She Had Made It
She barely felt anything.
It was cold. There was no way Rose couldn't feel that. The weight of ice in her hair, the sting of icy wind on the very surface of her skin. But nothing penetrated. She hadn't felt her fingers or anything other than the stretching of skin across her bones for hours. Blankets didn't shield her from the chill, warms liquids didn't warm her stomach, her chest or heart. She was cold, empty. Numb.
The surrounding world moved slowly, distantly. Like a dream. Voices echoed, and people smudged as they shifted. The dull, stunned thud of her heart was in someone else's chest, and thoughts came only in convoluted passing.
How long had they all been drifting?
The waves rocked the lifeboat beneath her gently, lulling, somehow blasphemous after the violence of that morning. The darkness was fading into the grey approach of dawn, but the stars were still visible enough to hold her vague stare until her lids sagged shut and all she could see was the green, glowing fire of a waving flare.
When she woke, the early sun haloed an overdue ship looming above them. Her eyes trailed skyward, over the name Carpathia and to the silhouettes of people lining the ship's railing, gawking down at the carnage the Titanic had left behind. They were still, like shadows, like ghosts. Rose moved her gaze eastward and saw the life belted officers straining to row the lifeboats closer, closer to another waiting, scrambling group of their counterparts. She felt diluted deliverance.
She watched, face blank and as white as the sinking moon, as the seamen began to help her fellow survivors up a rope ladder dangling from the Carpathia's gangway doors, from a vesicle of silence. Heartache swaddled her tighter than the blankets around her. She knew the amount of passengers boarding were sufficiently less than those aboard. Just in her boat alone lay four or five others, layered within the blankets, wearing the same grief-stricken face which matched her own. Her memory didn't stretch farther than her own rescue. She had been the last one to be saved from the water, she thought. It had been lifeless after her boarding of the lifeboat. She had watched the sky, not the bodies of those innocent people she had shared a ship with just hours before.
When it came her turn to board the ship, Rose struggled to stand, muscles seizing and body shaking. She took her very first steps for the second time, and used strength which she didn't have to climb the ladder she was cautiously guided to, the lifeboat swaying beneath her feet with every advance. It seemed that she was floating up there and yet, there was a huge weight upon her shoulders as well. Tired, cold, asleep and yet so awake...
When she reached the top, she grabbed reaching hands with both her own, and then her feet found the stability of the gangway. But with her very next step forward, her surroundings went spinning and her body slack with savage infirmity. Rose hardly felt herself falling, nor the impact of the woman's shoulder she collapsed against. Her legs seemed to have ceased use for just those few seconds. She stood only because she was held, and began walking forward again only because she was led.
Blankets appeared around her shoulders, layer after layer, as if by magic, and when she was given a cup of hot tea, Officer Lowe had to manually wrap her fingers around it. Its heat barely touched her. If it was red hot, she didn't feel it.
As she finally went to take a seat on the deck, the air around her stank of desperation and tears. Women begged for news of their husbands, their sons, and their brothers. Children stared with hollow eyes too old for their innocent faces. They didn't understand. No one did. They were all connected now by the devastation. Stranger was not relevant. Class and rank, for the moment, became the fickle thing that they were. As everyone came back to themselves, they became their loss. Her eyes watched those around her who were just as empty as she. Regardless of her own loss, she felt theirs too. The hole in every person stood with her, now stood beside her, begging for an answer.
Then, she thought of her own question; who would she be when she thawed?
Rose closed her eyes as noise and light slowly began to touch her again, and she wondered how she had gotten here. Just a few hours ago, if she went back just a few hours ago, Jack was right there. He was there beside her in the suffocating cold, holding her hand. She could feel his hand in hers. She could see their hot breath, like smoke, intermingling in the dark. How could he be gone? How could it be that she was never going to see him the again? The warmth she felt with him, even amongst the freezing cold waters had kept her going. To the very end she had believed that he would be here with her. We're going to make it, Rose. Trust me? And she had. With every single bone in her body, she had trusted everything about Jack Dawson. She still did.
A tear slipped gently from beneath her lid and slowly traced down the contour of her cheek. If she just went back a few hours, she would be with him again. She needed to be with him.
"Swim, Rose. I need you to swim!" The burn of the cold water was like the burn of fire. The crying, praying, moaning, shouting, and screaming of over a thousand became her own thoughts. People clawed mindlessly at she and Jack as they swam, searching for something, anything floating to get them out of the freezing water. It was as though the once sensible person had been driven utterly mad. The sense of isolation, the sight of nothing but obsidian water, was overwhelming.
Jack wrapped his arms around her waist and sang softly into her ear. "Come Josephine in my flying machine, going up she goes, up she goes…"
Lying on her back, Rose stared glassy-eyed up at the dark sky and felt peaceful, even though she knew she was dying. Her breath was shallow, and her lips barely moved as she sang. "Come Josephine, in my flying machine…"
Unity in their intertwined bodies. His slick skin sliding against hers, both trembling in the back of a Renault, bodies heavy and hot with pleasure.
The tinkling of ice on wood as she broke their frozen hands apart. The cold that bit her lips when she kissed his hand for the last time.
That fraction of a moment when she'd given up, saw no reason to try, to live…
The sound of heavy boots on wood, louder than any of the dim external noises around her, abruptly broke through Rose's reverie. Penetrated. She stiffened.
She would recognise the rhythm of those footsteps anywhere.
"Sir, I don't think you'll find any of your people down here. It's all steerage."
Cal Hockley ignored the steward that apprehended him as he came down the stairs and continued walking, taking in one bleak face after another. He searched the faces of every person lining the deck, looked under tattered shawls and blankets, hoping against hope to find Rose. Be here, he thought. Please.
She couldn't be dead. There was no need for his beloved to have lost her life. She was smarter than that.
The deck of the Carpathia was crowded with huddled people, the recovered lifeboats of the Titanic, and a massive pile of lifebelts that should have been bigger. Over all the tumult, Rose felt each one of Cal's footsteps reverberate through her body like aftershocks from a bomb. Her senses were hyperaware of his every move, and when she heard his swift intake of breath, she knew he had seen her. His footsteps picked up their pace, but all she could do was sit there, rigid with dread as he hurried towards her.
Relief swamped through Cal and thought fled when his eyes finally fell upon the back of Rose's head. He rushed forward.
"Rose!" The word rang with 'Thank God!'
Cal, earnest, wrapped his hand around Rose's shoulder and stepped in front of her.
The face he was met with was not Rose's.
He stared dumbly at the unfamiliar woman, struck silent and still by the startling return of his wretchedness. He backed away from her gradually, trancelike, and continued his search for Rose, heavy. Despondent with reality. He hadn't apologised. The woman had stared at him just as blankly.
Not a few feet away, Rose remained rooted, ignoring relief, wanting to disappear into the woodwork as she listened to Cal walk a little further away, and then turn again, circling back towards her.
As he passed her, she could feel his shadow coast across her back.
What would have happened had it been her he grabbed? With everything that had happened, would everything be forgiven? Would the whole thing be chalked up to cold feet, and go on as if Rose had never created a hitch in their plans? Would she become the fated good little society wife?
No.
She had left that life behind. The temptation had begun as soon as she had entered Jack's world less than twenty-four hours after meeting him. After he had revealed his feelings to her, which she had initially tried to fight away, she had given in and opened herself up to him. She wanted him. She wanted to live. She wanted to be with him.
She would not be a fated social wife.
The moment her eyes snapped open, she realised she was going to fight to live.
As the sound of his footsteps became distant, Rose dared to turn around and watch her old life walk away and from it, she gained some relief.
Later, at nine PM on April 18, 1912, as the Carpathia docked in New York, Rose and the rest of the Titanic's refugees disembarked and stood on solid ground for the first time in eternity. How their lives had changed immeasurably and how no one, no matter how dark, would imagine the turn of events which would happen. A maiden voyage filled with such hope, glory and excitement was now this...dark, grim and full of anger.
Rose lingered on the dock, staring up at the Statue of Liberty, welcoming everyone home with her steadfast majesty. She'd been an undisputed symbol of freedom for many who'd laid eyes upon her. Rose had not expected to be one of them. She'd been brought home in chains, but now they lay broken at Lady Liberty's feet. She was here; free.
She stood there staring for a long time, even as friends, relatives, the press, officers, and ambulances swarmed the dock, then it began to rain, and she was soaked. She'd been wetter. The cold was no longer a new feeling to her, but she didn't shiver. There was a slight warmth ignited within her.
So many people came to this country hoping for a new life. So many on the Titanic that she'd known, people she'd danced with and laughed with, were never going to get that chance now. She and Jack would never get that chance. But he had changed her. Saved her. Loved her. Encouraged. Opened the eyes of a young, naïve virginal bride to be, making her see life as it truly was, in all forms. He had come into a her life when she had contemplated ending it. He had given her a reason to live then, and now.
Could she do it alone?
As if prompted by the universe, an officer with a clipboard and an umbrella approached her. "Can I take your name, please, love?"
Rose looked at him. Destiny was waiting for her answer.
Could she?
"Dawson. Rose Dawson."
Why couldn't she become a woman that stood tall on her own, like Lady Liberty?
Why not? If a mindless insect turned into a beautiful butterfly, then so would she.
She was a woman now.
Eighty-four years later, old Rose sat in her wheelchair before a crowd of seamen and her granddaughter, sharing her story, sharing Jack, for the very first time. He had lived only in her mind and memory for so long that letting him out gave her the freedom, the acknowledgement which he deserved.
She looked down at the jade butterfly hair comb-her favourite as a girl-clutched in her aged hands. That it had been one of the few things recovered from the wreckage seemed very fitting to her. It was like it'd been waiting to return to her all these years, at this very moment. It was an item she never thought she would see again and yet as she held it within her gnarled hands, it felt as though she had never parted from it. Tracing its wings with a gentle finger, Rose smiled as she remembered how she'd always felt an unidentifiable yearning whenever she'd looked at it.
Rose looked at the listeners before her, her eyes bright with wisdom and memories. "Can you exchange one life for another? A caterpillar turns into a butterfly. If a mindless insect can do it, why couldn't I? Was it anymore unimaginable than the sinking of the Titanic?"
She looked back down at the comb, and it was like looking through a time tunnel, at that girl standing on a dock so very long ago, at the woman she had hardly dared to imagine becoming but she had. She had made it.