"I'll play it first and tell you what it is later."
~Miles Davis
"One of the things I like about jazz, kid, is I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?"
~Bix Beiderbecke
The woman gasps awake, her eyes flying wide. For an instant, she thinks that she sees someone hovering over her-but when she blinks, there is only the white, wide sky.
She breathes in. The air tastes like salt. She breathes out. Her legs feel weighed down. Deep breath in. She slowly turns her head to the right, her dark hair swinging into her face and grit rubbing against her cheek. Her eyes search in front of her. Before her stretches what appears to be a completely deserted beach. She breathes out a small, choked laugh.
She struggles up onto her elbows and considers her lower half. She is buried up to her thighs in the sand. The movement causes her pain, and she winces in surprise. I'm hurt, she thinks.
There's something important she needs to remember. She needs to get out, get away from here. Leaning forward, she starts to dig herself out of the the sand as fast as she can. She wonders what she was thinking when she chose to wear a black suit and white blouse to the beach. She can't remember what she was thinking. She can't remember how she got here. As she struggles to her feet, she thinks, a pin skirt suit to the beach. How had she chosen this outfit? How did the clothes stay so nice? Nothing makes sense. Nothing seems right.
Maybe we're being punished.
The words come from somewhere within, some fuzzy memory that she tries to grasp onto but feels disappear before she can reach it.
As if to answer a question, a small silver gleam winks up at her from the sand. She reaches for it. It looks like a class ring. She holds it and reads: DS.
DS. David Sawyer, her husband. This was David's ring. They had been on a plane. Something had gone wrong. They had crashed...
They had...crashed. She turns around in a wide circle, horror dawning. She has to find it. She has to get there. She starts running down the beach as fast as she can, stumbling along the way. As she rounds an outcrop of rock, it is as if her ears suddenly began to work. A cacophony of sounds blast at her, engines and people screaming. She scans the crowd, looking for David, but she doesn't see him. As she runs out into the chaos, she pushes aside thoughts of David. She will find him later. This was her element. This was her job. She saved people. She had work to do.
She races forward and grabs the arm of a young pregnant woman, pulling her away from a dangerously teetering wing. "Let's get you safe."
"You!" she shouts to a nearby dazed man who was looking around in awe. He has shaggy brown hair and a slightly pudgy build. She thrusts the curly haired woman at him. "Take care of her."
He blinks stupidly, then reaches for the pregnant girl and pulls her to over to his side. Almost instinctively, they huddle together.
She motions them away from the wreckage. For a few seconds they stand blinking in shock, but then they begin to move. She turns around and notices what appeared to be a man botching a job at CPR on an older gentleman. She starts to race over to intervene, when...
"Wait! What's your name?" the woman callsd, hand pressed to her belly.
"ROSE!" she shouts back, pushing her straight black hair out of her face, where it had fallen out of her bun.
My name is Rose.
Author's Note: Let me know if you would like more. I could write other short installments of this alternate series starring Rose.