Just to warn you, this chapter may be a bit bizarre. But bear with me, readers :-)
The doctor frowned in consternation as he inspected the blue-lipped girl before him. Her face held the remnants of great beauty, thrown aside by the throes of sickness. Her cheeks ashen, lips indigo, hair matted and forehead slick. She was still, deathly still most of the time, and his nurse often had to place her fingers before the girl's mouth to see if she was still breathing. And her scary stillness would sporadically be interrupted by uncontrollable bouts of shivering. The girls eyelids would flutter, her teeth chatter, her body convulse. Her lips would move, forming words that would never be spoken.
"What is her name?" The doctor demanded of the nurse.
"Nobody knows, sir. She was found on the pavement in Central Park, out cold. Right after that big storm."
The doctor nodded. Homeless, probably. Who knows what she did for money.
He cleared his throat. No matter; a patient is a patient. Even one of the less reputable breed of society. She was sick. So he would help her. "All right, then. We'll see what we can do."
The doctor stepped back. Just as he feared, her body temperature was far too low. Her breath was coming out far too rapidly and weakly. Whatever words she tried to say were slurred and mumbled.
"She has hypothermia. A bad case of it. How many days ago was she found?"
"Yesterday, sir. A gentleman brought her in, saying he saw her collapse onto the pavement. She hit her head as well, sir."
"Yes, yes, I can see that." The doctor waved his hand in dismissal. Hypothermia cases made him irritable. "And she hasn't woken up since yesterday?"
"No, sir."
"Well, you know what to do. Keep her warm. Make sure she gets some fluids. And come straight to me if she wakes up."
The nurse stopped him, concern plain on her features. "If, sir?"
"Yes, madam. If."
The nurse was worried. The nurse was confused. But most of all, the nurse was afraid.
The sick woman had barely moved since yesterday, when the doctor gave his diagnosis. It was her third day lying there on that cot. Her prospects weren't too bright. The doctor had checked in on the nurse and her charge a few times, only to leave the room shaking his head at the sight of his patients. He gave her one more day at the most. By his prognosis, this would be her last afternoon.
It was a pity, really. The girl was probably no older than twenty. It made the nurse want to cry. She was twenty-two, barely more than a child, already having to deal with more death and disease than she ever would have imagined. She wanted this girl to live. She wanted this sad, homeless girl to have the life she wanted.
With a sigh, the nurse returned to her novel. It was a mystery novel, something deemed improper for women. The doctor would have her head if he knew she was reading a novel—a mystery novel no less—on the job. But what the doctor didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
Suddenly, a scream.
A shrill, heart-wrenching, spine-tingling scream filled with fear and sorrow and loss.
It wasn't a word, but a sound. A feral, frightened, frightening, noise.
And it had come from the patient.
Tossing her novel beneath a chair, the nurse ran to the cot. Her eyes were wider than saucers. "Doctor!"
The patient writhed and shook beneath her quilts, letting out another scream. It seemed like she was trying to form words but couldn't. Her eyelids were still closed, her eyeballs moving back and forth beneath them.
"Doctor!"
"J-"
The woman's voice was softer now—the rustle of autumn leaves on the sidewalk.
"What is it?"
The woman thrashed her head back and forth, her eyebrows knitted together and her hands clenching the sheets. "J-J-J-J-"
"What?" The nurse put her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Doctor!" Where was he?
"J-J…" The woman took a deep breath and swallowed. "Ja-Ja-"
"Yes, what is it?"
"…Jack."
The word was slurred, mumbled, barely audible. But it was a word. The woman would live. "Doctor!" The nurse was almost giddy with relief. The patient hadn't opened her eyes yet, but she was speaking. Or, at least trying to.
There was hope.
The doctor burst through the door, the wood banging against the wall. "Good God, woman, what is all that screaming about?" His eyes widened as he saw the woman, shuddering beneath her sheets. "Has she awakened?"
The nurse shook her head.
"Well has she said anything?"
"She keeps asking for a 'Jack,' sir."
"Have you any idea who this 'Jack' is?"
The nurse shook her head again.
The doctor approached her shivering form. The frantic whispers of "Jack" had given way to quiet sobs.
When Rose opened her eyes she felt soft, cloudlike sheets beneath her. Her red curls were pooled around her shoulders, shiny and newly washed. Her pillow smelled new and like jasmine, the bed heater sending comforting heat through the mattress to her skin.
"We must find this Jack." Rose looked around in confusion. Her world seemed slow and blurred, each color bleeding into the next to form indistinct shapes. She was warm and cold at the same time, and she couldn't identify the voices she heard around her. They were concerned, she could decipher, and they were very close. In the same room. Hovering around her bed.
Rose blinked a few times, trying to clear her vision. Slowly but surely, the colors separated, and Rose could make out mahogany paneling, sumptuous rose-and-gold wallpaper. All around her were curtains, deep, scarlet curtains, held up by mahogany bed posts.
"She's awake!"
An emerald-eyed, pinched-face, red-haired woman leaned over Rose. Her mother. "She's awake!" She cried again. "Sir! Come quick! She's awake!"
A dark-haired gentleman oozed into her line of vision, a condescending sneer on that slick face. Cal. "Yes. Yes, she is. Quite right, nurse."
Rose moved her lips, trying to find her voice. Nurse? Why was Cal calling her mother nurse? "Wh-Wh-w-wh-wh-wh-"
"Yes?" Ruth's face loomed into Rose's vision. Rose lifted her hand, feebly trying to swat her mother away, but she found that her hand couldn't move.
"Wh-wh-why am I st-s-still on T-T-T-Ti-Titanic?"
Ruth and Cal shared a confused look.
"Where's J-Jack-k-k?"
Another confused glance.
"Where. Is. Jack?"
Rose was met by silence.
"Where is Jack goddamnit!"
"Madam, what is your name?" The doctor asked, staring unwaveringly at the girl. She had opened her eyes by now, and seemed quite agitated. He had no idea who Jack was, and wondered if the girl had actually been a passenger on the Titanic. She didn't seem wealthy, that's for sure, so a ticket would probably have been way too expensive for her. She was probably in an advanced state of deliria—a result of the sickness.
"Can you hear me, Madam? What is your name?"
Rose frowned as she tried to sit up, Cal's eyes boring into hers. "Don't be stupid, Cal. You know my name. And of course I can hear you. Now just get me out of this goddamned bed so I can leave."
The doctor frowned back at her. "I'm not Cal. I don't know who Cal is. I don't know who Jack is. I am a doctor. You were found unconscious on a sidewalk in Central Park. You've been asleep for at least three days. You're probably in a severe state of shock—"
Rose felt tears prick her eyes as Cal made up some ridiculous story. "Cal, just stop it. Where is Jack? I need to see Jack!"
She let those unshed tears fall down her cheeks as her hysteria grew.
"Where is he? Where is he Cal? Why won't you let me see him? Why won't you let me leave?" Rose buried her head in the pillow, softly sobbing. "You can't just dismiss me with a chuckle and a pat on the head."
That's when everything went black.
The doctor frowned, his forehead creased, as he removed his spectacles and tucked them into the pocket of his coat. He turned away from his hysterical patient, sighing as the nurse wrung her hands. "Well, at least she woke up. That's a start."
~And now I am under all~
