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Jack didn't think that the kind of stark terror he had faced on Titanic would ever haunt him again. Even his wildest dreams could not recreate the sheer amount of horror and disgust and hurt that had filled him in those few short hours.
Yet when he kicked off his boots, walked through his living room, made his way into his bedroom, and saw his wife curled into a fetal position and whimpering in pain on one of his shirts that lay atop the floor, a bolt of panic shot its way through him. He could hardly move for several seconds, and she had not noticed he was there because her torture seemed so terrible. His heart skipped many beats, and his breathing stopped.
Suddenly
every instinct in him that was for the survival of Rose slammed into
life and, filled with an emotion too awful for words, he crumbled on
the carpet next to her and took her in his arms. "Rose? Rose!"
He shrieked, tears that he didn't notice running down his face and
landing on her nightgown. She was still in her nightgown. How long
had she been lying here?
"My God . . . Rose, what happened?
ROSE!"
She couldn't answer him, but her eyes were squeezed closed tightly and her breathing was rapid and shallow.
It happened so fast, yet to him it was as though Time was suspended. All of his old fears came rushing back, and the cold grip of mortal terror that he hadn't felt in almost nine months shot through his blood like an addict's needle.
The realization crept across his aching, swollen mind achingly slow. He saw the panic in her fluttering eyes, and the maternal protection screaming its way into her face. He felt the water underneath his knee. He knew.
His baby, his child, the part of him and the part of his wife, the part of Titanic, was in danger, and he knew it.
"I have to go find a doctor!" He yelled, his heart slamming inside of his ribcage. Rose let out a gasp of pain. She was too weak to scream. She clawed at his arms and he saw the agony in her green irises, painted with horror.
"Oh baby," he whispered, talking to her and the actual baby at the same time. Fear was keeping him from registering his emotions and he put himself on override. He picked Rose up as carefully as he could, as her deathly pale lips opened and a soundless shriek escaped. She clutched her abdomen and, looking at him, managed an almost silent sentence.
"Jack," she panted, pausing to take shaky breaths and using every fiber of energy she had, "It's . . . it's time . . . but . . . something . . . something's wrong!" Her expression screwed up in hurt and she began to go into spasms.
"I can't leave you here! I just can't!" He didn't know what to do, and he knew that hesitance or a wrong choice on his part could kill mother or child.
"GO!" She yelled forcefully, her sweat pouring onto the sheets. "NOW JACK! GO!"
Tears filled his vision and he propped pillows behind her head. He brushed a curl of hair out of her face. At that moment, he wanted to castrate himself after watching her be in so much pain. He hated himself. God, she had probably never felt like this in her life, and it was all his fault, all his fault because he knew when the baby had been conceived, and he knew that it was because he hadn't been able to turn her away or be stronger.
But with her glassy eyes pleaded and begged with him to go, and he knew that she was willing to die to save her baby. That brought such terror into his soul and dug so deep into his spirit that he didn't have any option but to do what she said. Still, he paused by the bedroom door, and seeing his fear, she murmured, "Trust me."
Those two words brought such a rush of emotions and memories that he felt slammed into for a moment. He could see the icy water, black and foaming white, and it was so close, so, so close, and getting closer every second, reaching at them with its long and cold fingers to pull them into the clutches of death, screaming threats which had before been just whispered. He remembered begging Rose to trust him, begging with his eyes, begging with his heart, begging with everything he had. And he knew they both would have died if she hadn't.
"I love you," he whispered, searching her for some kind of response, but he didn't get any because she was in the throes of torture. He ran to her side, and he saw her about to protest, but he kissed her tenderly on the lips and unable to bear it anymore he was gone, putting on his boots as he ran to the nearest clinic, the entire time praying, because he was too scared to do anything else.
He did not notice the bitter winter wind as it bit through his clothes and his skin became irritated and an angry red. His heaving breaths swirled as silvery puffs of steam into the grey sky, and his boots sloshed through sleet and snow. He slid on rough ice patches and tripped over huge snowdrifts, but he never stopped. He didn't feel the pain of his hands when they were cut into by the cold sidewalk when he fell, for he was back up and running before his brain could register the hurt.
He knew that he couldn't survive without Rose, and he guessed Rose couldn't survive without the baby, and he knew that he needed them both. God, he silently thought, you've almost taken her from me so many times. I love her. I really do. I don't know if you're testing me or what in the world is goin' on, but I honestly can't live without her. She's my life, you know that. Take me instead if someone's gotta go. Could you just do that? I'm not tryin' to bargain or anything, but take me instead. I'll gladly give it all; I'll give my breath and my life for hers and our child's. Keep that in mind, okay?
He cried the entire time he ran.
Dr. Zablowski was a Polish doctor. He had immigrated to America three years earlier, and had built a thriving practice in Cregakaj, the New York City town where all the Polish immigrants lived to enjoy each other's company and keep with them some familiarity of their homeland. His English, though not perfect, was satisfactory, and he also, of course, spoke Polish fluently. His office was located on the furthest border of Cregakaj, and his low cost services were available to both his brethren and outsiders – from the Asian to the English to the Irish to the Americans.
It had been an uneventful day. He rubbed his beard to rid crumbs from a loaf of bread and his eyes to rid the tiredness. Although he had been up all last night with a sick patient, the dawn had brought a calm in the storm. He had let his partner Dr. Kreckan and his two nurses go home, and he was about to close up shop since it was six o'clock. Anyone who wished to find him after hours found him at his house, and he never turned a needy soul away.
As he packed a file into his leather case and swept up some ashes from his cigar, he heard hurried footsteps and labored breathing outside through his open window. Dozens of men and women were passing by on their way back home, so he assumed someone was simply racing to their abode for food, but there was a sudden pounding on the door.
"Open the door! Please, my wife she . . . Open the door!" An American yelled, and Zablowski heard the terror in his voice. The word "wife" caught him, for he knew what it was like to be in love, and he nearly tripped over his own shoes in his haste to let the man in.
As he threw open the door and a gust of the painfully icy wind hit him straight in the face, he saw that a young man, almost still a boy, with a sculpted face, matured muscles, tanned skin, and blonde hair stood before him. His blue eyes were full of misty knowledge and horrors that one at his age should not have, and deep inside was a panic that resounded in his desperate pleading.
"I live in a flat down the street a ways, my wife's pregnant, the baby's due in a month and there's something wrong!"
That's all that the doctor had to hear. He grabbed his coat and bag and slammed the door shut behind him, holding his hat on his head as he ran in the direction the man pointed. The wind blew against him and made his eyes water so that it was hard to see the ice patches, and he slipped on a few. Yet God blessed him with remotely good fortune and he kept his balance and his determination in the fury of a winter day in New York. He knew that something was seriously amiss, and he tried to find out more before he got there so he could get to work immediately.
"Wat happeened?" He asked, his accent thick, but his companion had no trouble understanding him.
"I don't know! I came home from work, and she was just lying on the floor moaning and holding onto her stomach! I think she mighta been there for awhile!" He answered, and Zablowski could tell he was fighting the urge not to break down. The guilt in the boy's eyes was too awful for him to look at.
"You said ze baby is early, no?" This sounded like the very worst of birth cases, and he was not looking forward to having it turn out to be how he expected.
"Yeah, the baby's a whole month early!" Jack exclaimed, trying to be patient and stay with the older man as they ran so he could answer the doctor's questions. However, once they rounded a corner and the flats were in view, Jack couldn't hold himself back anymore. The impulse to be as close to Rose as possible that never truly left him was cut deeper by the danger, and he shot off as fast as he could, not noticing that his boot was untied. Danger was not something new to him, and neither was having his wife in that danger, but it still was killing him.
The thoughts racing in his mind were bleak enough to fill hell and hopeful enough to fill heaven. He would not allow himself to think that Rose was in could die. He couldn't. To him she was immortal, a celestial creature, his angel that had been given to him and she could not be separated from him. He was not an idiot, he knew how close they had once been to death, but now he had the train of thought that she was invincible. Every time he looked at her, with her porcelain skin, magnolia eyes, beautiful frame, and a heavenly head of red stars for hair, he could not bear to think that she could ever go anywhere without him, even eternity. He would die alone. His life was now so entwined with hers that each breath she took felt like a breath of his, each beat of her heart seemed like a beat of his own. He was hopelessly not himself anymore.
He kicked the door open and tripped into the living room, not bothering to take off his shoes. It would have been inhumane for him to stop for a minute. He ran into the bedroom, where he saw that Rose was even paler, the color of paper or snow, and she could hardly talk. She was twisting on the bed, crying out softly every couple of seconds.
"Rose, Rose, stay with me. I . . . I got someone. He's comin', Rose, he's comin'."
His heart broke because for once he couldn't help her. He couldn't take away her immense pain or worry, and he couldn't make it better. He was absolutely defenseless and she was too. He had promised himself that he would always be there, and always help her, and he had failed again.
This woman in such total anguish on a ratty bed in one of the worst parts of New York City, this woman who was only eighteen and trying to get a baby out of her that had been made in wedlock when she was seventeen, this woman whose eyes were filled with so, so much pain . . . she had once been top of the line. Forget having to go through the beginning of labor alone, or waiting for a doctor to run to her, or giving birth in a leaky flat. Rose would have had the best money could offer – medicine to calm her pain, a doctor that was the best of the best, servants standing around her and mopping her face, a filthy rich husband. For the first time, Jack regretted taking her with him and he regretted her love for him. Not his love for her – no, never! He cherished that love with all he had in him! But only if she had not returned his feelings, it would have been so, so much easier. It was murdering him to see her like this, and he although he knew he would have died on the inside if Rose had chosen Cal, he was willing to die, wanting to die, so that Rose wouldn't have to feel like this.
Tears tracked their way down his face and splattered onto the blanket as he sat down next to his battle weary bride, who seemed like she couldn't hold on much longer. The Devil was reaching for her soul and she was pulling back as hard as she could, but there was going to be an end one way or another.
Dr. Zablowski entered the room and his grey eyes suddenly opened wide with shock when he saw Rose's condition. There was sweat painted across her forehead, matting her wild hair, but she was shivering violently as if she were freezing. The thing that worried him most was that she did not appear to be ready to have the baby yet.
"Now you leesten heere," he cried out, taking sudden control of the situation. His accent was thick, but easy too understand, and the young man looked up from burying his face in his hands. The girl, she had to be a girl, she seemed so young, did her best to pay attention but it was in vain.
"We have a seerious condeetion and very leetle time. I am Dookter Zablowski, and you two are?" He said, going to a water basin in the corner and matter-of-factly washing and drying his hands.
The young man tore his eyes from his beautiful wife's face and answered, "Jack Dawson. And this is Rose."
The doctor strode back to the bed and opened his black case. "Ah. Alreeght, Jack, I am in the theinking that the baby is breech. Do you know what theet means?"
From the stark look of horror that crossed this Jack's face, he knew exactly what it meant. He lips opened in a soundless, "Oh my God," and his eyes became huge with worry. "The baby's upside down?"
"Well, acktually, he is reeght side up. I'm theinking his feet are where his head is supposed to be. If theet be the case, we are goeing to turn him aroond."
A sudden contraction ripped through Rose's body. She screamed.
It was hours later and darkness was cloaking the air outside. Rose's delicate frame was contorted, and her green eyes were foggy with exhaustion. This hurt had plagued her since early morning, and now twilight had passed into the blackness of night. Each time she thought she felt her child move, the doctor shook his head. Apparently the baby would just not turn.
"Oh my God!" Rose screamed, her pillow soaked through with sweat. She grasped her stomach. She loved this baby. She truly did. But this . . . this was insane. She felt more like a cow giving birth than a young woman. Her labor had been absolutely horrible, and her back felt like it was going to break in two.
But to add on to all this misery, Rose had to worry about the life of the little one inside of her. Something was dreadfully wrong. Dr. Zablowski murmured only to Jack, and his brows furrowed more with each passing moment, while Jack searched her face more desperately. She knew that either she or her child was in danger, mortal danger. Perhaps both.
That made the pain almost nonexistent. She loved this baby so much that she did not mind the fact that she felt like she was being torn into bloody shreds. It was as though she had raised her son and daughter for years already.
Jack had wanted to name the baby Anna Jamie if it was a girl, in honor of his parents, and they both harbored secret wishes of what to name it if it was a boy, each of them honoring a past not forgotten.
So she held thoughts of Anna Jamie in her heart. Something told her that it was a girl, and she promised Anna Jamie to do everything she could to get her out healthy into the world, because she deserved that chance. They both did. She was thrilled to have a part of Jack's past with her, and him, forever.
As a little girl, Rose had always dreamed of being a mother, and not just any
mother, but one exactly like her own. She had thought of Ruth DeWitt-Bukater as a strong, beautiful, vibrant woman perfectly capable of being able to raise a daughter. While that might have been true at first, the responsibility and lack of wealth that had followed Jonathan DeWitt-Bukater's death had broke Ruth, and Rose now took that early image of her mother and fixed it as much as she could. Rose was dedicated to trying to be a perfect parent. She knew she could never quite get there, but she was going to do her best.
It was hardest now to keep these optimistic thoughts as the hours wore onward and still her baby would not turn. She cried out again and the doctor shook his head.
Jack was terrified. He wanted to break down because he was so scared, but he had to stay strong for his wife. She needed him right now. Her left hand was wrapped in a death grip around his, and whenever she felt a particular satanic pain, she would squeeze his hand so hard that he knew his bones were cracking. Her wedding bands dug into his fingers and blood dotted his skin, but he didn't care. He honestly didn't give a damn about how much he hurt.
"Mr. Dawseen, may I be seeing you in the cowrner, please?" The doctor asked, his face white from hours of strenuous, stressful work. Jack knew from the look on his face that he was not going to like the news that this man had to give him.
I don't wanna leave Rose; he told himself when he felt his reluctance at having a private audience with Doctor Zablowski. She can't be left alone right now.
But deep inside he knew the truth. He knew that he didn't want to hear, and he didn't want to know, and he wanted to keep safe in the ignorance of the severity of the situation. If he didn't know, he couldn't hurt. So he told himself he had to stay next to Rose, which was certainly true, but denied the coward inside of him.
Yet Rose released his hand and motioned for him to go before grasping her ribs, and he had no choice. His last string of innocence had been cut and he stood up slowly, wishing for all the world that he didn't have to go, but knowing he had too. He nearly kicked the chair he had been sitting on over by accident, and to delay the new further, he made it fall over and purpose and stooped to pick it up. But after that, there could be no more excuses. The doctor was in the corner, and he looked very sad. Not even worried anymore. Just sad.
Jack felt as if his feet were made of lead. The walk from the place where he stood to that corner felt like hundreds of miles. It was the longest walk of his life. Each millisecond brought a new doubt and a new horror and a new fear. Each step told him that he had lost them, both of them, and he was resigned to watching them die. He wanted some invisible force to pull him back, to stop him, for he could sense the evil waiting for him.
It came like a flash, the feeling of overwhelming dread, the feeling he had felt once, and only once, before. He remembered it like it was happening right before him. He remembered be sucked down into the endless black water and he remembered forcing his eyes open to look through the salt at Rose, who swam reaching for him helplessly as the Titanic pulled him further into the depths of the Atlantic. He remembered knowing he could never find her again in the freezing hell of 1,500 people. He remembered knowing they were both going to die.
Now he was safe. He was in his own bedroom. And yet death had somehow found its way to his doorstep again. He knew it had.
"Mr. Dawseen."
He didn't even realize he had made it all the way to the corner. It felt as though it had taken him years, and the words he heard seemed contorted in time and in slow motion.
"Mr. Dawseen, I do not know how to goo about teeling you this, but . . ."
Oh God.
"You . . ."
No God, no, please no, I'll do anything. Take me instead. No.
"Are gooing . . ."
I can't loose anything else. I just can't. You know that, don't you?
"Too loose . . ."
NO!
"One of them."
Jack couldn't think. His whole heart died. He felt the blackness crawling over it again, and then his spirit died along with that heart. Everything in him wilted like he had been fried by the sun, or drowned like the water had finally caught up to him. How long had he thought he could hide, really? He had known the water was going to catch up to him.
"The baby will not turn and I am theinking he or she is a stillboorn."
The numbness spread from his insides to his outsides, and he couldn't feel. He didn't know what to do.
"A . . . a stillborn?" He whispered, his eyes cold.
"I am soory, but that it what it appears to be."
He looked up at the doctor and saw the sympathy in his face. He looked over at his wife and saw the pain of her body. He looked into his heart and saw the question he had to ask. It was a practical question, a question of logic, a question he had to know the answer to. However, in asking this question, he had to give up his child. And that hurt.
"Can we save Rose?"
The man in front of him sighed, and the last petal of hope for the baby fell from the flower of fatherhood. He knew the baby was gone. He knew, but still he refused to believe.
"I theink so. The baby hast to come out now. But you see, if the child is not stillboorn, then it will die."
He had to chose, and he knew it. He had to choose between child and mother. He hated it and he hated himself and he hated the doctor and he hated the world. He hated passionately and thoroughly.
Yet still he loved.
"How sure are you that my son or daughter is dead?" He asked roughly, but almost silently, cut straight through the flesh and his soul being tormented.
"I am almoost pozetive. I can find no heertbeat."
He began to shake uncontrollably but he would not cry. He was too strong to cry. Damn his stubborn pride! What he needed right now was to break down and plead. He needed to plead with God, for help, for a decision, for forgiveness. But he would not do it.
He stared in shock with hard eyes at the doctor who was waiting impatiently for an answer and he knew there was no time. So often in his life there had been no time. When he was fifteen and the smoke billowed into the graying August sky, there had been no time and he had failed. When he was twenty and the Ship of Dreams had been broken and the boiling black waves were claiming it during the apex of its descent, there had been no time and he had thought, later, perhaps he had won. When he had held Rose in his arms in front of that stone bench, he thought he had conquered the world. But now in his own home, he was desperately loosing this battle with Time.
He had always envisioned himself as a fairly resourceful man, who made good choices quickly when he had to. He had never dreamed he would ever get snagged on a decision. But this was more than a decision . . . it was murder. Murder of hopes, of dreams, of love, and maybe even a Rose.
He knew what he was going to do because passion and devotion had tied their strings too tight around him, but he had to know. He was stalling, praying, wanting beyond needing that something would change.
"Sir . . . doctor . . . If you . . . If you had to make a choice, what would you . . . who would you . . . choose?" He would not let himself cry but the tears built up inside of him and a searing pain shot through his head, but it was ignored.
"I do not theink the baby hast surveeved, and even if it did, it might die anayway becose it is breech. It is in such an odd positeen that delivery might kill it and most likely the wife also. I can save the wife, and theet is what I woold do. I will not peerform surgairy but will simply get the baby out. I would not worry about protecteeing the baby and would not do a by the book delivery. I belieeve he or she is alreedy dead, so my singulair conceern would be to remove the baby and keep its mother alive. "
Something suddenly told Jack that the child was dead. It was a realization that he logically accepted and shoved the grief and pain away for later, knowing it would resurface. He had no choice, and he had to be practical. His child was dead but his wife was not, and he had to save her. He turned off his emotions.
"Do it."
Those two words sounded so harsh, so gruff, that Doctor Zablowski was taken aback and hesitated, not knowing if Mr. Dawson really meant what he had said.
"What are you waiting for! Save her! Do it!"
The doctor nodded and left the man in the corner, hearing his panting and knowing how hard he was trying not to cry. The scene made Zablowski's eyes water, but he could not afford to get attached, especially not now.
The beautiful wild haired woman's face was contorted in torture, but he could see in her face that she was bearing it because she held hope, hope that she would be a wonderful mother with a wonderful child and a wonderful husband, and together they would make a wonderful family. He didn't know what to say or how to even say it. He didn't even know if he had a right to. Her husband ran a hand through his ruffled blonde hair and he walked over to his wife. In that moment, the doctor saw true love. This man was putting his own feelings behind him, and it was obvious from his eyes that he cared only and always about this Rose, not himself.
"Hey you," Jack muttered quietly, resuming his seat next to Rose and grasping her hand. He pushed a sweat-matted curl off of her forehead and kissed her nose, trying to memorize everything on her face. She was not happy, maybe, but at the same time she was . . . and it would be the last time for a long time.
"Jack . . . what did he say?" She moaned, glancing at him with glazed over jade eyes. Then, hearing his terrible silence, the first wave of terror broke over her body and she would give anything to get out of this one moment.
"Rose . . . I need to tell you something . . ." Hurt and confused and lost, Jack trailed off, not wanting to tell her at all. He saw the emotional pain suddenly tormenting her soul, and he hated that. Marriage had only strengthened the unbreakable bond he had already had with her, and everything she felt, he felt.
Every motherly instinct inside of Rose Dawson suddenly began to scream in alarm. Time froze and nothing mattered except for this one second. She glanced from Doctor Zablowski to the love of her life, the one whom she would follow to Hell and back again, the one that had helped her create their baby inside of her, and the one with whom she wanted to raise that baby. She was terrified and for once in her life, it was not about her. It was not even about Jack. It was about a person she felt completely and eternally responsible for and would feel guilt or joy over whatever happened to that little one.
She literally burned inside. It seemed as though the crackling flame of doubt and desperation had finally crept its way into her very spirit, devouring everything in its path.
She glanced at Jack and just knew that no, he could not in any way tell her that her child was going to die, because it was his child too. He would never say to her to give up, and he would never make her risk that child's life. He was too perfect, too wonderful, to understanding. Wasn't he?
"The baby . . . the baby's gone, Rose." The tears in his eyes finally overflowed and he could not stop them. He didn't want to stop them. There was an anguish that coursed through him, an anguish as real as an icy winter sky or black ruffled waves, an anguish that had filled him up once before when he had realized that he had everything to loose and nothing at all to gain. It was an emotion that was impossible to describe with mere thoughts. He was so alone . . . and so lost. There came a point when he couldn't go on anymore. He wanted so awfully to be comforted and held.
I am so sorry, he silently whispered to his unborn son or daughter. I am so, so sorry. I don't know what happened. Oh God, I'm sorry.
Somehow in that second he got it into his head that it was his fault. He had let someone else down. He should have been home, should have stayed with Rose, should have helped her around the house more . . .
He let these ramblings overflow his mind to keep him away from the bitter grief that he could not yet unleash because he had to keep it locked inside. There was a part of his heart that he cast all emotions he didn't want to deal with, a part that was filled completely, and yet he threw more inside. He refused to meet reality at one moment, couldn't deny it the next – so instead he just tried to pretend it wasn't there. It was stupid, he knew, and it wasn't helping anything, yet every soul has a tendency to avoid the pain that gorges out their being and leaves them empty and alone. He was digging a deeper grave for himself, wanting desperately to claw his way out, but absolutely refusing to because he was himself, and he was strong, and he could not break down. He just couldn't. Tears he allowed, because there was no stopping them and anyone who didn't cry in his situation was not human. Yet fear and pain he turned away, and of course they just built up higher and higher, drowning him. Bloody remains of dreams were strangling him, and he would not see it, not now, and maybe not ever.
But Rose was a different story. He saw a blank look of misunderstanding rush across her, as though she was still hiding in the safety of her innocent lack of knowledge. As long as she refused to listen, he knew, she did not have to accept that her baby was dead.
Rose could not do that for very long. Reality was tearing at her heart, ripping away shreds and shreds until, to save herself, she had to face it. And the black battle began.
She burst into tears, but not pathetic, helpless tears. No, hers were hot and angry and resentful, not understanding, not wanting to understand. They were tears that carried a message right to Heaven, a message of hurt and blame and confusion and disgust.
There is a special bond between friend and friend. There is a special bond between friend and enemy. There is a special bond between husband and wife. There is a special bond between father and offspring. But nothing, nothing on this Earth or in Heaven or in Hell, can match the bond between mother and child.
Another part of the already cut down Rose was broken off and swept up by the Devil, who was determined to have all of her. The string between herself and hope was sliced, love was soaked from her being, and she was left dry and empty and afraid. It was like loosing her mind all over again. She was going crazy. There was no way she could enter more loss into her system, and this was the most evil one of all. The child she had thought she would dress in ribbons or checkered little suits, the child she had thought she would raise up to be a young woman or man, the child she thought would bring so much more joy to her life, that child was now deprived of life. The cruel irony of it made her shiver and for a second all of the tremendous pain she was in was just not there. A body can only handle so much at one time, and the emotional torture far outweighed physical.
There was something hideous waiting for her, and it drove her sanity from her. She tried to numb the hurt, tried to forget, tried to just keep giving birth, because she knew her baby would be fine.
But then, slowly, she glanced at Jack again, and she saw the anguish and horror and hideousness painted across his face, and she thought she understood.
"God . . ." she whispered, "God . . . Oh my God . . ." There was nothing else to say. The tears that had cascaded now froze on her cheeks, their trails glistening in shimmering pain.
The doctor began to walk over and Rose suddenly knew. What had she heard him say? That Jack had to loose one of them? That meant one would survive, and that might mean the baby would survive.
She finally understood Jack's willingness to die that night in the Atlantic to save her. For the longest time, she had no idea why such a beautiful creation would sacrifice everything that he had for someone so unworthy as she. The guilt had plagued her. She remembered the determination in his icy blue eyes when he had demanded that she live, and she remembered the sound of her heart breaking. But now, she got it. She was willing to die for love too, another pure and holy love, and he had to understand. It was an explosion of courage and devotion, and she had valor almost as great as his.
Time caught her up in its wings, and she wondered how she could do this to him. Would that mean his attempted sacrifice was in vain, because she did not value her life more than her child's? Or maybe he had saved her so she could save another. Maybe that was the cycle . . . life, defeat, victory, death . . . again and again. He had made it through, and he could raise a baby on his own. She knew he could.
But oh, she loved him so! Realizing that she was going to have to leave him and tell him that she was doing so willingly made her respect what he had been willing to do even more, because it must have torn him up to say verbally to her that he loved her enough to make her live while he had to die. Even in the midst of all of this trauma, when she turned to her husband and thought about the passion she had for him, it nearly killed her already to think that she was going to have to tell him goodbye. He had saved her so, so many times, and she could not possibly love him more than she did right now. He was her knight in shining armor, her soulmate, her destiny, her fate, what everything in her life had led to. He was invincible, he was her friend, he was her rock. Inside of him he kept her heart, and he knew he did, and he loved her with just as much unconditional love as she had for him. She knew their love could do anything . . . cross boundaries of time and places, reunite and separate them, defeat the world.
But this was goodbye for such a long, long time. For him, for the child, she had no choice, but her own heart broke cleanly in half again, and she hated life sincerely and honestly.
She looked at him with a streak of unintelligible pain in her eyes, and finally Hell had found its way to their doorstep. This time, there was no where to turn, and no one to cling to, for the two opposing sides of the battle were Jack and Rose, who were never supposed to be separated like that.
"Jack . . ." she whispered weakly, the sobs still wracking her throat. She reached blindly for his hand, and in his grief he allowed her to limply grasp it. He focused on her, his intense gaze boring into her soul, and it was even harder to tell him what she had to.
"Save the baby."
Jack stared at her uncomprehendingly, because his mind would not even register those three words. To save the baby meant to give up on his wife, and he could not do that for a baby that a doctor declared dead already. He would not loose everything. He would not. That childlike voice somewhere deep in the back of his mind told him he could not.
So, with his heart pounding so fast that it was knocking against his lungs and forcing any air out of him, he was forced to answer her. He knew how much what he had to say would hurt, but there was no other way around it. Something he had never wanted to say to this celestial creature had to be said, and he was disgusted with it. "No, Rose," he murmured quietly, his gaze once again set with willpower and purpose to save her life.
She looked at him in absolute shock, because he did not listen to her. For the only time she could remember, he was using his advantage of being the husband, the last deciding voice, and he was refusing her. He had never done that before, never made her obey him, never taken command when she didn't want him to. He had not been a master, but a partner. Now he was different. He did not even plead or grovel. He just said no, and that was it. But it was not anger she felt; it was panic. Pure, unadulterated panic. She understood that if he didn't do what she said then their little one was going to die, and she could not let that happen. What kind of cruel, heartless man would give up his own baby's life? An innocent, unsuspecting baby? Her Jack was not like that. Her Jack could not be like that. He would sympathize – he had to. He could not be selfish and hold her back.
"Jack, save the baby. Please! Save my baby!" She grabbed at him, clawing at his shirt, fear and terror and inhuman, hideous desperation shooting from her muddy green eyes.
What was he doing to her? He felt like a disgusting monster tearing a child's life from its mother's grasp, but he had no choice. The logic of his decision was the only thing that kept him going, for in that moment the room was filled with blackness not just from the outside night, but from Death itself. He screamed silently to his Lord, his Savior, and he asked why. He asked why he had to make this choice, and why God wanted to hurt him so terribly.
"Rose . . . I'm so sorry . . . I'm so, so sorry . . . but the doctor says the baby's already dead and –"
She tried to sit up wildly, her hair streaming around her face. "NO! No, my baby is not dead, do you hear me? Do you hear me! Forget about me! Kill me! Get my child out alive this instant! God damn it, do it, Jack!" She looked at him with tears making a river down her cheeks, and he saw her broken soul, her tormented spirit, her aching heart . . . he saw it all. The emotional bruises had been deepened into mortal wounds and he could not help her. The look in her eyes told him he had become the enemy, and Jack Dawson could not be Rose Dawson's enemy. It was not possible. She had to understand that this was for her, for him, and for their child.
He grabbed both of her shoulders and pulled her inches from his face, holding her still as she tried to convulse. He would not allow it and he shook her back and forth, his urgency to get her to realize the truth obvious and bloody.
"Listen to what I'm saying to you, Rose! Listen to me! Our child, not just your child, but my child too, is stillborn! The baby's not alive Rose! It's dead! It's dead!"
She shrieked and tried to rip away from him, pushing away his words and his body at the same time. Inside she refused to believe, and lived in comfortable denial. She just wanted a few more seconds . . . a few more seconds of bliss, a few more seconds of thinking she was about to become a mother. She did not want to see reality, so she had to turn away from her husband.
"How can you do this!" She stared wildly around, searching for anything to overturn her jury's ruling. She needed her flesh and blood to survive, even if it meant she physically had to die. She could not handle the guilt of watching her little one die.
Her eyes fell on Dr. Zablowski, who was watching all this with a deep, indescribable sadness. His dark head was bowed and his hands were folded. It seemed as though maybe he was praying, and for the life of her Rose couldn't see why. Hadn't God done this? Hadn't God chosen to destroy the family she was so close to having? Or had she, in her own selfishness, done it?
She saw the stubbornness of an inflexible mind in Jack's icy blue gaze, and she knew that if it was up to him her son or daughter was never going to live. Any fury she could have felt at him she did not have energy for, but she whirled around to the other man in the room, a man who perhaps could do something. Anything!
"Doctor!" She cried out, looking at him with such pleading and pure hurt that it was all he could do to hold eye contact with her. "You . . . you can't . . . let him do this! Please . . . please save my baby . . ."
Jack and the doctor opened his mouth at the same time to protest, one out of logic and the other out of deep, devoted love, but Rose suddenly fell back onto the bed.
All of the sudden a sudden spasm of pain, much sharper and hotter and venomous than all the last combined, plummeted through her veins and rocked her whole self, suffocating her in its relentless grip. Her irises glossed over. At first the torment was so awesome that she could not speak and she grabbed Jack's hand with a force that made his eyes water. But the real tears that fell from the corners of his eyes were tears of betrayal, tears of confusion, tears of helplessness. Seeing his beloved fight for a life she did not want through such torture made his heart break.
This fiery woman smothered in sweat and whose soul was so stressed was the same exact fiery woman he remembered, and that is what hurt him the most. There was such a difference from the beautiful, amazing, blissful girl she had been in those few hours following an April sunset and the beautiful, amazing, almost dying woman she was now, her body nearly crumbling on a ratty bed cover.
Again he felt the overwhelming shame that he had done this to her, and how and why he did not know. All he knew was that his passion and eternal adoration had led to this nightmare, and maybe she could have been so much more comfortable, and so much safer.
Then he remembered the demons and ghosts of her past, covered in what appeared to be wonderful titles, personalities, and riches but really falling apart and abusing this flower until she was nothing but a withered stem.
He was so confused, and he did not want to work it out now. Rose's face, painted with horror, was enough to fill in every cavern of his mind and would surely haunt him forever.
"Oh no," Dr. Zablowski shouted and raced over to the bedside, opening his bag as he did so. The dread that his voice told Jack that the worst had begun and it hit him so hard that he could hardly breathe. In slow motion, it seemed as though his entire life flashed by, not his wife's. He wondered if this was a sign that he was going to die instead of her, and he gladly and gratefully accepted the notion. He was ready to breathe his last breath to guarantee all of Rose's.
It was as though he was waiting for the final moment to rip all the air from his lungs. He watched the man in front of him grab all his tools, and he watched his own calloused hand reach out and tenderly stroke his love's cheek. He felt his lips brush her clammy forehead and her fingertips grasping at him in desperate pleading.
But his mind was somewhere else, on some other plane of Time. His mind was welcoming death, and so was Rose's, but each in such different ways.
Dr. Zablowski was washing blood off of his hands under running water in the Dawson's bathroom. He could not stop shaking, and his fingers were so unsteady that he thought he would slice them off if he attempted to clean any of his tools. He waited for the first wave of calmness to come.
Dawn was not far off. Never, not once in his long career in two countries, had he ever experienced anything quite like he had tonight. A deep and terrible guilt was welling inside of him, because he had lost the battle with Death, forsaken Life, and abused Love.
He had seen so many, many miscarriages. He had felt the unbreakable bond between a parent and a child before, more times than he cared to remember. He had watched a mother kissing her dead baby's cheek and seen a mother's tears dripping on her baby's body. But this was surreal. The life of Rose had been strangled from her body when she heard Jack tell her the truth. Instead of falling into each other's arms and weeping, which is what all the other couples had done, she had gone inside of herself and fought an inward battle, a battle that was still raging through her at that moment. And her husband . . .
The doctor hadn't even noticed that he had been crying. This was a sort of pain that transcended everything else, something that convinced him that Hell really did exist. The tears still coursed down his cheeks, cold, icy, terrible. There was some experience that had stained their lifetime, something that was so horrible they couldn't talk about it and they obviously couldn't stop thinking about it.
He had seen the angels and demons in Rose's eyes, had felt some sort of otherworldly presence. Not the presence of God, or the presence of the Devil, but the presence of people . . . people that were no more.
There was no more hope. Dr. Zablowski had never been in a room without any hope at all. It was suffocating him, poisoning his body. Without even a ray of light, the emotional blackness nearly drowned him.
He knew he had to stay strong in order to save Rose. He knew he had to. But it was so, so hard to convince himself that he could. He tried not to think as he felt through Rose's whispery nightgown and finally felt the babe's foot. The position that Rose was in forbade the baby from being able to move, and if he or she had been alive, they were dead now.
The very context of that word, dead, made him shiver and he felt phantom's fingers traveling up and down his backbone. This child hadn't even had a true chance at life, not even half a chance, and it was obvious that his parents had wanted him so. For even now Rose was wailing in fury, fury he could only guess was directed at him for making her husband choose, fury at her husband for actually choosing, and fury at God for not saving her little one. There was a fury even deeper than that, a fury he couldn't understand, something he didn't even want to try to understand. She was crying too, and each teardrop spoke of some other horrible tragedy in her life that was not over. Something new was coming and hurting her before she had healed.
It broke his heart to look at her. Her magnolia eyes screamed of a maturity and an understanding and a hurt that was far beyond how old she had to be. She looked so young, the age that was supposed to be filled with dreams and destiny. Her skin was smooth and flawless, her features still perfect and lovely. Age had not even begun to glance at her, and there was a betrayed innocence that lingered in her very breath. She reminded him of his own daughter, Anetka, who was only sixteen. Imagining Anetka in Rose's place nearly killed him, and it was all he could do to focus on his task. He felt a strange kinship with this girl he had never before seen.
And her husband . . . he looked stricken with guilt and a terrible terror. He would not leave her side even for a second, and he continuously stroked her face or kissed her hand. He too had wisdom that a young man should not have. There was a responsibility on his shoulders that the doctor knew that he himself could not bear if he had too. Jack obviously felt accountable for more than his child and even his wife. He felt a need to protect her, protect his soul and spirit and heart and mind, and something else that humanity didn't know a name for.
"I promised I wouldn't let you hurt like this again," Jack muttered silently, a tear sliding from his face to rest on her neck. "I swore it." He collapsed next to her, and Zablowski could see the confusion and torment he was in as clearly as the blood on his hands. But the next scene was something he could never forget.
Amid all of her physical, emotional, and spiritual pain, amid all of her righteous and unworldly anger, amid the nightmare that she was living in reality, the young woman cradled her husband's head in her arms and rocked him back and forth as they wept together.
Right at that second, he saw something he had never seen before. He saw truth in something he had doubted for a long time. He saw . . . a celestial beauty that he couldn't describe.
Because honestly, he saw that true love, pure and true love, could not be overwhelmed by man or beast or Devil. He saw that true love was the strongest force on Earth, stronger than hate. And he saw that although Satan may try, he could not separate these two soulmates from the absolute honest fact – these two people loved each other, with a love that he had never experienced before. It was like a love that had already reached the apex of heaven, and it was a love that he knew could never be broken.
"I need you to prush as 'ard as you can, Rose," he yelled, with a newfound determination to spare this magnificent girl's life. "Now! Prush!"
There was a scream as Rose tried to expel a body from her own. Jack's protectiveness automatically kicked back into full force and he sat erect, that dread and worry coating his eyes once more, but something else was there too. It was obvious that he was masking the intensity of his apprehension for his wife. "You can do it, Rose, I know you can, I know it . . ." He whispered over and over again, letting her clench his palm in her own and moving sweaty hair out of her eyes.
Suddenly it was as though a cold, icy fist let go of Rose's abdomen. It unclenched, and her rounded stomach heaved. She let out an absolute shriek, a shriek of hurt so sharp that the doctor had never heard one quite like it before. He had done amputations, and he had performed surgery without anesthetic, but not a single patient had gone through anything to this degree. She literally looked as though she were about to burst from her skin.
He continued to pull as hard as he could on the baby's leg, working him or her out into the world which had cruelly denied them. This seemed to nearly kill Rose, because she was supposed to be looking forward to holding a wailing child and all that would greet her was stiffness, and cold, and silence.
"Almost there, Rose, almost there . . ." Jack murmured quietly, touching her gently and raining soft kisses on her fingertips. Rose could not stop crying, and this added to the difficulty of her breathing. She began to gasp, sweat streaming down her forehead, until the sobs and gasps were so mixed together that she could not get any air, and she desperately needed it.
"Stop it! Stop! Rose, you are needing to bereathe. Do it noow. Sloowly. Be careeful, please. Theet's a girl." As Doctor Zablowski calmed the young woman, her breathing became more regular. She turned to Jack and looked at him with such dread that the doctor wondered how anyone could meet her eyes, but he did. Every shred of pain in her irises was magnified in his, and even he could see what this husband was telling his wife. Clearly, that look meant "I'm with you. I love you. Hang on, just hang on. It'll all be over. I promise." But the thing that shocked him most was that Rose seemed content to believe Jack.
As if to affirm what Zablowski had just observed, Jack's gaze intensified into his love's eyes. "Trust me," he stated, with such determination and purpose that one could hardly tell he was begging, because he was.
Those two words seemed to have a huge affect on his maiden. The look of franticness in her face died away, and it seemed as though he was the only thing in the world that she saw. She was looking into his soul through his pupils, into some past she had not forgotten. He simply sat there and let her read his heart, and it was simple that she loved him more than even she thought possible. Although her entire body was writhing in contractions and terrible anguish, she managed focused on him long enough to apparently see her dreams and destiny.
"I trust you."
He leaned down to kiss her cool lips. It was a brief kiss, because time and pain would allow for no other, but still the electricity shot between them overflowed and crackled in the air around them. It was an almost visible force binding them together eternally, and it was enough to keep Rose going through it all.
So he continued to pull and yank, careful not to tear the mother, but in a hurry to get the baby out lest the mother bleed to death. She had lost color from her lips and cheeks, but it was obvious that she was not going to die because she refused to. He did not want to test this, though, and within minutes he pronounced the child outside of Rose's insides.
The minute he said that, Rose screamed. It was more than a scream of pain; this was a scream of immortal torture. Before, he knew the baby had been immortal to her. But she must have felt the absence in her stomach, where something she had believed to be alive and flourishing had once lain. She did not hear any crying. So she knew . . . she knew and she hurt.
"But the baby kicked . . . the baby kicked . . ." She kept on sobbing this over and over again, while Jack held her exhausted body that would not stop flailing because of it's torment.
Hearing this statement, the doctor glanced for the first time at the thing in his arms. And there . . . there was something that made him ache. It was a girl. She had developed regularly on the outside, with nothing except the blueness of her skin and the emptiness of her chest cavity to display that she never had so much as a chance. He guessed something terribly wrong had happened when the baby had tried to be born early, something that had happened as a result of a trauma extremely early in the pregnancy that had mutated the infant's vital organs.
After his scientific evaluation, he could not block out what his heart felt any longer. Hearing the shrieks of a mother that could not be rattled him. But when he gazed on that face, he truly hated the world right at that second. The tiny, soft eyelids were lightly clasped, as though in some sort of deep slumber. A little face wore a serene expression of satisfaction and acceptance that a newborn baby did not have, and by the lightness of the child in his arms he knew life had left her some hours before he had arrived. Then he saw the small, wispy, blonde curls that were attached to the tender scalp, and it hit him. There had been a person inside. This was not a fetus, but this had been a soul and spirit that he had not been able to save. He looked up at the parents, and he wished so honestly that he had gotten here in time that it made him feel sick.
"Wat I need to say is . . . It was a girl . . ." He whispered quietly, as if afraid to awake the little baby that could never awake. He stroked a perfect little arm and counted ten perfect fingers and ten perfect miniature toes. Yet the blueness of her cold skin haunted him.
Then Rose did something which surprised him and at the same time it didn't. She reached out her slender hands, the tears suddenly held at bay, and she demanded that she hold her child. The need that every mother feels to hold their baby was still strong in her, and he could not deny her the right that every woman had.
Yet it hurt to let the flawless thing go, even to that to which it belonged. He felt another twang of guilt and imperfect shame as he laid the itsy body into the ivory arms of the one who had borne it. And he watched.
As crazy as it was, a tiny smile spread across Rose's face as she gazed upon her own flesh in another form. She ran a petite finger down her daughter's cheeks, chest, legs, and arms. She lightly kissed the pale curls of hair and then each innocently closed eye. A tear dropped from her face onto her little one's belly.
The same sort of insane love took sudden hold of Jack, and Zablowski could see that he fervently loved his daughter, even if his daughter could not physically love him back.
What the doctor didn't know was that Jack was looking at a product of passion that defied the laws that humanity had laid down, a passion as sweet and beautiful and pure as the child. There was one last porthole to a time and place that Jack and Rose were a part of, only and always them. This child had been conceived in a sort of eternal paradise that didn't exist anymore, and she was their last link to something they did not want to let go, to a devotion that they wanted to keep alive. It was a devotion that went past them, but that chained them to ghosts that loved them and likewise loved this little baby.
But Dr. Zablowski couldn't know this, and he observed Jack pull his wife and dead child into an embrace which sheltered all of them from Death, even if it was only for the briefest second. Love was all that existed in their world, and it felt wonderful, and tears flowed freely down all three faces, even as one stood on the outside looking in.
"I love you," Rose whispered gently to her daughter. "I'll always love you, Anna Jamie Dawson."
Jack bit his lip until blood sprang from a cut, and he seemed to be holding back weeping, because if he didn't it seemed like he would never stop. He kissed the little girl too, and he whispered her chosen name over and over again.
"Anna, I'm your daddy, and that's . . . that's your mama. She carried you for a long time just to see this, and we're not mad at you. We're . . . we're proud of you for trying . . . and . . . and I love you . . ."
He got so choked up that he couldn't go on. There was some sort of otherworldly thing, a phantom of sorts, and it seemed that Jack sensed him most. The doctor was terrified and he was frozen in fear, but Jack just nodded and muttered, "I know, Fabri, I know." Whoever Fabri was he did not know, but he was not frightened anymore. Just humbled.
Then the two parents just broke into frenzied crying at once, clinging to each other and their daughter, unable to let go of her body. Zablowski had to wait for hours until he could take her from them and put her in a body bag.
When he at last pulled the child from her father's grasp, her mother reached for her and took her back. He fought her to take Anna away. "I . . . I have too . . . she is dead . . ." He continued to shout, and Jack tried to hold Rose back, but eventually he let her grieve.
It broke his heart to take a baby away from her mother, and he never forgot the empty eyes of Rose Dawson. He never forgot the ghastliness on her pretty face, nor the look of hate and confusion she shot at him. It seemed as though Hell rose from the bowels of the depths into that tiny bedroom, and it all closed in on her. She seemed to be fighting so many demons she became overwhelmed, and as he ran from the room her heard her scream, "Give me my baby! I'm sorry! God, I'm so sorry! Why are you taking her! ANNA!" Then that heart tearing shriek attested to her dissolving into wrenching tears that shook her whole body, and he heard Jack going to her as he brought the baby into the living room and placed her in a small bag that he had brought with him.
The sobs never stopped, and soon he heard Jack's joining in as Loss and Hell drowned two people. He could do nothing to help them as he forever closed their daughter in darkness.
Jack kissed a sleeping Rose on the forehead as she tossed and turned on the bed, lost in nightmares. He stood above her, needing desperately to hold her, and yet he could not wake her up. Even though the nightmare she was having had to be terrifying, it could not be as bad as the real thing, the reality that had become so twisted and hideous that he couldn't even think straight anymore. While she rested, he tried to make himself go and talk to the doctor so that she did not hear the gory details, just him. It hurt too much to see her cry with him, and to remember everything they had lost.
He had been a father for what seemed like mere seconds, and he still loved in the way only a father could. It had been a maddening love, without reason or rhyme, just there. He had wanted so badly for that little girl to cry, to scream, to flail, to breathe . . . and it just hadn't happened. God had robbed him of another one that was precious to him, and it hurt him much more than he thought anything could. He didn't know why he found it so hard to let go of someone he had never had a hold on in the first place. Now a hole inside of him that he thought he had completely covered was growing again, getting deeper and blacker, and he could not stop it. A vital part of him had been ripped out and he knew he would never find it. Again, his heart had to mold and change shape, perhaps become a little bit smaller, to account for the missing piece.
He had seen enough death already to last him forever, and holding his own dead child had nearly snapped whatever resolve he had left. There had been something that was supposed to be flawless and perfect, and yet Death had changed her into nothing but an empty body.
With a fresh wave of guilt tearing his heart into bloody shreds, he looked down at his young wife again. Although she had marched through Hell itself, she still looked so young, so beautiful. Her innocence was still as fresh as the new fallen snow that lay outside, or the promise of spring. He could not help but want to preserve that unbroken purity, to keep it clean and to spare her from the pain that seemed so determined to take her from him. There was some sort of beast after her, a beast that had chased her for a long time.
"Well," he whispered silently, partially to turn away the monster and partially to ease his stinging worry, "You can't have her. You can kill, you can sicken, you can tear up, but she's still mine and you aren't gonna get her. Ever. I swear that."
She shifted slightly, disturbed by the soft sound of his voice in the air. She clutched at her stomach, a stomach that was so much flatter, and something inside of him ached so terribly that he felt he had to sit down next to her. Blindly, even as she slept, she reached for him. The terrible hurt continued to make him throb as he allowed her arms to entwine around his neck and leaned down, so that her hot breath warmed his skin.
He stayed above her like that for what seemed like forever, just taking her in. There was a scent of sweat, yes, but there was also that lovely rosewater that he had smelled so many times. It was the smell that made him feel like maybe, just maybe, they would get past all this someday. When she pulled him down, he lay next to her and wrapped his arms around her shrunken waist. Shame nearly drowned him when he saw her youngness again, the ring on her finger, her empty abdomen, and her horror-streaked face.
He cried very hard without making a sound. It was just Jack and his wife, ever so alone, as tears soaked his pillow and Rose's fiery red hair.
Jack was finally capable of getting up some time later. He tenderly embraced Rose, who was still in the realm of dreams, and opened his bedroom door. He hadn't heard Doctor Zablowski leave, and he knew that he needed to talk to the Polish man before he walked out the door. There was so much he didn't understand, and so many questions he had. He didn't know if he had the strength to ask them yet.
He hadn't slept at all, even though he was exhausted. He couldn't sleep. There was a weight on him that denied him any rest from reality at all, and he was happy to oblige it because he was too guilty to allow himself satisfaction or even a glimpse of hope.
He felt like he had broken the wings off of the little bird that carried all the dreams they had had. It seemed as though any visions of family that had existed before were just dead now, as dead as the brown leaves under all the snow outside, as dead as the skeletons in the Atlantic, as dead as his heart.
He swiped at a stray tear and sighed heavily as he entered the kitchen. The doctor sat at the table, with his head buried in his hands, and his rough lips were moving silently as if he were praying.
Jack stood there for a moment, unwilling to disturb a prayer. He watched, fascinated, as the man silently cried out to his God, running his hands through his hair and beard, looking like he was begging forgiveness. Then he started to whisper, and Jack realized that he was praying in his native tongue. It made him choke up all over again.
Suddenly Zablowski seemed to sense his presence as he sat up straight, as if startled. He looked at him with sympathy, and Jack had to glance away. Jack hated sympathy, even now, when he really needed it.
"She will be feene once she reests."
Jack continued to stare at him, not blinking, just studying and hurting. There was no animosity in the stare, no hatred, no anger. It was just pure pain and pure gratefulness, because he still had his Rose. In the eternity after he would have her forever, but he could not let her go now. He was extremely selfish, and he knew it, and he did not regret it in the least. There was unfeeling in his icy blue irises, but it was not because he lacked emotion. It was because he lacked the capability to feel sheer agony that badly again. He could only hurt like that once in his life, and it had been done already. So because he could not display all of his feelings, there was a gaping hole in his heart.
More than a child had died. A future had died . . . a future full of beautiful certainty that had changed into what-could-have-beens. It was like a star had been born for a split second, shimmering in its potential and magnificence, but it had quickly perished and grown cold. There were so many cold stars in his life . . .
He could not help but think about Fabri at a time like this, because he desperately needed a best friend to help him get through. Rose needed to be supported herself, and they had to grieve together, but he wanted to be able to cry without feeling like he was letting someone down. He wanted to be able to just break apart, to not have to stay strong. But he knew the truth; he knew that Fabrizio was not here, and that he never would be again.
For the first time, he allowed himself to silently say something that he had denied since April. Maybe he had denied it because of guilt, maybe because of shame, maybe just because of the sheer pain. The denial didn't change reality, but he felt like he had been running from a truth that he couldn't run from anymore. He had been able to say, "Fabri is gone," or, "He moved on." Even that had taken all of his emotional strength. But right now he had just faced one huge mound of hurt and he when he turned around another was there that he wanted gone. So he thought the three words needed to free his best friend from the bond of slavery to this world, and let him go to another.
Fabri is dead.
Even in his mind, the words sounded so hollow, so brutal. So devoid of any emotion. He could not help but vividly remember the last time he had seen him, and the desperation in those warm brown eyes. There had even been blame and anger, but not directed at Jack. Maybe it was directed at the Captain, or at the officers, or at the White Star Line. Maybe it was directed at God. But deep in his heart, Jack knew that Fabrizio had possessed the right to blame, the right to wonder and question and cry. He had not only been ready for America, but he deserved America. He deserved the freedom, the liberty, and the beauty of a new life. What Jack couldn't understand is why it was denied from him, and why such innocence had been betrayed. He looked at the world with tired, weary eyes now, because of all of the hurt that had worn him down. There was still that thirst for adventure and life, but also a dread that everything he had experienced would hit him again.
Today it had. Perhaps it would happen again, he didn't know. He was not so naïve as to think that God only let life be unfair once or twice.
"Will she be able to have children again?" He asked quietly, praying that there entire future had not suddenly just ended. For as much as he loved Anna Jamie, he wanted to love another baby someday, a baby that would love him back. It hurt to look that far into the future, but he knew he had to. Rose couldn't.
Dr. Zablowski looked at him evenly for a moment, and then slowly answered. "Yes . . . she weel . . . if she avooids the . . . condeetion early in her term that causeed her to . . . to loose Anna . . ." He eyes dropped from Jack's face to the ground and he nervously scuffed the kitchen floor with his boot.
Jack shook his head and ran a masculine hand through his tangled blonde hair. "Don't worry, sir. She will be that cold again, I promise." He swallowed and let his heart take that promise and tuck it away for eternity. It meant more than physically cold; it meant emotionally, it meant she would never have a love starved body ever again.
There was an uncomfortable silence, and Jack finally noticed a little black sack on the kitchen table. A shock of horror and terrible sadness washed over him again, for he knew what that sack contained.
His breathing became uneven and the heat that meant tears were on the way burned his whole body. He tried not to imagine that tiny girl closed forever in the darkness, because he knew he could not handle it.
"It's all my fault," he breathed, his eyes stinging and his heart dangerously close to fluttering out of control. "I should have stayed with her . . . I should have been there . . . I should have made her stay on the . . . the boat!" He forced the last words out. They came before a torrent of weeping that violently wracked him and he slammed against the counter behind him.
Jack sank on the floor, weeping viciously, moans being torn from his lips. There was no hero, no potential, no life, and no hope left within him in that moment. He was simply a very broken man, with a spirit that was being crushed under something far bigger than he was.
"God . . . why didn't I keep her out of . . . of the . . . the water?" He sobbed, not even trying to dry his soaked cheeks or keep the water off of his shirt. The drops rained steadily on the floor and he tasted salt running into his mouth, burning the cuts that he had made from biting his lip. "Damn it!" There was a tortured anger in his words that terrified the doctor in front of him, because the doctor had never seen such anguish like this. It was more than the loss of a daughter, it was the loss of faith and dreams and maybe a Rose, but Zablowski couldn't know that.
"I have to teeke the baby," Dr. Zablowski whispered quietly, laying a hand on tormented man's shoulder, even though he knew he couldn't really help. "I cannot leave her heere. You can contoct me with funeeral arrangeements, but I have to put her in the morgue."
Jack looked up at him with haunted, bloodstained blue eyes. Those eyes were not here, but in another place and time, maybe another reality. Ghosts seemed to glance out from ebony pupils.
"Be careful with her," Jack murmured. There was nothing else to do. Every particle of him wanted to hold his little girl again, and he wanted to keep her here. But a tiny practical voice that he could not kill told him that was a danger not only to himself, but to Rose. So instead he would go hold his wife, and they would cry together, and they would be expected to heal.
He hated the cruelty of the world, because the world did not let people mourn. He was told that he had to get back up tomorrow and go to work and act like nothing had happened. He was forced to pretend as though a huge chunk of his soul had not been torn out. He was disgusted with all of the fakeness, and all of the feigning. That was what he had saved Rose from, but he had learned that cheap shamming was part of the game everywhere. It made him want to die to think that men and women were that far gone.
Not that he didn't want to die anyway.
He was staring straight ahead, his mind in so many places. He was back on that farm in Chippewa Falls, watching black flames boil into a sky with ashes that carried his parents. He was on the icy Atlantic, where time didn't exist and boundaries didn't matter. Where he had found and lost true love, where he had said goodbye to friendship and seen horrors that most people were not even capable of dreaming of. And he was also in a tiny apartment in the slums of New York City with a dead child in a doctor's bag and a battered, tear-stained wife sleeping on an old bed. No matter where he went came this suffocating feeling of shame and misunderstandings, making him gasp for air he did not deserve to have.
He looked up and realized the doctor had gone, leaving the handwritten address of his office on the kitchen table. He hadn't even noticed. Just like that, Anna Jamie was out of his life, never to be brought back again.
It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. The enormity of the pain he was in made him stagger when he stood up. He had a roaring headache, but he did not notice, because the body does not hurt when the heart does that badly.
He heard Rose crying softly in the bedroom and his pulse quickened. He did not want her to cry. He knew it was unavoidable, knew that it was something she had to do. Yet the part of him that would not listen to reason, the part of him that wanted to protect her from agony as long as possible, did not want her to have to cry.
When he quietly pushed the door in, she was facing him on the bed. Her whole body was curled in a fetal position and she had her face buried in her arms to muffle her sobs. Curls tangled around a beautiful, tortured face.
What was left of his heart broke right at that moment. He did not know what to do. Again, Jack did not know what to do. He was as lost as she, and he couldn't act like he wasn't. So he stood helplessly in the doorway, for the first time unable to help the girl he loved with everything he had and everything he never would.
It was not what fate had wanted. God could not have possibly wanted two soulmates to be pried apart by evil. He could not have designed them for the purpose of heartache. It just wasn't possible.
But all of those walls came crashing down from the Heavens with a tiny little moan of one word from the white lips of a young woman with that wild red hair. "Jack . . .!"
That was all that it took. In two strides, Jack had made it to her side and fell next to her on the mattress. The pale, ferocious light of a winter morning pierced the bedroom that during the night had become tainted with pure blood. In that cruel light, Jack took his Rose in his arms and they both cried until their hearts threatened to explode.
As the rest of the world awoke like every other morning and ignored all the horror coming from that tiny flat, two people who loved each other and a dead little girl with a love that no one else could ever understand clung to each other because they had just been stripped of everything else. A part of a man and a woman before thought immortal died in that harsh light of a December morning.
