The Woman That She Became

The Woman In Me

Rose couldn't feel anything at all, she was entirely a separate entity to her body. Her mind wandered across the night's sky, as though it had left her bones, like a soul off to Heaven, although she was simply in a Hell.

It was cold. There was no way that she couldn't feel that much. The weight of ice in her hair, the sting of icy wind on the very surface of her skin. But nothing penetrated. Nothing seemed to get past that first layer. 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. It was like moving through the layers of a dream, of a hazy and crazy dream.

How long had they all been drifting for?

The waves rocked the lifeboat beneath her gently, lullingly, somehow blasphemous after the violence of the morning. It was as though after all they had endured; some comfort was to be offered...something had to be, didn't it? The darkness was fading into the grey approach of dawn, but the stars were still visible enough to hold her vague stare which brought her some sort of peace, some kind of connection to the universe about them, until her lids sagged shut and all she could see was the green, glowing fire of a waving flare. A freezing cold exhaustion came over her, pulling her into a state of something else.

When she woke, the early sun haloed an overdue ship looming above them. Her eyes trailed skyward to the reddening dawn, the name Carpathia and to the silhouettes of people lining the ship's railing, gawking down at the carnage the Titanic had left behind. Rose moved her gaze eastward and saw the 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 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. The hazy layers weren't yet broken. Her body was not yet accustomed to the ever-biting coldness. The bitter sting of loneliness enveloped her, she felt no kinship with the other survivors. Felt nothing.

When it came her turn to board the ship, Rose struggled to stand, muscles seizing and body shaking. The entire movements were completely hard to even navigate. She took her very first steps for the second time, and used strength she didn't have to climb the ladder she was cautiously guided to, the lifeboat swaying beneath her feet with every advance.

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. She stood only because she was held and began walking forward again only because she was led. It was as though she was a floating soul, lingering about and trying to find her way someplace. Someplace that she had absolutely no knowledge of.

Internally, she screamed out to him. Jack.

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, for she had no feelings or ability to even feel the heat of the liquid. 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 without any understanding of the situation at hand. They were all connected now by the devastation. Class and rank, for the moment, became the most blurred line, none of it seemed to matter. As everyone came back to themselves, they became their loss. Who would she be when she thawed? What would be awaiting her?