AFTER TITANIC

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

 

She stares up into the night sky, singing the song he sang to her while they were at the bow of the ship just hours ago. "…up she goes, up she goes" she sang, running the lyrics over and over, trying to ignore the horror of her situation. "Come Josephine in my flying machine…"

Suddenly a beam of light flashes across her face and a distant voice breaks into her reverie, "Hello! Is there anyone out there?"

Coming to attention, she forces herself to turn around to see where the voice is coming from and for the first time a ray of hope breaks into the bleak darkness of her heart.

A boat! Can it really be a boat, come back to save them?

"Jack," Rose lightly, but urgently shakes the cold hand tightly grasping hers. "There’s a boat."

Poor thing. He’s fallen asleep. She hates to wake him, but she had no choice, they had to get to the boat.

"Jack," a little more loudly and a little more roughly, "there’s a boat, Jack."

No response.

"Jack! Wake up! Please! There’s a boat!" Her voice is now hoarse from the cold, but the fear in it is unmistakable. Why doesn’t he wake up? Why doesn’t he open his eyes and say something? He can’t be….no. She won’t even harbor the thought that he may be dead. He had to be alive. He just had to be, or what else is her reason for living? "Jack…?"

Suddenly his hand squeezes hers and his eyes pop open. "Can’t I get any sleep around here?" He weakly replies, lightly smiling at his attempt at a joke.

"Oh Jack," instant relief washes through her. She knew he was alive, like he said earlier, he was a survivor. "A boat! There’s a boat right over there, and if we don’t hurry, we’ll miss it." She points to the silhouette of the lifeboat and the officer, still yelling for a response as he got further and further away. Perhaps it was already too late. The boat was obviously too far away for a human voice.

"Come back!" Jack yelled as loudly as he could, which in his weakening condition was very loud. "We’re over here! Come back!"

But the boat got further away. It was obvious that they weren’t going to be heard. Rose felt her eyes fill with tears of hopelessness, until she spotted the whistle stuck in the mouth of a dead officer. It was a disgusting thought to have to use a whistle that was in the mouth of a corpse, but she had no choice. Their case was getting hopeless. She can feel the life going out of Jack’s hands as he remained in the freezing water. She had to get him out of there fast…before he was really gone from her for good.

Still holding tightly to Jack’s hand, she slipped off the board and pulled Jack over to where the dead officer floated on a piece of debris.

Here goes everything, she thought as she pulled the whistle out of the officer’s mouth and blew on it as hard as she could.

"Come about!" a voice hollers, shining a light right on Jack and Rose. Smiling with satisfaction, Rose fell into unconsciousness

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