I don't know how long it's been when the boats finally come back. I'm singing to myself. The song Brittany sung to me. When I hear voices, at first I think I'm dreaming. Or that maybe I've died. Then I come to my sense a little.
"Britt?" I shake her hand. "Brittany?" I shake her arm. She doesn't respond, and I become a little more desperate. "Britt! There's a boat, Britt?" I realise what's happened, but I refuse to believe it. "Britt?" I shake her even stronger, but she still remains unmoved. "There's a boat Britt." I can see the boat moving away, and for a second I want to let it, and stay here with her, but then I remember my promise.
"Come back!" I try to shout, but my yell comes out as a whisper. I try again, and again, but it's no use, they can't hear me. Then I remember the whistle. I pull my hand from Brits frozen one, keeping hold of her wrist.
"I'll never let go, I promise." I kiss the back of her hand, then drop it, and watch as she sinks.
I pull myself from the door, dropping into the water. It's more painful than I would've thought, but at least I can move my limbs again. I swim over to the body of the officer, and pull the whistle from his mouth. It takes me a couple of goes to get my lips to move enough to be able to blow.
I keep blowing until they find me, clinging to the chair the officer was on, and pull me onto the boat.
"Fifteen hundred people went into the sea when Titanic sank from under us. There were 20 boats floating nearby, and only one came back. Six were saved from the water, myself included. Six, out of 1,500. Afterward, the 700 people in the boats had nothing to do but wait. Wait to die, wait to live. Wait for an absolution that would never come."
I lay in the boat for hours, waiting for help to arrive, watching the officer who'd saved me wave flares. I drifted in and out of sleep for those hours, until the Carpathia came. I sat with the people from Steerage, wrapped in a blacket.
I saw Finn come to look for me, but I swaddled myself up further, hiding myself from his view. He was the last person I wanted to see. He looked torn, but I let him leave.
"That's the last time I ever saw him. He married, of course, and inherited his millions. But the crash of '29 hit his interests hard, and he put a pistol in his mouth that year. Or so I read."
It was raining when we reached New York, the Statue of Liberty reaching up into the sky from in front of us.
"Can I take your name please, love?" An officer from Carpathia stood next to me, covering me with his umbrella.
"Pierce. "I told him. "Quinn Pierce."
I heard him mumble a thank you and move away as I watched the statue pass us.
"We never found anything on Brittany. There's no record of her at all."
"No, there wouldn't be, would there? And I've never spoken to him until now, not to anyone. Not even your grandfather. A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets. But now you know, there was a woman name Brittany S. Pierce, and that she saved me, in every way a person can be saved. I don't even have a picture of her. She exists now, only in my memory."