water, stayed at her side constantly.
As the days passed, Rose’s fever stayed almost steadily at one hundred four degrees, sometimes dropping slightly from the effects of aspirin and bathing with cool water, but always returning to the same dangerously high level.
Jack sat beside her as much as he could, fighting his own cold and the resulting exhaustion to tend to her. He washed her face with water drawn from the icy Atlantic, helping to lower her fever from time to time, and had even unbuttoned the nightgown a Carpathia passenger had loaned her in order to wash her down more thoroughly—although that attempt had been quickly stopped by Nurse Bittner, who had been horrified at what she saw as his attempt to improperly touch the delirious woman.
Jack often sat with her on her cot, holding her up against his own body so that she could breathe more easily, and when Rose was lucid enough to realize he was there, she clung to him, evidently terrified of her struggle to breathe, while Jack did his best to reassure her that she would be all right—though he wasn’t entirely certain he believed it himself. He helped her to drink sips of water, tea, and broth, and encouraged her to cooperate with the doctor and nurse, although, in her frequent delirium, Rose repeatedly mistook Dr. Thompson for Cal, cringing and trying to hide from him, and when Nurse Bittner tried to give her medicine, she often spit it out, not realizing that the bitter drugs might help her.
Even when Dr. Thompson, Nurse Bittner, or one of the volunteers succeeded in getting Jack to lie down and rest for a while, his thoughts were never far from Rose. He wondered why it was that she was far more ill from her exposure to the cold than he was, even though she had been wearing a warm coat and a lifebelt and had been able to get up onto the piece of debris and out of the water.
He himself had had no coat, since the one he had "borrowed" had been taken from him and he had had no chance to go back to his room to get his own coat—although from what Fabrizio had told him, any attempt to go back to their room would have been foolhardy in the extreme, as the room had flooded not long after the Titanic had struck the iceberg. In retrospect, Jack realized that he should have kept the blanket Cal had taken from Rose when he had given her his coat, but he hadn’t thought about it at the time, not with his efforts to coax Rose into the boat, and then his frantic race after her when she had jumped out of the lifeboat and back onto the sinking ship. In truth, a blanket would probably have been lost in the sinking, and would probably have impeded his efforts to swim to the surface had he been able to hold onto it, but after the bitter chill of the North Atlantic, he wished he had had something to help warm him.
In spite of his lack of a coat and lifebelt, and having to remain in the water because there wasn’t enough room on the piece of debris for both of them, Rose was suffering now far more than he was. He shuddered to think of the condition she would be in now had she not had the coat and lifebelt and the piece of debris to keep her out of the water, and could only conclude that the reason for his suffering less from the effects of exposure than Rose was that he had been toughened by many a cold night spent outside in whatever place he could find to sleep, while she had always had a warm bed to sleep in and warm clothes to wear when it was cold. Jack had developed a tolerance for the cold, while Rose had not.
*****
In the mid-afternoon on April eighteenth, Rose’s fever finally broke. Her cough lessened and her breathing grew easier, and she soon fell into an exhausted sleep, waking near sunset to find Jack holding her hand and dozing in his chair beside her.
"Jack?" Rose whispered his name, reaching with her free hand to touch his face.
Jack awoke at her touch, looking down to see her looking at him clearly for the first time since she had come into the infirmary and discovered his presence.
"Rose, how are you feeling?"
Rose looked at him, slightly confused. "Jack, you’re here. You’re really here…it wasn’t a dream, was it?"
"No, Rose. I’m really here."
"I thought you were dead." Rose felt her eyes start to fill with tears and blinked hard, embarrassed.
"I’ve been beside you for the past three days. You fell on me when the nurse was trying to get you into a bed…and I’ve been beside you ever since. Don’t you remember?"
"I…I remember falling on someone and thinking it was you, but…I wasn’t sure it wasn’t all a dream. I thought you were here, too, when I couldn’t breathe…but it’s all a blur. Nothing makes sense."
"I’m here, Rose. You weren’t dreaming. You’ve been really sick, though…pneumonia. I was afraid you wouldn’t make it. Your fever just broke a few hours ago, and you’ve been sleeping ever since."
Rose struggled to sit up, reaching out a hand to touch Jack’s face when she finally succeeded. "You’re not well yourself."
Jack shrugged, reaching for a handkerchief and blowing his nose, looking at Rose apologetically. "It’s just a cold."
"You need to take care of yourself before it becomes something worse."
"I’ll be all right. I’m a survivor, remember?"
"Nevertheless…" Rose stopped, vaguely remembering something from her delirium. "Jack, was Cal here?"
"He hasn’t been here, Rose, although you mistook the doctor for him several times."
Rose turned red. "What…what did I say to him?"
"Mostly you just coughed and tried to hide under the sheet, although once you begged him to put the gun away."
"Gun?"
"It was a syringe, actually. You kept spitting out your medicine, so he gave you a shot instead."
"Oh…" Rose buried her face in her hands. "Does…does he really look much like Cal?"
"See for yourself…he’s coming over here."
Dr. Thompson stopped beside Rose’s cot. "It’s good to see you awake, Miss…"
Rose glanced at Jack, then back at Dr. Thompson. "Dawson. Rose Dawson." She glanced at Jack again, then turned her attention back to the doctor, fidgeting in embarrassment. "Dr. Thompson? I…I apologize for…for what I said…earlier. You…"
"It’s all right, Miss Dawson. Delirious people don’t always make sense." He glanced at Jack. "Mr. Dawson, if you would be so kind as to return to your own bed, I need to examine Miss…erm…" He looked at them, wondering what their relationship was.
"She’s my cousin," Jack quickly prevaricated.
"I see." Dr. Thompson looked skeptical, but nodded, gesturing to Nurse Bittner to put a privacy screen between Rose’s cot and Jack’s.
Rose sat quietly as Dr. Thompson examined her, still embarrassed at mistaking him for Cal. He really didn’t resemble Cal that much…he had dark hair and eyes, but his face was much sharper and he sported a handlebar mustache, while Cal was clean-shaven. She couldn’t believe she had made such a mistake—and not just once, but several times. To be sure, she was afraid of Cal—after all, he had tried to kill Jack and herself on the sinking Titanic—but she must have been truly out of her head to mistake the doctor who was trying to help her for the man who had tried to kill her.
Dr. Thompson finished his examination and allowed her button her nightgown back up. "Well, Miss Dawson, it looks like you are on your way to recovery. One of your lungs is almost clear, while the other sounds much better than it did even a few hours ago, and your temperature is back to normal. I do want you find a place to stay as soon as the ship docks in a couple of hours and rest for a few days…let your body tell you when you’re ready to resume your normal activities. With rest, and if you stay warm and dry, you should be fine."
Rose thanked Dr. Thompson, and he left, going to tend to the next patient. Nurse Bittner removed the privacy screen, taking it to the next patient. When Rose lay down, she turned her head to see Jack looking at her with an odd expression on his face.
"What?" she asked, forgetting for the moment what she had called herself.
"Rose Dawson?" Jack raised an eyebrow at her.
"What else was I to call myself?"
"Rose DeWitt Bukater, maybe?"
Rose shook her head vehemently. "No. That’s my old name, part of my old life. I can’t go back to it…not after what Cal did while the ship was sinking. He has a violent temper, and we badly wounded his pride. He’ll kill me if I go back to him."
"You don’t know that, Rose. He may have been acting out of anger…"
"He most certainly was…but his pride won’t let him back down. He’ll kill me if I go back to him…and Mother will make me go back to him if I return to my old life. This marriage was to have been her financial security. No." Rose shook her head. "I’ll take another name if you don’t want me sharing yours…but I won’t be Rose DeWitt Bukater again. She died with the Titanic…and I’m starting a new life."
"Rose…you can keep the name. I don’t mind…though I’ll admit I never expected to give my name to someone this way." He got up, sitting on the edge of her cot and pulling her into his arms. "I’d like to come with you and be part of your new life…if you’ll let me."
Rose looked up at him, a smile lighting her face. "Of course you can…didn’t I say I was getting off the ship with you?"
"Yeah…yeah, you did."
"Jack, I…" Rose stopped, realizing that his attention was no longer focused on her. Looking up, she followed his gaze to see what he was staring at.
Cal stood in the doorway of the infirmary, watching them.